The Industrial Workers of the World, now more generally known as the I. W. W.[79] was organized at an "Industrial Union Congress" held in Chicago in June, 1905. This first or constitutional convention had its inception in an informal conference held in that city, in the fall of 1904, by six men of prominence in the socialist and labor movement. These conferees were: William E. Trautmann, editor of the Brauer Zeitung, official organ of the United Brewery Workmen; George Estes, President of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; W. L. Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; Isaac Cowen, American representative of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers of Great Britain; Clarence Smith, General Secretary-Treasurer of the American Labor Union; and Thomas J. Hagerty, editor of the Voice of Labor, official organ of the American Labor Union.[80] Several others not present at this conference were at that time actively interested in the matter and coöperated in carrying out these prenatal plans. Two of them, Eugene V. Debs and Charles O. Sherman, General Secretary of United Metal Workers International Union, were destined to play important rôles in the organization.
These men were impelled by a common conviction that the labor unions of America were becoming powerless to achieve real benefits for working men and women. This feeling was confirmed and intensified by many recent events in the trade-union movement. It was not the more conservative, "aristocratic" unions alone which were found wanting. Even those labor organizations of the industrial and radical type, such as the American Labor Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, were believed to be, for one reason or another, quite unprepared to negotiate—much less to fight—with the ever more highly integrated organizations of employers. At the constitutional convention in June, 1905, Clarence Smith of the American Labor Union explained the reasons for initiating the movement.
This conviction of ineffectiveness in the face of opportunities for effective work was strengthened [he said] at the general convention of the International Union of United Brewery Workmen last September. It seemed clear that a united, harmonious and consistent request from all unions and organizations of the American Labor Union, backed by an administration in whom the rank and file of the brewery workers had confidence, would have brought the Brewery Workmen into the American Labor Union at that time. And what would have been true of the Brewery Workmen would have been true also of other organizations of an industrial character. It therefore seemed the first duty of conscientious union men, regardless of affiliation, prejudice or personal interest, to lay the foundation upon which all the working people, many of whom are now organized, might unite upon a common ground to build a labor organization that would correspond to modern industrial conditions, and through which they might finally secure complete emancipation from wage-slavery for all wage-workers.[81]
In order to go over the matter and discuss plans more thoroughly, it was decided to arrange for a larger meeting. On November 29 a letter of invitation was sent to about thirty persons then prominent in the radical labor and Socialist movements. This letter contained the following significant paragraph:
Asserting our confidence in the ability of the working class, if correctly organized on both political and industrial lines, to take possession of and operate successfully ... the industries of the country;
Believing that working-class political expression, through the Socialist ballot, in order to be sound, must have its economic counterpart in a labor organization builded as the structure of socialist society, embracing within itself the working-class in approximately the same groups and departments and industries that the workers would assume in the working-class administration of the Co-operative Commonwealth ...;
We invite you to meet us at Chicago, Monday, January 2, 1905, in secret conference to discuss ways and means of uniting the working people of America on correct revolutionary principles, regardless of any general labor organization of past or present, and only restricted by such basic principles as will insure its integrity as a real protector of the interests of the workers.[82]
It is noteworthy fact that, although the proposition was concurred in and the invitation accepted with enthusiasm by the great majority of those invited, agreement was not unanimous. There were two dissenters—Victor Berger and Max Hayes. It is not recorded that Mr. Berger even sent his "regrets," but Mr. Hayes explained his position at length. In a letter to W. L. Hall, December 30, 1904, he said:
This sounds to me as though we were to have another Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance experiment again; that we, who are in the trade-unions as at present constituted, are to cut loose and flock by ourselves. If I am correct in my surmises it means another running fight between Socialists on the one side and all other partisans on the other.... If there is any fighting to be done I intend ... to agitate on the inside of the organizations now in existence....[83]
The Western Federation of Miners did not lack enthusiasm for this wider venture in industrial unionism. President Moyer's report to the thirteenth convention, which met just one month before the constitutional convention of June, 1905, contained the following: