Lewis J. Duncan, the Socialist mayor of Butte, declared that the I. W. W.s did not take part in the dynamiting. In a letter dated June 29, 1914, and addressed to the United Labor Bulletin (Denver), he asserts that
the responsibility for Tuesday's disturbance cannot truthfully be placed on the I. W. W. The "600 itinerant I. W. W. trouble-makers" on whom your report lays the blame for the June 13th trouble, are non-existent.... The men in revolt against the local officers of the miners [union] and against the W. F. of M. officials are a majority of the miners of Butte, and only a small minority of them are connected with the Propaganda League of the I. W. W. here, or are even sympathetic with the I. W. W.s. We have no economic organization of the I. W. W. in this city. It is untrue that even all those in the lead of the local revolt are connected with the I. W. W....[648]
But scarcely more than a week after the dynamiting it was announced in the newspapers that
plans for forming an independent union of miners were made today at a meeting ... attended by 5000 miners.... The seceders [the dispatch continued] have an executive committee of twenty, a majority of whom are known to be members of the Industrial Workers of the World....[649]
Apparently nothing came of this in the way of an I. W. W. organization, for there was no I. W. W. local in Butte in 1914. At the present time, however, there is an active local there.
Entirely apart from the Butte controversy there has been a marked feeling among the officials of the Western Federation that the I. W. W. had deliberately attempted to disrupt the Federation. President Moyer thought the I. W. W.s had tried by crooked methods to get control of, or disrupt the W. F. M.[650] He alleged that "there had been a conspiracy entered into both in and out of the Western Federation of Miners ... to secure control of this organization for the purpose of getting it back into the I. W. W.,"[651] and that "publications edited by this direct-action, sabotage-howling coterie have lent their aid to this campaign...."[652] Mr. J. M. O'Neill, the editor of the Miners' Magazine, a man who has since 1907 been particularly lavish of epithets on I. W. W.-ism, complained that
Since the Western Federation of Miners repudiated by referendum vote the aggregation of characterless fanatics, who make up the official coterie of the International Workless Wonders, the officials of the Western Federation of Miners have been assailed by every disreputable hoodlum in the I. W. W....[653] The time has come [he went on] when the labor and socialist press of America must hold up to the arc-light these professional degenerates who create riots, and then, in the name of free speech, solicit revenue to feed the prostituted parasites who yell "scab" and "fakiration" at every labor body whose members refuse to gulp down the lunacy of a "bummery" that would disgrace the lower confines of Hades.[654]
Each faction of the I. W. W., according to O'Neill, claims to be "the genuine brand of unionism that is ultimately destined to shatter empires, scatter kingdoms and strangle economic slavery to death...."[655] Another editorial in the same journal declares that the Federation is
unalterably opposed to their tactics and methods.... Industrial unionism will not come through soup houses, spectacular free-speech fights, sabotage or insults to the flags of nations.... Men will not be organized or educated by means of violence, for violence is but the weapon of ignorance, blind to the cause that subjugates humanity and sightless to the remedy that will break the fetters of wage slavery.