[339] Proceedings, Third Convention (Official Report No. 3, p. 3, col. 5).
[340] Proceedings, Third Convention, loc. cit., p. 2, col. 1.
[341] Ibid., p. 1, col. 5.
[CHAPTER VIII]
"Job Control" at Goldfield
It was in a Nevada mining camp that the I. W. W. made the first notable application of its principles of revolutionary industrial unionism. During the years 1906 and 1907 Goldfield as the scene of bitter disputes between the mine operators on the one hand and the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W. on the other.[342] These disputes were caused, chiefly, by a more or less successful effort on the part of these two local organizations to supplant the traditional craft unionism in Goldfield by the "new unionism."
The Western Federation of Miners was quite strongly entrenched at Goldfield by the time the I. W. W. made its début in the labor world. Its local union at Goldfield, No. 220, was an industrial union, that is, its membership comprised, as provided for in the W. F. M. constitution, "all persons working in and around the mines, mills and smelters...."[343] Early in 1906 the I. W. W. had a flourishing local (No. 77) composed of the "town workers" of Goldfield. The American Federation of Labor had almost no foothold in Goldfield at the time, the only A. F. of L. locals in the camp being the carpenters' union and the typographical union. The I. W. W. local was a more comprehensive organization even than an industrial union. It was a mass union which aimed to include all the wage-earners in the community. "We proceed," says an editorial in the I. W. W. official journal, "without force, without intimidation, without deportations and without murder, to organize all wage workers in the community.... In the organization were miners, engineers, clerks, stenographers, teamsters, dishwashers, waiters—all sorts of what are called common laborers."[344]
It was apparently this unconventional type of unionism along with the very radical socialistic leanings of both town unionists (I. W. W., No. 77) and the mine unionists (W. F. M., No. 220, affiliated with the I. W. W.) that brought trouble. The I. W. W. accused the A. F. of L. unions of beginning it,[345] but the controversy was primarily with the Mine Operators' Association. Vincent St. John, in a letter published in the same issue of the Industrial Union Bulletin, says that the carpenters and typos were used "by the Mine Owners' Association as a nucleus to colonize the camp against the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W." The dispute began in a "controversy which arose between the Tonopah Sun, supported by A. F. of L. locals in the camp the one side, and the locals of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners on the other."[346] The Sun attacked the I. W. W., whereupon the I. W. W. (including the W. F. M.) boycotted the newspaper, and the newsboys, who were organized in the I. W. W., refused to sell it. The Sun then, according to this W. F. M. version of the affair,[347] sought the services of strike-breakers to scab on the newsboys' union, but were unsuccessful. The miners' union (No. 220. W. F. M.) now called a meeting at which they decided
that local No. 77, Industrial Workers of the World, which comprised all the town workers with the exception of the building trades, cease doing business as a local and go into local 220 of the Western Federation of Miners ... [and thus place] all wage-earners in the camp in No. 220 with the exception of the newsboys who held a charter from the Industrial Workers of the World, and a portion of the building trades, who held membership in their international organizations.[348]
St. John says that this merger was made at the instigation of the Mine Owners.