1. That the Industrial Workers of the World is a voluntary association consisting of about 62,000 members residing in various cities and villages throughout the United States and Canada.
2. That its 1906 convention was legal and valid.
3. That the acts of Mr. C. O. Sherman after that convention were illegal, and,
4. That the "attempted abolition" of the office of General President was illegal and void.[242]
The findings were on the whole favorable to the "wage slaves" faction, but even so the latter were in a rather forlorn position now, having been abandoned to their fate by the Western Federation of Miners (whose delegates supported Sherman, some of them bolting the convention before its adjournment), and by the Socialist party. Before long the Western Federation finally withdrew its support from the Sherman faction and early in the year 1907 the "would-be usurpers" gave up the struggle,[243] but the Western Federation of Miners did not come back into the fold. They decided to withhold payment of dues to either faction pending their anticipated and formally realized secession at their convention in May, 1907.
Mr. Sherman had made a desperate fight. He and his followers conducted what was virtually a duplicate even if spurious general office and organization of the I. W. W. The Shermanites, who had retained control of the "Industrial Worker,"[244] the journal of the organization, continued its publication for several months at Joliet, Illinois. Herein were published refutations of the charges set forth by the "DeLeon-Anarchist Combine" in their special series of Bulletins of the Industrial Workers of the World. With the surrender of the Shermanites the "Industrial Worker" was discontinued, and the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction—now the I. W. W.—established the Industrial Union Bulletin as a weekly organ.
The now triumphant revolutionists considered that the whole trouble was due to an attempt to sell out to the capitalists, to make the organization a conservative—and therefore a perfectly harmless—association. Mr. Trautmann insisted that their "sole object when forcibly taking possession of headquarters and all their documents" was to destroy all evidence of their plots for
surrendering the Industrial Workers of the World to the employing class and their agents. The stenographic report of the second convention will prove the falsity of every charge made against the "tramps" and "beggars" who saved the I. W. W. to continue its work as the revolutionary economic organization of the working class of America.[245]
"The danger was great," declared Daniel DeLeon in his speech at the adjournment of the 1906 convention. "The conspiracy was deep laid. We see it appearing in the papers from Denver all the way across to New York. It was a conspiracy to squelch the revolution in this convention, and to start over again another American Federation of Labor."[246]
DeLeon's sentiments regarding the schism of 1906 are particularly worthy of note, because of the fact that he was destined two years later to figure with seceders in a split of that same "DeLeon-Anarchist Combine" which was now victorious and of one mind in overthrowing "usurpers" and apparently in harmony in every way. But in two years the "DeLeon-Anarchist Combine" was to change to the DeLeonites versus the Anarchists, each of whom was to constitute a separate organization called the Industrial Workers of the World.