[CHAPTER XIV]
Recent Tendencies
The mutual hostility between the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W. has not lessened since 1907. This antagonism has been most acute in Arizona, Nevada and Montana mining camps. In the Arizona-Montana territory the feeling on the side of the Federation is indicated by the following extract from a letter written to the twenty-first convention of that organization by a member in Jerome, Ariz.
We are very sorry [he writes] that we are unable to send a delegate to Denver, but we have the fight of our life here with an I. W. W. bunch. They are coming here from all over; already they have got in some dirty work by getting some of our members to quit the W. F. M., ... there seems to be a concerted movement on the part of the I. W. W. to get in where the W. F. M. are doing good work and disrupt the union.[641]
It is not unnatural that there should be increasing friction between the two organizations, inasmuch as the Western Federation has become on the whole more conservative, while the I. W. W. has grown constantly more revolutionary. In June, 1910, the W. F. M. voted for affiliation with the American Federation of Labor and the alliance was finally consummated in May, 1911. "What the mine owners failed to do by force," declares the I. W. W., "they have accomplished through Civic Federation methods. The process will doubtless continue, until the W. F. of M, becomes as completely the football of metalliferous mine owners as the United Mine Workers is of the coal barons."[642] At its twentieth annual convention in 1912, the W. F. M. now not only divorced from the I. W. W., but wedded to the A. F. of L., reversed its traditional embargo on agreements and accepted the policy of entering into contracts with the operators.[643]
Article V, section 4. of the Federation's Constitution (1910 edition) stipulated that "no local union or unions of the W. F. M. shall enter into any signed contract or verbal agreement for any specified length of time with their employers." This clause was stricken out in 1912. The revised edition of the Constitution for that year expressed the new policy of the Federation (now the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers) in these terms: "Local unions or groups of local unions may enter into wage agreements for a specified time, providing such agreements have the approval of the Executive Board...."[644]
The bitterness between the two organizations was most acute in the Butte (Mont.) mining fields. The situation reached a dramatic climax in the summer of 1914 when, on June 13, the Union Hall of Butte Miners' Union No. 1 (W. F. M.) was dynamited. The writer is not sufficiently familiar with the facts to tell this story in detail, or to express an opinion as to whether or to what extent the I. W, W. element in Butte was responsible for the dynamiting.
The friction between I. W. W. sympathizers and the management of the local W. F. M. union—Butte Miners' Union No. 1—was unquestionably a factor in the quarrel which culminated in the dynamiting outrage. There were certainly other factors. The local organization had been gradually dividing into two factors—the "Reds" and the "Yellows." Among the "Reds," I. W. W. members and sympathizers predominated. The "Yellows" comprised the local officials of the union and their followers, and they were in a majority. It was alleged by the "Reds" that at the union meetings the administration element deliberately packed the hall with the "reactionaries" before the hour of opening, so that the "Reds" could not even voice their grievances. Then the hall was blown up. The administration accused the I. W. W. and pointed out that such a deed was to be expected of a group which avowed its belief in the doctrine of "direct action by the militant minority." The Miners' Magazine declares that "the 'Red' faction composed of I. W. W. members dynamited the Union Hall."[645] At the last W. F. M. convention (1916), President Moyer said that the real cause of the Butte tragedy was the "poison the I. W. W. promoters were scattering" in the minds of the Butte miners.[646] A large portion of the two weeks' session of the twenty-first W. F. M. convention (Denver, 1914) was taken up with a discussion of the Butte dynamiting and the alleged complicity of the I. W. W. therein. One of the delegates related the following incident, which he said took place in front of the Union Hall in Butte a short time before the dynamiting:
Three of the mob ... presented I. W. W. cards ... at the door and asked to be admitted to the meeting, and on being refused, one of them laid his I. W. W. card on the sidewalk, stooped down and patted it with his hand and said, "We will make you fellows eat that card before long."[647]