III. Resolved, that the Conference places itself on record as recognizing the usefulness of the Industrial Workers of the World to the proletarian movement....
X. Resolved, ... that ... steps be taken to bring about a national conference between the two organizations in order to bring about unity on a national basis.[208]
The Conference holds [reads this Manifesto] that without the political movement backed by a class-conscious ... economic organization, ready to take and hold and conduct the productive power of the land, and thereby ready ... to enforce if ... and when need be, the fiat of the socialist ballot of the working class; that without such a body in existence, the socialist political movement will be but a flash in the pan ...; that a political party of Socialism which marches to the polls unarmed by such [an] organization, but invites a catastrophe over the land in the measure that it strains for [and achieves] political success.... It must be an obvious fact to all serious observers of the times, that the day of the political success of such a party in America would be the day of its defeat, immediately followed by an industrial and financial crisis, from which none would suffer more than the working class itself.... By its own declarations and acts the American Federation of Labor shows that it accepts wage-slavery as a finality ... holding that there is identity of interest between employer and employee.... Consequently [the Conference] ... rejects as impracticable, vicious, and productive only of corruption the theory of neutrality on the economic field ..., condemns the American Federation of Labor as an obstacle to the emancipation of the working class ... [and] commends as useful to the emancipation of the working class the Industrial Workers of the World, which instead of running away from the class struggle bases itself squarely upon it, and boldly and correctly sets out the socialist principle "that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common...."[209]
The second I. W. W. convention met on September 17, 1906, with ninety-three delegates. The sessions continued for sixteen days. It had been predicted at the first convention that the Industrial Workers of the World would within a year be one hundred thousand strong. This forecast was, according to Secretary Trautmann's report to the second convention, very much too sanguine. This report indicated that there were some sixty thousand members (including 27,000 in the Western Federation of Miners) at the opening of the second convention. The following tabulation of the growth of the membership during the first year is arranged from the data given in Mr. Trautmann's report:
I. W. W. Membership—First Year[210]
| Date | Unions directly attached | Transportation Dept. | Metal Dept. | Total Membership | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1905 | ||||||
| Aug. 1 | 1,900 | |||||
| Sept. 1 | 4,247 | [211] | ||||
| Oct. 1 | 1,000 | 840 | 5,078 | |||
| Nov. 1 | 840 | 5,482 | ||||
| Dec. 1 | 840 | 7,971 | ||||
| 1906 | ||||||
| Jan. 1 | 840 | 8,200 | ||||
| Feb. 1 | 7,817 | |||||
| Mar. 1 | 9,275 | 1,500 | 10,775 | |||
| Apr. 1 | 10,288 | 3,000 | 13,228 | |||
| May 1 | 13,520 | 195 | 3,000 | 16,715 | ||
| June 1 | 21,000 | |||||
| July 1 | 22,500 | |||||
| Aug. 1 | 45,000 | |||||
| Sept. 1 | 60,000 | |||||
The data, it will be noticed, is very fragmentary in regard to the growth of the various departments, and even the figures representing total membership can be considered by no means conservative. Mr. St. John, until recently Secretary-Treasurer of the organization, wrote "that the Second Annual Convention reports claim 60,000 members, but the books of the organization did not justify any such claims; in fact, the average paid-up membership with the W. F. of M. for the first year of the organization was 14,000 members in round numbers."[212]
As has already been intimated, the Mining Department was from the first not very securely held in the bonds of the general organization, and it is very doubtful whether the 27,000 miners should be included in I. W. W. membership estimates even during the period while the Western Federation was nominally a department of the Industrial Workers of the World. According to Secretary Trautmann, it was evident "on August 1, 1905, that those brave men of the American Labor Union, numbered then 1,100, and approximately 700 in the Metal Department, [and] could not be swayed by the denunciation of the opposition in the West, those under cover as friends, often more dangerous than those openly fighting the I. W. W." "These 1900 [1800]," continued Mr. Trautmann, "constituted the only force with which the constructive work was begun."[213]
President Sherman reported that on September 10, 1906, the locals holding charters in the Industrial Workers of the World numbered 394, of which number 120 were not at that time in good standing, so that there were at the time of the second convention 274 active locals enrolled.[214] The greater part of this number consisted of local unions directly attached to the general organization without any intervening subordinate division or subdivision. A considerable minority of the total, however, comprised local unions which were only indirectly attached to the general organization, such locals being enrolled in District Councils or National Industrial Unions, or even Industrial Departments and being directly responsible to that council, national union, or department.