"The consolidated miners and the reunited I. W. W.," he said, "would draw to themselves all the trade unions with industrial tendencies, and thus would the reactionary federation of craft unions [A. F. of L.] be transformed from both within and without, into a revolutionary industrial organization."[661] In the same article Debs advocated a reunion of the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties, and William English Walling in commenting on Debs' proposal for uniting the W. F. M. and the U. M. W. says that such an outcome "if not immediately probable, is decidedly possible."[662]
The ninth I. W. W. convention, which met in Chicago, Sept. 21, 1914, as not an important one. It was in session less than a week and there were not more than twenty-five delegates present.[663] The writer attended the sessions of September 22, 23 and 24. On the 22nd he counted ten delegates actually present, and about the same number of spectators. The next morning there were sixteen delegates on hand, and on the 27th, seventeen. No stenographic report of the proceedings—indeed, no complete report of any kind whatsoever—has ever been issued. A very brief account was printed in Solidarity, which emphasized the fact that all the delegates were "typical specimens of the working class rank and file, with some contempt for empty theorizing and a marked preference for action."[664] On the 23rd, resolutions were presented asking for a reduction in the amount of dues payable to the national office and proposing to limit convention delegates to one vote each irrespective of the size of the locals which they represented. Both were lost. The latter resolution was supported by a militant minority which very naturally believed that the majority is sluggish—always behind time—and therefore nearly always wrong. They insisted that the new and fruitful ideas always come from the minority and that it should, therefore, be given representation rather according to its (assumed) revolutionary initiative than according to its numerical strength. Their attitude was primarily the result of the difficulty they experienced both in and out of the organization in getting their militant ideas "across" to the large majority. In a lesser degree they were stimulated by the example set them by their fellow syndicalists in France where the "militant minorities" in the small unions of the C. G. T. are given the same representation and voting power as the large unions of that body. For this reason small groups which make up the "extreme left" in the C. G. T. have more influence than similar groups in this country.[665]
The unemployment situation had been particularly acute the preceding winter and it was reported that the greater part of the membership of the I. W. W. were out of employment at the time of the convention. "... the I. W. W. has no apologies to offer," says Solidarity, "for the smallness of its last convention ... most of our members are out of work, and few, if any, Pacific Coast locals could have financed a delegate for even four days in Chicago."[666]
According to the account appearing in the I. W. W. press, it was the understanding of the convention
that [unemployed] parades to City Halls, Capitols, etc., should be discouraged as nothing more substantial than hot air is to be found in these political centers. The delegates agreed with Haywood that the places for the unemployed to demonstrate were the places where there was plenty of food and clothing so that they could help themselves.[667]
At the same time the delegates decided to take definite steps toward organizing the unemployed. According to the Chicago papers, Haywood had said: "Millions have been appropriated for the militia; nothing for the wealth producers who will be without work. Where warehouses are full of food, go in and take it; where machinery is lying idle, use it for your purposes; where houses are unoccupied, enter them and sleep."[668] At a later session (on September 24) there was adopted unanimously and without discussion a resolution which, in effect, stipulated that all speakers be instructed to recommend to the workers the necessity of curtailing production by "slowing down" and the use of sabotage. The resolution also suggested the publication of an explanatory leaflet on this subject.[669] The Daily News dispatch, just quoted, reports F. H. Little, an executive board member from California, as saying, "Wherever I go, I inaugurate sabotage among the workers. Eventually the bosses will learn why it is that their machinery is spoiled and their workers slowing down."
At the same session it was proposed that a conference on harvest organization be held, and from this time on the harvest and the other agricultural workers attracted more and more of the organization's attention.
There was some discussion of the methods used in conducting the business of the local unions, especially in regard to the bookkeeping system—or lack of system. No definite decision was reached, but the remarks of the delegates show that they were beginning to realize that financial and membership records cannot be kept by the futurist or impressionistic methods which are so effective on the soap-box. It was realized also that responsible persons must be selected for the work of the local secretary-treasurer, and it was urged that some uniform system of bookkeeping be adopted for the use of local secretaries. Some I. W. W. officials, like some bank officials, no doubt abuse the confidence placed in them, although the daily press probably heralds to the world the I. W. W. defalcation with greater promptness and enthusiasm than it does that of the banker. A dispatch in the Omaha Bee (Nov. 24, 1916) says that the local "secretary-treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World has been missing for the last four days and so is $250 which was to be used for the relief of strikers and their families in Duluth, Minn." In another instance, according to Vincent St. John, "the National Secretary [of the 'National Industrial Union of Forest and Lumber Workers' of the I. W. W.] left with all the funds in his charge six or eight months ago and the organization had to start all over again...."[670]
The European war had broken out less than two months before this convention met and the delegates did not fail to adopt a resolution against war. It was worded in part as follows:
... The ignorance of the working class is the reason for the continuation of the war.... The [German] Social Democracy was a movement that engendered a spirit of patriotism within political boundary lines. The industrial movement will wipe out all boundaries and will establish an international relationship between all races engaged in industry.... We, as members of the industrial army, will refuse to fight for any purpose except for the realization of industrial freedom.[671]