The Industrial Workers of the World was among the first to come to the defense of the indicted men. The General Office in Chicago immediately sent out thousands of circular letters throughout the country asking for contributions; large amounts were turned over to the Special Defense Fund from the General Defense Fund of the I. W.
W., and finally a total of $10,982.51 was raised. This, labor's common extremity, did actually, though but temporarily, achieve that miracle (to appear later in San Diego and Lawrence) of I. W. W.'s, Socialists, Socialist Laborites, Anarchists, and "Pure and Simplers,"[296] even, coöperating in a common activity. The I. W. W. was the first to organize protest meetings, and secured the services of Clarence S. Darrow for the legal defense. The slogan "Shall our brothers be murdered?" was reiterated on every hand and made the watchword of the defense.
The situation was still a desperate one at the time of the 1906 convention. The men were still held in jail awaiting trial. It seems to have been the general belief that they were to be "railroaded" to the penitentiary or the gallows, and the conduct of the prosecution as well as the postponement of the trial, all tended to strengthen that belief. The delegates at the convention decided to turn fifty per cent of the per-capita tax of the Mining Department into the Moyer-Haywood Defense Fund. Some of the delegates undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of the I. W. W. in the Moyer-Haywood affair. Thus William E. Trautmann asserted on the floor of the convention that
Money and the best legal talent would not have been able to save the lives of Charles H. Moyer, William D. Haywood, Geo. A. Pettibone and Vincent St. John;[297] their dead bodies would ... bear testimony to the outrages perpetrated by the class controlling the resources of this land, and all institutions of oppression, were it not for the vigilance of the few.... men of the I. W. W., who, facing all the calumnies of the public press ... threw their lives into the scale in order to raise the issue. We must prevent the judicial murder.[298]
The jailing of Haywood, especially, one of the most aggressive and influential organizers of the I. W. W., deeply affected the members of that body and really subtracted much from their strength. It was generally felt among laboring men and women that Moyer and Haywood were jailed because they were members of the Industrial Workers of the World, or because they were Socialists. A letter written by Haywood in the Ada County jail on the day that the second convention opened in Chicago indicates the active interest he continued to take in the organization even during his imprisonment. It is here given in part:
Ada County Jail,
Boise, Idaho, Sept. 17, 1906.
To the Officers and Delegates of the Second Annual Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Comrades and Fellow Workers: