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

by Paul F. Brissenden

To say that these conferees were, broadly speaking, socialists and that they outlined a socialistic program of a certain sort does not mean, as the daily press report insinuated, that the Socialist party was in any way represented in the conference or that it was a political movement. Max S. Hayes, anxious to disclaim on behalf of party Socialists any responsibility for the new undertaking, explained that

As a matter of record and fairness it should be stated that, first, not a single signer to the above call is officially identified with the Socialist Party; secondly, that not one of the signers has been seen or heard or known on the floor of the American Federation of Labor conventions as an advocate of socialism in recent years; and thirdly, it is doubtful whether any American Federation of Labor delegate, with possibly an exception or two, had the slightest knowledge that the Chicago [January] conference was to be held.[90]

The American Federation of Labor, as the embodiment of the craft idea, was the subject of bitter attack at this prenatal conference. The general opinion seemed to be that the A. F. of L. had outlived its usefulness, and that its extinction—but not necessarily the extinction of its constituent local unions—was a consummation very much to be desired.

The A. F. of L. very naturally resented its proposed annihilation.

The Socialists have called another convention to smash the American trade-union movement [said President Gompers]. Scanning the list of twenty-six signers of this call, one will look in vain to find the name of one man who has not for years been engaged in the delectable work of trying to divert, pervert, and disrupt the labor movement of the country.... We feel sure that the endorsement of the latest accession to this new movement of Mr. Daniel Loeb, alias DeLeon, will bring unction to the souls of these promoters of the latest trade-union smashing scheme. So the trade-union smashers and rammers from without and the "borers from within" are again joining hands; a pleasant sight of the "pirates" and the "kangaroos" hugging each other in glee over their prospective prey.[91]

But the members of the January conference did not propose any wholesale or indiscriminate "smashing from without." It is true they believed the Federation, as a federation, to be harmful to the interests of labor—and would have been nothing loath to "smash" it—but the federated units they proposed to take over and unite in a very different way.

Mr. A. M. Simons, who claims to have given the final draft to the Manifesto, says that "the idea expressed at the conference was to form a new central body, into which existing unions and unions to be formed could be admitted, but not to form rival unions."[92] Discussing the January conference in the International Socialist Review,[93] Mr. Simons traces this idea back to two vital tendencies of the day, viz., (1) the merging of trade lines in the class struggle, and (2) the accelerated growth of class-consciousness on the part of the capitalists. He concludes that "the only question about the desirability of forming such an organization is the question of timeliness."

The organized laborers were only a part of the concern of the conference. Over ninety per cent of those gainfully occupied are unorganized. It was, of course, realized that outside of all unions stood the overwhelming majority of all workingmen, and, as Daniel DeLeon put it, these men did not "propose to go into these organizations run by the Organized Scabbery, because they had burned their fingers thus enough. The organization of the future has to be built of the men who are now unorganized—that is, the overwhelming majority of the working men in the nation."[94]

Thus it was really hoped that much could and would be done by workingmen in the existent unions, without breaking away from these local unions. These latter must be pried away from the A. F. of L., but not themselves destroyed. By all means let us "bore from within" as far as that can be done; also when we can bore no longer, let us hammer from without and pound together new bodies from out the great unorganized mass. This, in brief, was the position of most of the industrialists. However, not all would yet go this far. Even among the Socialist leaders a note of dissent was heard expressing the belief that to "bore from within" was the only revolutionary method not absolutely suicidal.[95] Just what fate awaited these January ideas was to some extent revealed in the proceedings of the June convention.