It is not unnatural that there should be increasing friction between the two organizations, inasmuch as the Western Federation has become on the whole more conservative, while the I. W. W. has grown constantly more revolutionary. In June, 1910, the W. F. M. voted for affiliation with the American Federation of Labor and the alliance was finally consummated in May, 1911. "What the mine owners failed to do by force," declares the I. W. W., "they have accomplished through Civic Federation methods. The process will doubtless continue, until the W. F. of M, becomes as completely the football of metalliferous mine owners as the United Mine Workers is of the coal barons."[642] At its twentieth annual convention in 1912, the W. F. M. now not only divorced from the I. W. W., but wedded to the A. F. of L., reversed its traditional embargo on agreements and accepted the policy of entering into contracts with the operators.[643]

Article V, section 4. of the Federation's Constitution (1910 edition) stipulated that "no local union or unions of the W. F. M. shall enter into any signed contract or verbal agreement for any specified length of time with their employers." This clause was stricken out in 1912. The revised edition of the Constitution for that year expressed the new policy of the Federation (now the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers) in these terms: "Local unions or groups of local unions may enter into wage agreements for a specified time, providing such agreements have the approval of the Executive Board...."[644]

The bitterness between the two organizations was most acute in the Butte (Mont.) mining fields. The situation reached a dramatic climax in the summer of 1914 when, on June 13, the Union Hall of Butte Miners' Union No. 1 (W. F. M.) was dynamited. The writer is not sufficiently familiar with the facts to tell this story in detail, or to express an opinion as to whether or to what extent the I. W, W. element in Butte was responsible for the dynamiting.

The friction between I. W. W. sympathizers and the management of the local W. F. M. union—Butte Miners' Union No. 1—was unquestionably a factor in the quarrel which culminated in the dynamiting outrage. There were certainly other factors. The local organization had been gradually dividing into two factors—the "Reds" and the "Yellows." Among the "Reds," I. W. W. members and sympathizers predominated. The "Yellows" comprised the local officials of the union and their followers, and they were in a majority. It was alleged by the "Reds" that at the union meetings the administration element deliberately packed the hall with the "reactionaries" before the hour of opening, so that the "Reds" could not even voice their grievances. Then the hall was blown up. The administration accused the I. W. W. and pointed out that such a deed was to be expected of a group which avowed its belief in the doctrine of "direct action by the militant minority." The Miners' Magazine declares that "the 'Red' faction composed of I. W. W. members dynamited the Union Hall."[645] At the last W. F. M. convention (1916), President Moyer said that the real cause of the Butte tragedy was the "poison the I. W. W. promoters were scattering" in the minds of the Butte miners.[646] A large portion of the two weeks' session of the twenty-first W. F. M. convention (Denver, 1914) was taken up with a discussion of the Butte dynamiting and the alleged complicity of the I. W. W. therein. One of the delegates related the following incident, which he said took place in front of the Union Hall in Butte a short time before the dynamiting:

Lewis J. Duncan, the Socialist mayor of Butte, declared that the I. W. W.s did not take part in the dynamiting. In a letter dated June 29, 1914, and addressed to the United Labor Bulletin (Denver), he asserts that

But scarcely more than a week after the dynamiting it was announced in the newspapers that

Apparently nothing came of this in the way of an I. W. W. organization, for there was no I. W. W. local in Butte in 1914. At the present time, however, there is an active local there.

Entirely apart from the Butte controversy there has been a marked feeling among the officials of the Western Federation that the I. W. W. had deliberately attempted to disrupt the Federation. President Moyer thought the I. W. W.s had tried by crooked methods to get control of, or disrupt the W. F. M.[650] He alleged that "there had been a conspiracy entered into both in and out of the Western Federation of Miners ... to secure control of this organization for the purpose of getting it back into the I. W. W.,"[651] and that "publications edited by this direct-action, sabotage-howling coterie have lent their aid to this campaign...."[652] Mr. J. M. O'Neill, the editor of the Miners' Magazine, a man who has since 1907 been particularly lavish of epithets on I. W. W.-ism, complained that

Each faction of the I. W. W., according to O'Neill, claims to be "the genuine brand of unionism that is ultimately destined to shatter empires, scatter kingdoms and strangle economic slavery to death...."[655] Another editorial in the same journal declares that the Federation is

There has been less trouble between the coal miners' union and the I. W. W. because the United Mine Workers have always been much less radical than the Western Federation and the I. W. W. has really never succeeded in making inroads of any consequence among the United Mine Workers. Max Hayes, International Vice President of the U. M. W., told the United States Commission on Industrial Relations that the I. W. W. was "rather an unknown quantity among the coal miners. In fact," he said, "we do not let them propagate their doctrines; at least, we try to prevent their ideas from becoming accepted by our people.... There is nothing constructive about their philosophy: it is all destructive."[656]

The Mine Workers' Union is perhaps the most constructively business-like, and certainly one of the most successful, unions in the world. Their hard-headed constructive work is most of all evidences in the business agreements which they negotiate with the operators at regular intervals.

To the I. W. W., agreements—particularly all time agreements—are in themselves evil. Consequently the friction between the world's smallest and most revolutionary industrial union and its largest and most conservative industrial union was experienced primarily in connection with these agreements. "Wherever the bona fide labor unions have succeeded in effecting a satisfactory agreement with the employers," declares the Miners' Magazine, "... there will be found the I. W. W. organizer, attempting to create dissension."[657]

The most recent conflict between the I. W. W. and the Mine Workers was in the anthracite region around Scranton, Pennsylvania. In April, 1916, entirely against the will of the United Mine Workers, according to a conservative writer,

At about this time (1914) Eugene Debs, one of the founders of the I. W. W., was again urging the formation of a great revolutionary industrial union. He proposed to begin with the two big miners' unions—the Western Federation and the United Mine Workers—which organizations were to form the head and center of the new union.

"The consolidated miners and the reunited I. W. W.," he said, "would draw to themselves all the trade unions with industrial tendencies, and thus would the reactionary federation of craft unions [A. F. of L.] be transformed from both within and without, into a revolutionary industrial organization."[661] In the same article Debs advocated a reunion of the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties, and William English Walling in commenting on Debs' proposal for uniting the W. F. M. and the U. M. W. says that such an outcome "if not immediately probable, is decidedly possible."[662]

The ninth I. W. W. convention, which met in Chicago, Sept. 21, 1914, as not an important one. It was in session less than a week and there were not more than twenty-five delegates present.[663] The writer attended the sessions of September 22, 23 and 24. On the 22nd he counted ten delegates actually present, and about the same number of spectators. The next morning there were sixteen delegates on hand, and on the 27th, seventeen. No stenographic report of the proceedings—indeed, no complete report of any kind whatsoever—has ever been issued. A very brief account was printed in Solidarity, which emphasized the fact that all the delegates were "typical specimens of the working class rank and file, with some contempt for empty theorizing and a marked preference for action."[664] On the 23rd, resolutions were presented asking for a reduction in the amount of dues payable to the national office and proposing to limit convention delegates to one vote each irrespective of the size of the locals which they represented. Both were lost. The latter resolution was supported by a militant minority which very naturally believed that the majority is sluggish—always behind time—and therefore nearly always wrong. They insisted that the new and fruitful ideas always come from the minority and that it should, therefore, be given representation rather according to its (assumed) revolutionary initiative than according to its numerical strength. Their attitude was primarily the result of the difficulty they experienced both in and out of the organization in getting their militant ideas "across" to the large majority. In a lesser degree they were stimulated by the example set them by their fellow syndicalists in France where the "militant minorities" in the small unions of the C. G. T. are given the same representation and voting power as the large unions of that body. For this reason small groups which make up the "extreme left" in the C. G. T. have more influence than similar groups in this country.[665]

The unemployment situation had been particularly acute the preceding winter and it was reported that the greater part of the membership of the I. W. W. were out of employment at the time of the convention. "... the I. W. W. has no apologies to offer," says Solidarity, "for the smallness of its last convention ... most of our members are out of work, and few, if any, Pacific Coast locals could have financed a delegate for even four days in Chicago."[666]

According to the account appearing in the I. W. W. press, it was the understanding of the convention

At the same time the delegates decided to take definite steps toward organizing the unemployed. According to the Chicago papers, Haywood had said: "Millions have been appropriated for the militia; nothing for the wealth producers who will be without work. Where warehouses are full of food, go in and take it; where machinery is lying idle, use it for your purposes; where houses are unoccupied, enter them and sleep."[668] At a later session (on September 24) there was adopted unanimously and without discussion a resolution which, in effect, stipulated that all speakers be instructed to recommend to the workers the necessity of curtailing production by "slowing down" and the use of sabotage. The resolution also suggested the publication of an explanatory leaflet on this subject.[669] The Daily News dispatch, just quoted, reports F. H. Little, an executive board member from California, as saying, "Wherever I go, I inaugurate sabotage among the workers. Eventually the bosses will learn why it is that their machinery is spoiled and their workers slowing down."

At the same session it was proposed that a conference on harvest organization be held, and from this time on the harvest and the other agricultural workers attracted more and more of the organization's attention.

There was some discussion of the methods used in conducting the business of the local unions, especially in regard to the bookkeeping system—or lack of system. No definite decision was reached, but the remarks of the delegates show that they were beginning to realize that financial and membership records cannot be kept by the futurist or impressionistic methods which are so effective on the soap-box. It was realized also that responsible persons must be selected for the work of the local secretary-treasurer, and it was urged that some uniform system of bookkeeping be adopted for the use of local secretaries. Some I. W. W. officials, like some bank officials, no doubt abuse the confidence placed in them, although the daily press probably heralds to the world the I. W. W. defalcation with greater promptness and enthusiasm than it does that of the banker. A dispatch in the Omaha Bee (Nov. 24, 1916) says that the local "secretary-treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World has been missing for the last four days and so is $250 which was to be used for the relief of strikers and their families in Duluth, Minn." In another instance, according to Vincent St. John, "the National Secretary [of the 'National Industrial Union of Forest and Lumber Workers' of the I. W. W.] left with all the funds in his charge six or eight months ago and the organization had to start all over again...."[670]

The European war had broken out less than two months before this convention met and the delegates did not fail to adopt a resolution against war. It was worded in part as follows:

Only two constitutional amendments of importance were passed at the ninth convention. One was a further development of the machinery of the referendum and constituted a victory for the decentralist boosters of the "rank and file." The first three clauses read as follows:

The other amendment expressed in more specific terms than ever before the attitude of the organization toward agreements between employers and employees. It replaced the former blanket prohibition with a clause which specifically defines the kinds of agreements which must be avoided, and, inferentially, permits the making of agreements which are free from the objectionable features specified. The amendment is to Article III., and is as follows:

These two years of unprecedented field activity were naturally years of growth in membership. This is more especially true of 1912 than of 1913, during the latter part of which a decline set in. The membership was at its high tide in 1912 after the Lawrence strike. The I. W. W. then boasted more than 18,000 members.[674]

Never since that time has it reached that point nor had it previously, unless we include the W. F. M. in the membership for 1905. There was also during both years a net increase in the number of locals in the organization. During the year ending August 31, 1913, two hundred and thirty-six new locals were organized, and during the same period one hundred were disbanded. The new locals were organized in largest numbers in the lumber, textile, and metal and machinery industries. Thirty were "mixed" locals.[675]

In the following table is a complete list of these new and defunct locals classified to show the number gained and lost in each industry:

TABLE 4

Number of local unions organized and disbanded during the year ending August 31, 1913, classified by industries as reported.[676]

The membership declined considerably in 1913 and 1914, since which time it appears to have increased slightly. Conservative estimates fix it at about 15,000 in 1913, 11,000 in 1914, and 15,000 in 1915.[677] The author has not yet been able to get a reliable estimate of the membership for 1916. The reports of the tenth convention (November, 1916) as published in Solidarity give no clue. A dispatch to the Weekly People (December 9, 1916, p. 1) reports that the delegates claimed to represent a constituency of 35,000 to 40,000. As to 1912, Professor Hoxie said the average paid-up membership was 14,300 and that "local and national bodies have an additional dues-paying membership of 25,000 on which no per-capita tax has been paid to the General Organization," and credits the organization (for 1913) with a "nominal non-dues-paying enrolment of from 50,000 to 60,000." He came to the conclusion "that 100,000 or more men have had I. W. W. dues cards in their possession during the past five years."[678] The figures in Appendix IV indicate that more than 191,000 persons have at one time or another during the last ten years been members of the I. W. W. This table also shows that the I. W. W. often gives very exaggerated membership estimates. This was true in 1913 when unofficial I. W. W. estimates ran into the hundreds of thousands. At this time, it is reported that, "Hoxie walked into the office of St. John, the General Secretary, and said, 'Look here, St. John, I've got the goods on you. You have only 14,300 members.' 'You're a liar, Hoxie,' replied St. John, 'we have 14,310.'"[679] Levine gives an estimate (doubtless furnished by the general office of the I. W. W.) which is unquestionably much too high. He puts the membership for August, 1913, at 70,000, distributed as follows: textile industry, 40,000; lumber industry, 15,000; railroad construction, 10,000; metal and machinery industry, 1,000; and miscellaneous, 4,000.[680] The numerical insignificance of the I. W. W. as compared to the American Federation of Labor was strikingly indicated by Professor Hoxie in the course of his remarks before the American Economic Association in December, 1913. He said that in 1913 the I. W. W. had paid-up membership amounting to

The years 1914 and 1915 were marked by a definite slump in the fortunes of the I. W. W. followed in 1916 by a noticeable increase of activity. St. John says that the decrease in membership during these years was most marked in the following industries: "lumber, railroad construction, building, packing house, amusement workers and the public service industries."[682] A possible exception to this general inactivity is the National Industrial Union of Marine Transport Workers of the I. W. W., which affiliated with the I. W. W. in April, 1913, and has since made some progress.[683] St. John informed the United States Commission on Industrial Relations that the cause of this falling-off was the industrial depression. He said that "the membership on the Pacific Coast from one end of it to the other, seventy-five per cent of them, have been out of work in the last year and have not paid any dues."[684] Leonard Abbott thought that the reaction or slump of 1914-15 in the I. W. W. was "due perhaps to the great emotional strain of revolutionary activity...."

In the latter part of 1915 and in 1916 came a revival of I. W. W. activity. The most energetic group of all has been the Agricultural Workers' Organization or the "A. W. O." (organized April, 1915), which has taken great strides in pushing the propaganda of industrial unionism among the farm laborers and harvest hands and organizing these hitherto unorganized workers. At the tenth convention "the A. W. O. held the center of the stage, being represented by seven delegates with 36 votes each."[686] The "A. W. O." has its headquarters in Minneapolis and is strongest in the Middle West and Northwest. The following extracts from a daily press dispatch will give an idea of the stir which is being made by the "A. W. O." of the I. W. W. The accuracy of the report is questionable but it is presented for what it is worth.

The year 1916 saw a recrudescence of both free-speech and strike activities. The most important were the Everett Free Speech fight culminating in the tragedy of November 6 and the miners' strike on the Mesaba range during the spring and summer. The scope of the present study does not permit of a detailed account of either of these highly important labor struggles. Indeed, this is hardly possible now, since in neither case is the story complete.

Many signs suggest the possibility of a split in the I. W. W. before many months. The growing strength of the A. W. O. and its natural yearning to be a big independent organization as well as the failure of the Pacific Coast to send more than one solitary delegate to the tenth convention, both indicate a possible development of internal discord sufficient to divide the I. W. W. into eastern and western wings. Mr. Roger W. Babson in one of his recent confidential labor reports suggests another way in which a shifting of power may come. "A very large labor organization ... has taken steps," he says, "to leave the Federation of Labor and form an industrial union.... A convention for this purpose is planned for Chicago in the near future. The Industrial Workers of the World plan to gain control of this convention and may succeed."[688]

A correspondent in the Weekly People says that one delegate at the tenth I. W. W. convention declared that there was very likely to be a split in the organization and intimated that, in such an event, the Agricultural Workers' Organization would be the chief factor in bringing it about.[689] The same writer continues:

No convention was held in 1915. The tenth convention met at Chicago in the latter part of November, 1916. Fairly complete reports have been published in the columns of Solidarity.[691] There were in attendance about 25 delegates, including three members of the General Executive Board and the General Secretary. The delegates were almost entirely from the East and Middle West, only one coming from the Pacific Coast.[692] The editor of Solidarity, commenting upon the charter of the convention, says that "the tenth convention is remarkable as denoting the decline of the 'soap-boxers' as the dominant element." "The dominant tone," he says, "was constructive rather than controversial and the general demand was for such constitutional and other changes as would make for greater efficiency in the work of the organization," and he approvingly quotes one delegate as exclaiming, "The I. W. W. is passing out of the purely propaganda stage and is entering the stage of constructive organization."[693]

The most recent official report says that the organization now (January 1, 1917) "consists of six industrial unions: Marine Transport Workers, Metal and Machinery Workers, Agricultural Workers (A. W. O.), Iron Miners, Lumber Workers, and Railway Workers, having fifty branches and 200 unions in other industries, together with 100 recruiting unions directly united with the general organization."[694] The paid-up membership is put at 60,000 on January 1st, 1917, up to which date it is claimed that an aggregate of 300,000 membership cards had been issued since 1905.[695] The bulk of the present membership is distributed among the following industries: textile, steel, lumber, mining, farming, railroad construction, and marine transportation. Except in the textile industries, the majority of these workers are migratory unskilled laborers.[696]

The activities of the I. W. W. are by no means confined to the United States and Canada. The organization has been gradually extending its propaganda in most English-speaking countries. This study is primarily concerned with the I. W. W. in the United States. But in any case it would be impossible to present any adequate record of its work in other countries because of the difficulty of getting at the facts of the situation. The announcements from the Chicago headquarters make reference to four foreign jurisdictions, viz.: its British, New Zealand, Australian and South African "administrations." It is unlikely that the "British Administration" amounts to anything. The writer has happened upon vague references to an "I. W. W. local" in London, but has not been able to either disprove or verify them. It is in the British colonies of South Africa[697] and Australia that the I. W. W. has made headway with its propaganda and organizing work. After the outbreak of the European War the I. W. W. in Australia became the object of no little attention on the part of the government because of their anti-militarist agitation. Finally in Australia several of the Wobblies were arrested, tried and convicted on charges of high treason.