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

by Paul F. Brissenden

Socialist party leaders were as firmly convinced as was DeLeon that there was a "deep-laid conspiracy," but they believed that DeLeon was the arch conspirator. When the Seventh International Socialist Congress met in Stuttgart in 1907, Morris Hillquit and J. Mahlon Barnes presented the Socialist version of the affair.[247] The fatal trouble from the very beginning, they thought, was the inclusion in the I. W. W. of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the "enfant chétif" (as they expressed it) of the Socialist Labor party.[248] They go on to tell how this alleged conspirator prepared the ground for the "capture" of the convention in the interest of this "enfant chétif":

Several months before the 2nd Convention, the Alliance, under the direction of the adroit chief of the Socialist Labor party, Daniel DeLeon, planned to take possession of the administration of the I. W. W., and by means of a skillful manipulation of the delegates, succeeded in obtaining a majority for itself in the convention. The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, indeed, dominated the convention. It completely modified the constitution of the organization, abolished the office of General President, and chose a new Executive Board from among its friends and adherents. But the triumph of the Alliance did not last. In conformity with the constitution of the I. W. W., the acts of the convention are not valid unless ratified by a referendum of the members.... The leaders of the Alliance refused to submit the acts of the convention to a vote of the members, and the old officials immediately declared them null and void. The division was therefore complete in the ranks of the I. W. W. The two factions maintained rival bodies of officials and the dispute was carried to the courts, which pronounced in favor of the old administration [Sherman, et al.]. The great majority of the members supported the original organization directed by Mr. Sherman in the capacity of President, while the number of adherents to the DeLeon faction did not exceed 2000 members.[249]

Vincent St. John offers some interesting testimony against the allegation that DeLeonism dominated the second convention:

It is my opinion [he says] that they [the Shermanites] are, because of lack of argument with which to sustain a wrong position, hoping to cause the prejudice which exists against DeLeon and the Socialist Labor party to blind many to the true state of affairs, a prejudice to which I plead guilty to having had, but which I was unable to justify upon investigation, a prejudice which exists against this organization and man because it and he stood upon the ground that we now occupy fourteen years ago, struggling against grafters and traitors, and for which they have paid the penalty in being slandered and vilified. This is no eulogy of DeLeon or the S. L. P.... It is my conclusion.[250]

These conflicting opinions are presented for what they are worth. On both sides they should be taken with salt. The writer makes no attempt to pass judgment except to point out that the Socialist party report to the Stuttgart Congress is obviously in error in claiming that the Master in Chancery pronounced in favor of the old (i. e., the Sherman) administration.[251]

The "proletarian rabble" recognized that the power of the opposition would be fatally undermined if it lost the active support of the Western Federation of Miners. It has been seen that they did finally lose that support when the W. F. M. finally cut loose entirely from anything and everything calling itself I. W. W. This—the most staggering defection of all that the young I. W. W. had to face—had been rather plainly foreshadowed as early as the fall of 1905. Within three months of the adjournment of the first convention the report was circulated among various unions in the West that the Western Federation had refused to join the Industrial Workers of the World.[252] This rumor was without foundation. The Western Federation did join the I. W. W.

Immediately after the close of the first convention [according to Secretary Trautmann's report] the officers of the Western Federation of Miners reported to the members of that organization the actions of the first convention, and a referendum was issued for the purpose of having the work of the delegates ratified by the rank and file. At the end of August, notice was received that the members of the Western Federation of Miners had approved, by a big majority, the actions of the delegates in installing that organization as an integral part of the Industrial Workers of the World, and on September 1, 1905, the Western Federation of Miners became the Mining Department of the Industrial Workers of the World.[253]

But this was not to be for long. Although the break did not come for some months after the second I. W. W. convention, some premonitory evidences of disaffection came to the surface at that meeting. As will be seen, there were several things which aggravated the trouble in the Mining Department. The deposition of President Sherman by the delegates to the second convention, and the consequent confusion, especially in regard to finances, resulted in the bolting of the convention by the delegates of the Mining Department (the Western Federation of Miners).[254] From the close of the second convention until the summer of 1907 the Western Federation was nominally a part of the Industrial Workers of the World, but was all this time becoming more and more alienated in spirit. For all practical purposes, January 1, 1907, may be regarded as marking the termination of the Federation's connection with the I. W. W. This whole controversy between the I. W. W. and its Mining Department, i. e., between the "proletarian rabble" (the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction) on the one hand, and on the other the "reactionaries" (the Sherman-Hanneman faction), supported for the most part by the Western Federation of Miners—all this frenzy of squabbling is given a great deal of space in the Miners' Magazine (the official journal of the Western Federation) during the last three months of 1906.[255]

The men most prominent in the activities of the second convention were Daniel DeLeon, Vincent St. John, C. O. Sherman, and Wm. E. Trautmann. Members of the Socialist party were less prominent and numerous than they had been a year before. Neither Mr. Simons nor Mr. Debs was present at the 1906 meeting. The Socialist Labor party contingent was, however, quite as strong as ever—one of its new delegates being Mr. Paul Augustine, later the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor party.[256] DeLeon's influence was as strong as ever. He was declared to have controlled the convention—this was reiterated by individuals both inside and outside. Ex-President Sherman, in a speech in his own defense on the convention floor, said: