The I. W. W.: A Study of American Syndicalism

by Paul F. Brissenden

Decentralization is what they want. To gain this point of control in the movement, they begin with the officials by saying they have too much power, and to break up the machine we must divide up in various parts, do away with the General Executive Board and the General Office. The first move ... was ... when the scheme of a Pacific Coast District Organization was launched under the mask of perfecting more organization [sic] in the I. W. W. At the [P. C. D. O.] convention held in Portland, Ore., they were to establish a western headquarters, ... get control of the western organ, The Industrial Worker, elect their own General Executive Board, and get out their own due-books and stamps, etc. This idea ... is now prevailing in various sections throughout the organization. The P. C. D. O. scheme ... failed because of [lack of] support [and] died with its first convention because of the fact that it smacked of disruption and decentralization....[627]

In the I. W. W., as in all voluntary organizations covering areas of continental magnitude, doctrines are allocated territorially. There are many points of contrast between the eastern and the western constituencies of the Industrial Workers of the World. At present we are only concerned with the eastern and western attitudes toward the idea of decentralization. The western environment drives the petit bourgeoisie to demand political home rule or local autonomy in legislative government. The result is the recent remarkable spread of the initiative, referendum and recall in the three Pacific Coast states. In these same three states we find the chief strongholds of industrial autonomy. The life of the western proletarian imbues him with the more individualistic kind of rebellion which expresses itself in the more or less coherent demand for an industrial state made up of self-governing local groups of workers. The results have been the partially successful drive from the West for the referendum idea in union government, the chronic decentralist mutterings which have constantly emanated from the West, the open but unsuccessful decentralist attack at the eighth convention and—the P. C. D. O. In the long run the decentralist pressure has had its effect and the organization, as already intimated, is now less centralized than it was a decade ago. The writer realizes that the analogy between western political pioneering and labor-union or industrialist pioneering in that section must not be pushed too far. For example, the ultimate result of I. W. W. decentralization is anarchist communism, which is quite different from the kind of political society resulting from the home-rule and referendum statutes enacted by a middle-class electorate.

The I. W. W. leaders were not unaware of the effect of the geographical environment. B. H. Williams, the editor of Solidarity puts it in this way:

We see in the West, individualism in practice, combined with a theory of collective action that scoffs at individual or group initiative by general officers and executive boards and conceives the possibility of "direct action" in all things through the "rank and file." Hence the proposal ... for minimizing the power of the general administration.

He explains that the eastern delegates come from a different environment. Industry in the East is highly developed and centralized. They don't think of Pennsylvania in a geographical sense.

Without the individualistic spirit himself, the eastern worker nevertheless recognizes the value of individual initiative in promoting mass action and in executing the mandates ... of the organization. The problem before the sixth convention was to preserve the balance between these two sets of ideas. In that the convention succeeded admirably.[628]

Another industrialist thinks that "the western part of the country, being very little developed industrially, has a tendency to develop individualism in the minds of the workers.... On the other hand, the workers in the large industrial centers develop a strong collectivism which expresses itself in mass action," and which requires a "close[ly] centralized organization."[629]

The western local union is usually a "mixed" union, and it is therefore not directly connected with any "shop" or industry. It is more nearly a propaganda club. It usually has a hall of some kind for meetings, and in many cases this hall is open all the time. Sometimes there is a "jungle kitchen" attached and meals can be served to itinerant Fellow Workers who are passing through. This means that there is naturally more hall-room conversation and less solid "shop talk" in the western local than there is in the strictly industrial shop organization of the East. Many members felt that too much time was wasted in talking politics and religion. At the eighth convention there was some criticism of the loquaciousness of the western "wobbly" and of his personal appearance as well.

To-day you have got to have a man go up and address the public that looks like a human being [said Delegate Olson]. [See what] you have got in the western country by their ragged agitators; you have got nothing but disappointment, and then you holler at the General Secretary.... If the rank and file were educated well enough to make use of the organization instead of arousing animosity they would do away with this spittoon philosophy.[630]

Frank Bohn, in describing the methods by which this group of so-called "spittoon philosophers" in the mixed locals is said to have attempted to disrupt the I. W. W., asks, "Is this chair-warming sect now the leading element in the I. W. W.? Is it in a majority? If it is, the I. W. W. is not dying. It is dead."[631]