These dilatory tactics that have been pursued by the opposition have prolonged the convention, due to their express determination, in my opinion, to freeze out these wage slave delegates.... Only last night the boys came to me and said: ... "We can't stand it any longer; we are going broke; we can't sleep in boxcars and eat handouts and remain here."[237]
The "beggars" gained the upper hand. Mr. DeLeon succeeded in putting through a motion to suspend the above mentioned article of the Constitution concerning delegates' expenses, and a resolution was finally passed which authorized the payment of $1.50 per day from the general treasury to all without the necessary expense money.[238]
In this way the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction secured control of the convention and brought about the deposition of President Sherman—the first and last President of the Industrial Workers of the World. The convention now proceeded to consider some of the problems of industrial unionism which had cropped out in the course of twelve months' experience. Meanwhile ex-President Sherman and his followers had decided to stand pat—but not on the floor of the convention. They took possession of the General Headquarters and with the assistance of the police successfully held them against all comers.
Upon entering the premises of the General Headquarters the members of the General Executive Board [newly elected] were prevented from entering by thugs engaged by members of the old General Executive Board and two members [of the new board], Vincent St. John and Fred Heslewood, were attacked by these sluggers.[239]
This picturesque situation is explained to the membership in an official announcement issued by the new Executive Board in behalf of the "proletarian rabble":
Sherman and his hired sluggers are now in forcible possession of the general office and all the books, records, papers, roster of local unions, mailing list and other property of the organization, necessitating legal procedure on our part to oust them and regain control of the office and property.... The majority of the General Executive Board was his perfect tool. They winked at his irregularities, endorsed his extravagance and lent their efforts to perpetuate him in this organization as they are now lending their assistance to help him disrupt it.[240]
The success of the "beggars, tramps, and proletarian rabble," that is to say, of the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction, was hardly complete. They were officials without an office in which to do business, without equipment of any sort, and without money. Secretary St. John writes that they "were obliged to begin work after the second Convention without the equipment of so much as a postage stamp." The financial routine in the general office had required the signature of the president on all checks and prohibited the withdrawal of funds from the bank without that signature. Now the President was deposed, the office abolished, and the deposed President refused to sign the necessary requisitions so that the four thousand dollars belonging to the I. W. W. in the Prairie State Bank of Chicago was safely out of reach of both factions.[241]
The matter was at last taken to the Court of Chancery and a restraining order issued prohibiting Sherman and his friends from appropriating the property of the Industrial Workers of the World. The findings of the Master in Chancery were in substance as follows:
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.
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:
Delegate DeLeon has controlled this convention.... But, ... while I endorse the underlying principles that are advocated by the Socialist Labor party ... I am opposed to their tactics and I do not hesitate to say that time will demonstrate to the working class that their tactics are suicide [sic] to the movement.[257]
The members of the Socialist party, naturally biased against the Socialist Labor party, were quite ready to accuse its representatives of steam-roller methods at the 1906 convention. As before, these insinuations were quite correct in that the Socialist Labor party, through its unofficial representatives, most of all through DeLeon, did thus indirectly have a great deal of influence in the convention. But it is yet open to question whether this influence was a pernicious one. Moreover, the dominant policy of the convention was not an unmixed DeLeon policy and the dominant group contained another element, viz., the more thoroughgoing non-, or rather, anti-political faction, attaching to no political party whatever. The chief spokesmen of this element were William E. Trautmann, the Secretary-Treasurer, and Vincent St. John,[258] who was to succeed the former in that office several years later. He was a member and official of the Western Federation of Miners, and a radical and enthusiastic devotee of the principle of industrial unionism. He emphatically opposed the action of the Western Federation officials at the 1906 convention and instead of following the majority bolt from the I. W. W., he bolted the Western Federation and was elected a member of the General Executive Board of the I. W. W.[259]
These two men represented the alleged Anarchist end of the so-called "DeLeon-Anarchist combine" and were the real spokesmen of the more revolutionary element. They would have preferred to have had the political clause of the Preamble stricken out, but were not powerful enough to swing the majority of the delegates to that position and finally agreed as a compromise to stand with DeLeon and his followers for the retention of the political clause. The fight over the political clause was thus postponed to a later convention.
The financial problem was from the first made more difficult by a kind of dual unionism which was contrary to the spirit, at least, of the I. W. W. law, but which was tolerated because quite unavoidable. The involuntary connection of many local unions with more than one general organization resulted in the subjection of such unions to the payment of dues to each central organization. To relieve this excessive burden of taxation it was decided by the General Executive Board to make a discount from the regular dues in favor of all locals thus situated. This discounting policy, felt to be necessary in order to hold many unions in the organization, meant a loss of revenue which could ill be borne.
Moreover, in consideration of some material equipment in the way of office furniture and supplies, seals and charters were furnished free of charge to all unions formerly with the American Labor Union or the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. To top all, the mismanagement and extravagance resulting from discord in the general office, and incompetence among the officials, almost strangled the organization before its first anniversary. Debts were contracted with manufacturers and
the inability to pay ... nearly endangered the very existence of the organization, when threats were made to disclose the real state of affairs to parties who were straining every nerve to see the smashing of the I. W. W.... Personal loans had to be contracted to deposit money at the bank when the account was overdrawn and for three months in succession the constant fear that these conditions would become known kept the real workers on the administration from engaging enough assistance to carry on the necessary work....[260]
Despite these difficulties there was turned into and expended from the General Defense Fund (in addition to the voluntary subscriptions) the sum of $8,910.00 in behalf of twelve different strikes. The report of the auditing committee showed that there was on hand August 22, 1906, a net balance of $3,555.92.[261]
FOOTNOTES:
[222] In a letter quoted by Brooks, American Syndicalism: the I. W. W., p. 85.
[223] The I. W. W., History, Structure and Methods (1917 ed.), p. 6.
[224] "I. W. W. Conference Proceedings," Miners' Magazine, Sept. 6, 1906, p. 12.
[225] "I. W. W. Conference Proceedings," loc. cit., pp. 12, 13.
[226] "That Conference at Chicago," Miners' Magazine, Sept. 6, 1906, p. 7.
[227] International Socialist Review, vol. vi, p. 435.
[228] Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1901), p. 587.
[229] Ibid., p. 58.
[230] Industrial Workers of the World Bulletin No. 4, Dec, 1, 1906.
[231] Proceedings, 15th W. F. M. Convention pp. 177-8.
[232] Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), p. 226.
[233] Statement dated Oct. 4, 1906, Miners' Magazine, Oct, 11, 1906, col. 2, p. 7.
[234] Letter dated Nov. 6, 1906, Miners' Magazine, Nov. 22, 1906, p. 11. Sherman published another letter in his own defence in the Miners' Magazine of Nov. 1, 1906, pp. 10-11.
[235] Letter dated Ada County Jail, Boise, Idaho, March 17, 1907. Published in Proceedings 15th Convention, W. F. M. (1907), p. 584.
[236] Jean Spielman, Mother Earth, Dec. 1907, p. 458.
[237] Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), p. 20.
[238] By a vote of 378 to 237, ibid., pp. 80, 94.
[239] William E. Trautmann, "A statement of facts," Industrial Workers of the World Bulletin, No. 4, Dec. 1, 1906. cf. St. John, I. W. W., History, Structure and Methods (3rd ed., 1913), p. 7.
[240] Machinists' Monthly Journal, vol. xviii, pp. 1109-10 (Dec, 1906). This announcement is dated Oct. 5, 1906 and carries the following postscript: "Until we can get charge of the office again we will be unable to furnish local secretaries with due stamps...." p. 1110.
[241] Mr. Sherman could not draw the money because the signature of the Secretary-Treasurer was also necessary.
[242] These statements are condensed from the report given in the Industrial Workers of the World Bulletin, No. 4, Dec. 1, 1906.
[243] "The W. F. M. officials supported the old officials of the I. W. W. for a time financially and with the influence of their official organ. The same is true of the Socialist party press and administration. The radical element in the W. F. M. was finally able to force the officials to withdraw that support. The old officials of the I. W. W. then gave up all pretense of having an organization." (St. John, The I. W. W., History, Structure and Methods, 1917 ed., p. 7.)
[244] There is no connection between this paper and the Industrial Worker later published as a weekly at Spokane, Washington. Nor is this latter the same Journal as the Industrial Worker recently published in Seattle. All are I. W. W. organs.
[245] "A Statement of Facts," Industrial Workers of the World Bulletin, No. 4, Dec. 1, 1906.
[246] Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), p. 610.
[247] In the Report of the Socialist party of America to the Seventh International Socialist Congress, L'Internationale ouvrière et socialiste. Édition française, vol. i, pp. 23-32, "Les mécontents de la Fédération."
[248] Loc. cit., p. 30. "La Socialist Trade & Labor Alliance a obtenu le record d'avoir provoqué plus de disputes et de schismes au sein des mouvements socialistes et ouvrièrs en Amérique, pendant ces dernières années, que n'importe quel autre organisime, et son adhésion au mouvement a été fatal à celui-ci." Ibid.
[249] Translated from the French. Loc. cit., pp. 30-31.
[250] "Vincent St. John on the I. W. W. Convention," Letter to the Editor, Miners' Magazine, Nov. 8, 1906, pp. 5-6.
[251] Cf. supra, p. 145. The report of the Master in Chancery, Industrial Workers of the World Bulletin, No. 4, Dec. 1, 1906.
[252] Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention, p. 107.
[253] Ibid., pp. 50-51.
[254] The bolting delegates were: Mahoney, McMullen, Hendricks and R. R. McDonald.
[255] Especially important are the various reports on the Second I. W. W. Convention, appearing in the issue of October 18th.
[256] In general the members of the two Socialistic parties were arrayed in opposing camps—the Socialist party men siding with the Shermanites and the Socialist Labor men with DeLeon, of course.
[257] Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), p. 271.
[258] Vincent St. John had been a member of the Western Federation of Miners since 1894 and was in 1906 a member of the executive board of that organization, but refused to leave the convention and join the seceding Miners in 1907, choosing rather to bolt the W. F. of M. and remain with the I. W. W.
[259] "St. John has given the mine owners of the [Colorado mining] district more trouble in the past year than any twenty men up there. If left undisturbed he would have the entire district organized in another year." (Statement attributed to mine-owners' detectives and printed in the Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 28, 1906, and quoted by Geo. Speed in a letter to the Weekly People, April 7, 1906, p. 5, col. 1.)
[260] Report of General Secretary-Treasurer, Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention, pp. 57-8.
[261] For complete itemized statement cf. the report of the auditing committee, vide Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), pp. 579-94. The cash balance was for some time after the close of the convention inaccessible to the general officers. Cf. supra, p. 145.
CHAPTER VI
The Structure of a Militant Union
With its "house-cleaning" job off its hands, the convention now turned its attention to some of the specific problems of policy and constructive work. The activities of the past fourteen months had brought new and challenging questions to the fore. One of the most important was the problem of the agricultural laborer. Attention centered upon the farm laborers and the lumber workers. Most of the industrialists agreed that the coöperation of the country workers—farm laborers and lumbermen—and the city proletariat was absolutely necessary for the success of revolutionary industrialism.
The agricultural elements of the working class [said one of the delegates at the second convention] are going to be the last and hardest to be organized into this economic organization, and ... while we may have the wage slaves of the industrial centers organized, when the crisis comes we will find [them] ... in an economic organization and bucking against a combination of capitalists and agriculturists, and when that time comes we will of necessity have to exercise our political rights and overthrow that opposition.[262]
The I. W. W. had already made some headway among the lumber workers, and it was in connection with this element that many believed it most feasible to organize the farm laborers. Secretary Trautmann devoted two solid pages of his report to the discussion of the relation of the farm and forest workers with the city proletariat. He believed that the failure of revolutionary movements was often due to the lack of coöperation between these sections of the working class. He urged the organization to follow among the farm laborers those methods which had already been applied with some success in the lumber camps.
For this work of organizing the farm laborers [he said] we must look for actual support to the thousands and hundreds of thousands of wage-earners in the lumber camps of the United States and Canada. No element is so faithful to the principle, when once understood, as the hard-working pioneer proletarians in the woods, nor a group of toilers who will fight more vigorously ... than those who ... call themselves "lumberjacks." Their relation with the farm laborers and the ... [seasonal] character of their employment should serve as the key to open the field for the organizing of the farm wage slaves. In the summer months most of the lumbermen work as farm hands or in the saw-mills, and many a blacklisted mechanic from industrial centers seeks as a last refuge from the master's persecution employment as constantly shifting farm laborer and lumberman. The Industrial Workers of the World have organized and are organizing with astonishing success the lumbermen in different parts of the country.... But ... their condition will be jeopardized if the I. W. W. fails to organize the workers in the fields in which they seek and secure employment during the remainder of the year, that is mostly in agricultural occupations, ... [and] ... to assure a successful protection of farm laborers and lumbermen, it is absolutely necessary to get the organizations so organized into direct touch through the general administration of the I. W. W. with the organizations of the Industrial Workers in the cities.[263]
An important change in the geographical distribution of propaganda and organizing activities was that suggested to the convention by President Sherman. He thought that these activities of the Industrial Workers of the World should not be immediately spread indiscriminately over all parts of the country, believing it to be most expedient to allow the eastern section of the United States to lie fallow for a time, so to speak. He recommended that
the greater part of the money expended for paid organizers be devoted to the western States for the next six months, for the following reasons: West of the Missouri River the industrial conditions are in a far better state ... than they are in the eastern States and organizing can be done there without endangering turmoil in the way of lockouts and strikes.... We must get a substantial organization in the West ... before we will be prepared to make a general campaign in the East, as in the eastern States the workers in many of the industries are so poorly paid that a strike or lockout means starvation if finance is not forthcoming.... Hence I feel the necessity of first fortifying ourselves with a good Western membership before exposing the organization to a general assault by the employers of the East.[264]
This proposal was, however, not very favorably received by the convention. The committee on reports of officers made, among others, this recommendation, which received the endorsement of the convention:
We disagree with our President regarding organizing in the West in preference to the East.... The committee believes that [the fact] that conditions in the East are deplorable is the very reason why organizing work is necessary in the East, that the standard of living may be improved, thus accomplishing a more uniform standard of working-class solidarity.[265]
The average member of the Industrial Workers of the World was exceedingly sceptical of the value of undiluted representative democracy for either a labor union or a political state. He suspected that any official might, and probably would, be disloyal. He realized how difficult it is for any organization which depends on representatives to maintain a body of such representatives who really represent. He knew how easy it is for a delegate to be "reached"—to be influenced by one of a score of insidious forms of corruption. This accounts for the stress laid by the Industrial Workers of the World upon the referendum idea, from the very beginning of its existence. Let the acts of delegates in convention be ratified by referendum vote. The convention is the law-making body, but it is always subject to the will of rank and file. All factions, even that one which plotted disruption, united in lip service, at least, to the idea of the referendum. Labor-union democracy must be made democratic by referendum control. How much of all this referendum clamor was "sounding brass" is indicated by some remarks made by Mr. DeLeon (who, of course, believed in the referendum) at the second convention:
I think it is positively comical [he said] to see men who stand convicted before this convention of having trampled on the principles of this constitution ... who have refused the referendum, men who suspended locals because they did not submit to the men who lined up with those elements; I think it is positively comical to have such elements come before this convention and bow down to the referendum and salaam and kowtow to the rank and file, or start off screeching like howling dervishes—"referendum"![266]
The convention had to face the important fact that a very large proportion of the human raw-material for I. W. W. propaganda were foreigners, new to America and speaking alien tongues. From the very first a very liberal policy in regard to the foreign element had been adopted by the Industrial Workers of the World. Certainly they could not consistently adopt a narrow policy here and draw the color line it they intended really to become an all-inclusive democratic organization. It will be remembered that protest against discrimination against the negro by craft unions was voiced by William D. Haywood at the very opening of the first convention.[267] At the second convention this liberal attitude was maintained in regard to all foreign elements. Moreover, in the work of organizing the immigrants it was proposed to go still further and take the aggressive.
This convention [said Secretary Trautmann] should instruct the incoming Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World to immediately find the necessary agencies in Europe, so that immigrants to this country, before leaving, will be already furnished with all the information necessary, and be enlightened as to the real conditions in the United States, and an appeal should be made to them to immediately join the existing organizations of the Industrial Workers of the World immediately after they accept employment in any industry. The literature of the Industrial Workers of the World should be distributed in different languages in the various emigration ports in Europe, and central bureaus be established by the Industrial Workers of the World in American harbors, and be opened to the immigrants, and information should be furnished them [as to] how they could ... participate in the struggles of organized labor....[268]
Requests were made at the convention for literature in many foreign languages—Macedonian, Jewish, Italian, Slavonian, Spanish, etc.—on behalf of these and others. Foreign-language publications and pamphlets were issued and foreign-language branches of the local unions had been established and continued to be extended in scope after the second convention. The Italian Socialist Federation asked for the services of an Italian organizer, and one was provided. An Italian paper, Il Proletario, had been appearing for a short time as an official organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, and its publication was continued under the supervision of the General Executive Board.[269]
Furthermore, the structure and scheme of organization in the local unions was modified to suit the requirements of a polyglot membership. A motion was proposed and carried
to allow wage-earners of a given nationality to form unions of their own in the respective industries in which they are employed and where there are not enough to form unions of that kind, the parent unions shall allow the [non-English-speaking] members ... to have branch meetings for educational purposes.[270]
It is worthy of note that sex lines were ignored quite as completely as race lines. Perhaps the organization leaned backwards a little in the policy of special inducements to women and "juniors"—indicated in the resolution carried "to remit for female members, ten cents per member per month to the union, the same to apply to juniors."[271]
The character of the unit group—the local union—as being preëminently industrial in nature, was emphatically reaffirmed and more fully defined than ever before.