Another indication of growth was the expansion of the I. W. W. press. At the close of the fourth convention the I. W. W. had only one paper, the Industrial Union Bulletin, which suspended publication early in 1909 and whose place was filled by the Industrial Worker (II.) (Spokane), which in turn passed out in September, 1913. The Industrial Worker (I.) was published from January, 1906, until the summer of 1907. The Industrial Worker (III.) (Seattle) began publication in April, 1916, and continues to appear.[528] It is stated in Solidarity, July 2, 1910, that in that year the I. W. W. had seven papers in as many different languages.

During the twelve months preceding the sixth convention (September, 1911) seventy locals were organized and forty-eight disbanded. They were distributed among specified industries, as shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2[529]

Secretary-Treasurer St. John presented an interesting classification of the reasons given for the disbanding of these forty-eight local unions. He distributes them as follows:

It was at this meeting that the question of the authority of the general administration over the rank and file was first seriously considered in the I. W. W. A number of constitutional changes were proposed and most of them were brought forward with the more or less definite idea of minimizing, or at least modifying in some way, the authority of the national officers and the other members or the General Executive Board. These amendments originated chiefly from local unions in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific States. The debates lasted several days and involved a rather thorough discussion of the relations between the different parts of the organization. All of these proposed amendments were lost, the delegates being of the opinion probably that few constitutional changes were necessary.[531]

At this (1911) convention, W. Z. Foster presented his report as representative of the I. W. W. at the seventh conference of the International Labor Secretariat which met at Budapest in August. He was unable to make a very favorable report. The international conference, after giving an entire day to a discussion of the question of the admission of the I. W. W., refused it unanimously despite the fact that his claims were backed by the representatives of the Confédération Générale du Travail of France.[532] At about this time the French syndicalists were facing a serious crisis, which threatened them as well with complete division. They escaped then, but there have since developed two groups in the C. G. T.: the "red" (revolutionary) syndicalists, and the "yellow" (conservative) syndicalists.[533]

Karl Kautsky quotes M. Lagardelle as having admitted in 1911 that "the present crisis compels a general revision of the facts and the ideas of syndicalism. After a glorious beginning we find ourselves faced with that which is generally the result of forced marches in complete exhaustion."[534]

The I. W. W. had had no direct contact with French syndicalism previous to 1908. Moreover, its relations with the French movement have not at any time been as close or as definite as is generally imagined. The I. W. W. organization is an indigenous American product, if there ever was such a thing. The tactics used have come in part through the reading by I. W. W.s of the writings of Pouget, Sorel, Lagardelle, and others of the French syndicalist school. This contagion of ideas has also spread through personal contacts. In 1908 William D. Haywood went to Europe and there met some of the leaders of the C. G. T. Again in 1910 he was present at the International Labor and Socialist Congress at Copenhagen. He nominally represented the Socialist party of America, but he also, in an unofficial way, championed the cause of American syndicalism as it had been developed by the Industrial Workers of the World.[535]

The biennial conference of the International (Labor) Secretariat met at Budapest, Hungary, August 10-12, 1911. The entire first day's session was taken up with a lengthy argument over the admission of W. Z. Foster, the I. W. W. delegate. His credentials were finally rejected since he had only the support of the French Confédération Générale du Travail.[536] President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, in his report to its convention held later on in the same year, refers to "the repudiation of the so-called Industrial Workers of the World" at the Budapest conference. "Inasmuch," he said, "as the would-be delegate for the corporal's guard that composes the Industrial Workers of the World professed to support the policies and program of the Confédération Générale du Travail of France, his pretensions were supported by the latter organization."[537] James Duncan, the A. F. of L. delegate at Budapest, reported that "a misguided man, named Foster, from Chicago, claiming to represent an alleged organization of labor in America, called the International [sic] Workers of the World, had been for some time in Paris ..." and had apparently convinced the C. G. T. that he should be recognized at the Budapest conference instead of the A. F of L. representatives. "During the discussion Foster lost control of his temper," said Duncan; "he even threatened assault ...—ocular demonstration of what an I. W. W. really is(!) ... [But] the Frenchmen were not dismayed at their tricolor being smudged with I. W. W. mire."[538]

French syndicalism, then, has entered the I. W. W. to give it certain characteristic strike tactics and a set of foggy philosophical concepts about the General Strike, the "militant minority," etc. To this extent the I. W. W. is a syndicalist union. In structure it is a decentralized body (to the extent that it has any body to be decentralized), whereas the C. G. T. is decidedly centralized. In its organization and in its attitude toward compatriot labor bodies it is at variance with the French Confédération. The French idea has taken more definite form in the United States in the shape of the Syndicalist League of North America.

The Syndicalist League is a propaganda body rather than a labor organization. It is directed largely against the I. W. W.—opposing syndicalism to the industrialism of the American organization. It believes in the possibility of reforming the American Federation of Labor from within and condemns the dual-unionism of the I. W. W. It is optimistic regarding the craft union. "It is aware," says William English Walling, "that it will be impossible to secure a revolutionary majority in these organizations, whether of a socialistic or of an anarchistic character, and it has imported for this contingency the French syndicalistic theory of the power of the 'militant minority.'"[539] A number of the anarchists were inclined to favor the Syndicalist League because they feared the "centralized government" of the I. W. W.[540]

In this connection it may be well to note here the organization in New York City in October, 1912, of the Syndicalist Educational League with Hippolyte Havel, secretary, and Harry Kelly, treasurer. This, we are informed, "is an organization of active propagandists formed for the purpose of spreading the idea of syndicalism, direct-action and the general-strike among the organized and unorganized workers of America."[541]

In 1911 the trial of the MacNamara brothers for the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building was stirring the country. The I. W. W. so vigorously championed the cause of the indicted men that the San Francisco Chronicle was moved to say:

A few days later the Industrial Worker carried in capitals on the front page the following

OFFICIAL I. W. W. PROCLAMATION!

"Arouse! Prepare to Defend Your Class!"

When the seventh convention met in 1912 the General Executive Board declared that the MacNamara case "demonstrated beyond doubt that no legal safeguard can be invoked to protect any member of the working class who incurs the enmity of the employers by standing between them and unlimited exploitation of the workers." Furthermore, it charged that the A. F. of L. "did not come to their assistance as it should have done ... [because] the moral support guaranteed these members of the working class was practically nil so far as the American Federation of Labor was concerned."[544]

These militant utterances of the I. W. W. served to increase a growing hostility to that organization in the Socialist party. This increasing opposition was directed against the methods and tactics of I. W. W.-ism rather than against its criticism of capitalist society, its form or organization or its idea of the character of the society of the future. The Socialists objected in general to the whole philosophy of direct action, and more particularly to certain phases of direct action—viz., the use of sabotage and violence in general.

One I. W. W. official defines direct action as the "withdrawal of labor power or efficiency from the place or object of production."[545] Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist, describes it as the "conscious individual or collective effort to protest against or remedy social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers."[546] Professor Hubert Lagardelle, one of the intellectuels of the French syndicalist movement, explains that "Direct Action is opposed to the indirect and legalized action of democracy, of Parliament and of parties. It means that instead of delegating to others the function of action (following the habit of democracy), the working class is determined to work for itself."[547] Sabotage has been defined by the leading English Syndicalist, Tom Mann, as "the taking of advantage for personal or class gain."[548] Pouget says that "le sabotage est la mise en pratique da la maxime: à mauvaise paye, mauvais travail."[549] In its mildest form sabotage is simply the time-honored trade-union practice—restriction of output. Gustav Hervé, the editor of La Guerre Sociale, advocates its use as a kind of gymnastique révolutionnaire or training for the revolution which many socialists believe may be precipitated by the violence of the capitalists, in the guise, perhaps, of martial law. It may be convenient to think of direct action as the inclusive term. Thus it may take the form of concerted abstention from work and be simply a strike, or it may take the form of working "in a way detrimental to the boss" and be one kind of sabotage.

An interesting example of the I. W. W.'s press campaign for the methods of sabotage and direct action was furnished when in the summer of 1913 the I. W. W. locals of Los Angeles began the publication of a semi-official weekly paper called The Wooden Shoe. This name was selected on the strength of the legend that the word sabotage was coined in France when a workman with a grievance threw his sabot or wooden shoe into the machinery and so clogged it and stopped production. This kind of direct action is picturesquely advocated on the front page of each issue of this paper. Grouped around the title heading—The Wooden Shoe—are the following boxed mottoes and slogans:

These tactics had been more and more talked about if not practised by the I. W. W. for several years past. Indeed, it is safe to say that the practical application of those forms of direct action which the "Wobblies" consider expedient was becoming constantly more general. When the Socialists met in convention at Indianapolis in May, 1912, the problem of the proper attitude for the Socialist party to take toward the I. W. W., and more especially toward the "direct action" propaganda, was made the occasion of a violent controversy. The discussion centered on a motion to insert a new clause in the constitution of the Socialist party providing (in Article II, Sec. 6) that "any member of the party who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation shall be expelled from membership in the party...."[550] After a long debate the amendment was adopted by a vote of 191 to 90, and the now famous Article II., Sec. 6, became a party law.[551] During the discussion there were some quite violent criticisms made of direct action and violence. Delegate W. R. Gaylord said: "We do not want any of it. None of it! We don't want the touch of it on us. We do not want the hint of it connected with us. We repudiate it in every fibre of us."[552] Victor Berger expressed himself very emphatically on the "sabotage clause."

It was not alone the advocacy of "direct action" which incurred for the I. W. W. the enmity of the Socialists. The latter felt that when the I. W. W. in 1908 "repudiated political action," it really declared war on the Socialist party. That party obviously could not consistently approve of the Detroit I. W. W. because that faction was really the ward of a rival political organization, the Socialist Labor party. Ernest Untermann, who was one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, said at a previous convention of the Socialist party: "When we organized the I. W. W., we hoped that it would be both a political and an economic organization.... Instead of that, from the very outside there crept in an element that made for disintegration, and today the I. W. W. has drifted back toward syndicalism."[554] He declared, moreover, that the I. W. W. deeply in debt to the Socialist party, as he intimated, had ungratefully obstructed the work of the party:

Finally the last tie that connected the I. W. W. with the Socialist party was broken when, in February, 1913, William D. Haywood was recalled from the National Executive Committee of the party.[556]

CHAPTER XII
Lawrence and the Crest of Power (1912)

The year 1912 marks the high tide of I. W. W. activity. From Lawrence, Massachusetts, to San Diego, California, these restless militants stirred the nation with their startling strike and free-speech propaganda. Reports of strikes and free-speech activities in Solidarity and the Industrial Worker show a higher frequency for both these types of industrial warfare in 1912 and 1913 than for any other corresponding period in the organization's career. During the years 1911, 1912 and 1913 there were some fifteen free-speech fights of considerable importance—more than have been staged in all the rest of its history before or since.[557] The dynamic prominence of this period is less marked for the free-speech propaganda than for the then strange and novel syndicalist strike propaganda of the I. W. W. The strike activities were, however, confined quite largely to a shorter period—1912 and 1913. As already noted,[558] the years 1909 and 1910 were more crowded with I. W. W. strike activities than any previous period. These fat propaganda and lean organizing years were followed by twelve months of a general all-round leanness which was only saved from complete sterility by about half a dozen rather lively free-speech fights. Then followed the "Wobblies'" two big years, during which more than thirty "I. W. W. strikes"[559] ran their course in different parts of the country. In Table 3 are given what facts are available concerning I. W. W. strike activities in 1912.

Overshadowing all others in importance was the gigantic strike of the textile workers at Lawrence. This great struggle set new fashions in strike methods. It Americanized the words, "sabotage," "direct action," and "syndicalism" and revealed to the hitherto ignorant public the manner and effectiveness with which these alleged French importations could be applied to an existing industrial situation. Lawrence, together with San Diego, and one or two other "free-speech" cities, really introduced the Industrial Workers of the World to the American public. The organization and its activities were known to students of the labor problem and to others who happened to be on the spot when a fight was on, but they were not known to the great body of citizens. Lawrence and the free-speech fights made the name of this little group of intransigents a household word, hardly less talked about and no whit better understood than the words "socialist" and "anarchist."

On January 11, about 14,000 of the textile operatives left their work. During the strike, which continued until March 14, this number was increased to 23,000. According to a Federal report, "the immediate cause of the strike was a reduction in earnings, growing out of the State law which became effective January 1, 1912, and which reduced the hours of employment for women, and for children under 18 years of age from 56 to 54 hours per week."[560] At the beginning of the struggle only a small minority of the operatives were organized.

TABLE 3.

I. W. W. Strikes in 1912 (Partial List).[561]