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

by Paul F. Brissenden

The plain truth is [declared one of the alleged false pretenders] that the Sherman-McCabe Slugging Company has at no time since the [second I. W. W.] convention had the support of more than 1,000 members—something less than 100 in New York, 100 in Chicago, and the rest (reactionary pure and simple unions) lost in the distances between Ahern's saloon at the St. Regis and Motherwell's saloon at Bingham's Canyon.

The Shermanites, however, claimed the Mining Department, and they seem on the whole to have been justified, for the pro-Sherman or "anti-proletarian" faction, so called, eventually dominated the fifteenth convention of the Western Federation of Miners and made what was already a virtual separation from the I. W. W. a formal and complete divorce. The Shermanite organ, the (old) Industrial Worker, in its issue for April, 1907, claimed that the "Mining Department of the Industrial Workers of the World gained nearly 3,000 members during the month of February" (p. 8). The Shermanites also claimed to have chartered ten locals (outside the W. F. M.) in January.[311]

There were present at the first day's session of the September 1907, convention fifty-one delegates representing sixty-five local unions, and before the close of the convention there were 74 local unions represented by 53 delegates having a total of 129 votes. Few delegates had more than two or three votes. The Paterson (N. J.) delegation had 28 votes; George Speed, representing two locals, had twelve; B. H. Williams, eleven and Daniel DeLeon, three. Contests were made on 26 of the delegates. Among the other delegates to this convention were Rudolph Katz. E. J. Foote, Vincent St. John, F. W. Heslewood, Wm. E. Trautmann, M. P. Hagerty, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Mr. Katz was elected temporary chairman.[312]

The organization was not prosperous at this time. It was weakened and almost torn apart by the exhausting internal struggles it had gone though in its two short years of life. It had lost its strongest member—its main body, almost—the Western Federation of Miners, and with the Sherman contingent a considerable number of individual members in local unions even though the locals themselves retained their affiliation. The writer has not seen any definite statement as to the magnitude of the loss in locals and individuals due to the Shermanite defection. The "proletarian rabble," however, claimed that "139 of the local unions declared themselves in favor of all transactions of the convention."[313] At this time, on the same authority, there were 358 locals "carried on the books," but only 181 in good standing.[314] On a basis of locals in good standing the Shermanites took with them less than twenty-five per cent of the locals in the organization, but if we include all locals, the Shermanites must be allowed to have taken with them sixty per cent of the I. W. W. locals. Further evidence of serious decline is found in the very low proportion of I. W. W. local unions which were represented by delegates at the third convention. If we may accept Secretary Trautmann's statement[315] to the convention that there were at the time about 200 local unions in the organization, it appears that but slightly more than one-third of these locals were represented at the convention. The "Wobblies" had very little to say at this time about the membership of the organization. Indeed, there has never at any time been much to say about it. In 1907 they were even less aware of their own numerical strength than they usually are. They knew, of course, that it was small and that it had dwindled much since 1905.

The leaders of the Western Federation of Miners followed the proceedings with no friendly eye. J. M. O'Neil declared that "the Trautmann faction does not dare disclose its membership...."[316] He stated further that "a delegate upon the floor of the September convention asked to know the membership of the organization, but he was curtly told by the chairman of the convention to 'never mind counting noses but [to] go home and organize.'"[317]

Official reports to the fifteenth convention of the Western Federation of Miners held the preceding June, credited the I. W. W. with a membership of 32,000, of which number 8,000 were delinquent.[318] This estimate is presumably exclusive of the Western Federation. Delegate F. W. Heslewood (W. F. M. and I. W. W., later a member of the General Executive Board of the [Chicago] I. W. W.) who was one of the so-called "wage-slave delegates" at the second I. W. W. convention, tells the miners' convention that "in one local in the state of Oregon there are over 3,000 members that travel the streets with red flags and red neckties demanding the full product of their toil...."[319] Professor Barnett puts the membership for 1907 at 6,700.[320] General Secretary St. John places it at 5,931.[321] He estimated the membership for 1905-6 as 23,219. Barnett's figures are: 1905, 14,300; 1906, 10,400.[322] These estimates vary widely, but this at least is evident: there was a marked and progressive decline in membership during the organization's first two years of existence.

During the twelve-month period ending September, 1907, one hundred and eighteen locals were organized.[323] Reports published from time to time in the Miner's Magazine[324] indicate that from the birth of the organization to September 17, 1906, three hundred and ninety-four locals had been organized. A total of 512 locals had, therefore, been organized up to the convening of the third convention in September, 1907. As already noted, there were in the organization at that time about 200 local unions. The necessary inference is that three out of every four locals organized so far in the history of the I. W. W. had either broken away from the organization or simply expired. This condition has been characteristic of the I. W. W. in greater or less degree throughout its brief career. The "turnover" of local unions as well as of individual members has been immense and very irregular. No continuous reports of the new locals chartered have appeared in the I. W. W. press. Weekly reports appeared quite regularly in The Industrial Union Bulletin through the spring of 1907 and showed that four or five new locals were being chartered each week during the three-months period. There is no record of locals disbanded.

In August, 1907, the International Socialist and Labor Congress met at Stuttgart. Both factors of the I. W. W. were represented: the Sherman faction by Hugo Pick and the DeLeon-St. John faction by Fred Heslewood. The latter group in its suspiciously optimistic report claimed that, "... starting out with only 2,000 members in 1905, the Western Federation of Miners not included, the organization has now 362 industrial unions and branches organized in 37 States and 3 Provinces of Canada ... [and] embraces now 28,000 militant workers...."[325]

The Congress devoted considerable attention to the problem of labor organization. The discussion of this problem centered almost exclusively upon two topics: (1) the relations between the political party and the trade union, and (2) the defects of the craft union. The I. W. W., through its representatives, was actively interested in both of these matters. Its sustained opposition to the craft type of union is characteristically displayed in the report[326] which the Socialist Labor party presented to the Congress. It was evidently written by DeLeon and it may be taken fairly to represent the attitude of the I. W. W. One paragraph of this report, which puts very comprehensively the Industrialist's indictment of the old-line union, reads:

The trades-union field [in America] was found by the political movement of socialism to be preëmpted by what is called craft or pure and simple unionism. This system of unionism organizes the crafts, not simply as units but as autonomous and sovereign bodies. The fundamental error of this system of economic organization was soon found to be desirable by the capitalist class. The craft union rendered all economic movement fruitless. If indeed the wages in these unions were ever found higher than among the unorganized, the price that the union paid for such higher wages was to divide the working class hopelessly. In the first place, the craft union deliberately excluded the majority of the members of the trade from participation, by means of apprenticeship regulations, high dues, high initiation fees and other devices. In the second place, each of these craft unions, in turn, could earn its Judas pence only by allying itself with the employer each time that some other craft was at war with the employing class. It is superfluous to enumerate the long catalogue of deliberate acts of treason to the working class at home and abroad, and the shocking corruption that such style of unionism was bound to breed. Suffice it to say, as proof, that these craft unions are found amalgamated with an organization of capitalists, known as the "Civic Federation," the purpose of which is to establish "harmonious relations between labor and capital." These craft unions are mainly organized in the American Federation of Labor.[327]