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per-capita tax and the W. F. M. sent organizers of the Sherman faction, but the dual unions did not last long, and in fact 220 itself was shaking, till finally it went down and the only cry you hear from those whom the powers that be cannot control is the one big union, and it is only a matter of a short time till the workers get aroused, and then there will be something doing.

At that time we had job control in many mining camps. At

For Governor, Thos. B. Casey, miner, W. F. M.

I claim that we have left the field of mass organization and have got down to the field of industrial integral organization. I claim that industrial organization as it shall be exemplified by the Industrial Workers of the World is of an organic nature.... We recognize that mass organization is a thing that is to be abjured when we come into an industrial organization.... The difference between a mass organization and an industrial organization is that the mass organization is destructive ... industrial organization is constructive. It proposes to recognize the laws to the minutest details that environ, govern and control the working class.

There is at this time a struggling local in Goldfield--Metal Mine Workers' Union No. 353, organized in August, 1914. The author recently wrote to the secretary of this local, making inquiries in regard to the present labor situation in Goldfield and the condition of the local union. He replied: "The economic conditions of this camp forbid the answer of the question you ask.... I trust ... it will not be long before 353 can meet openly and above board."

The organization continued to over-indulge in strikes. It was more or less involved in the strike of the Electrical Workers of Schenectady in December, 1906. In 1907 it was involved in the following strikes among others: textile workers, Skowhegan, Maine, February to April; silk workers of Paterson. N. J., March; silk workers of Lancaster, Pa., fall of 1907; piano workers of Paterson, N. J., April; the loggers in Eureka, Cal., May, 1907; the saw-mill workers of Portland, Ore.; the sheet steel workers in Youngstown; the tube-mill workers in Bridgeport, Conn.; the miners in Tonopah, Nevada; the foundry workers in Detroit; and the smeltermen in Tacoma, Wash., in the summer of 1907. Goldfield, of course, was the scene of an almost continuous epidemic of strikes during the years 1906 and 1907.

In his report to the third convention the General Secretary-Treasurer says that

Not counting the strike and lockout in Goldfield, ... we had 24 strikes in which approximately 15,500 members participated. Most of these strikes lasted two to six weeks, one nine weeks, two lasted ten weeks and longer, and the strike of the Tacoma smeltermen lasted over six months.... Out of all these strikes ... two must be considered flat failures.... All other strikes ended either in compromise or in the complete attainment of what the strikes had been inaugurated for.

Portland has just passed through her first strike conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World, a new and strange form of unionism, which is taking root in every section of the United States, especially in the West. The suddenness of the strike and the completeness of the tie-up are things quite unprecedented in this part of the country. These conditions did not merely happen--they came as direct results of the peculiar form and philosophy of the movement that brought the strike into being. "If the street-car men had been organized under our motto, together with all other A. F. of L. men, the street-car strike would have lasted ten minutes," says Organizer Fred Heslewood. The boast is not an extravagant one. Wherever the Industrial Workers of the World are organized they can paralyze industry at almost the snap of a finger. It is the way they work.

"Well, you've tied us up. I didn't think you could do it, but you did. You're clever; I'll give you credit for that. I didn't think any union could close this mill," one of the mill owners is reported as having said to Organizer Yarrow. "You yourself have taught us all we know," replied Yarrow. "We organize on the same plan as you do and we've got you."

One peculiar feature about the great mill strike was that ... there was absolutely no violence, no law-breaking and no crying of "scab." Just one man was arrested for trespassing, and he imagined that he was standing in a public street. Other strange features were the red ribbons, the daily speech-making and the labor night and day shifts of organizers who received not a red cent for their services.

He represents by a vote of the United Mine Workers an element that is today in rebellion against the United Mine Workers of America, that element being not only that one local which is in rebellion, but three or four or five, and very likely ... will be followed by at least one-third of the locals in the state of Illinois.

A reaction from an excessive indulgence in strikes, or at least a sign of the consciousness of this excess, is evident from two resolutions adopted by the third convention:

Resolved, that the convention instruct all our organizers to discourage strikes and strike talk, and to impress upon those whom they are organizing the necessity of realizing that the conquest by the workers of the power to retain and enjoy the full product of their labor should take precedence in their minds of all smaller ameliorations of our conditions.

I believe it is an entire waste of money at the present time to keep said organizers in cities where the A. F. of L. has the workers divided and organized into crafts. We are not financially able to tear down this barrier of fakerism at present. I do not mean that we should not fight it. I mean that we should pay special attention to the lumber industry before they are rent into fragments by the American Federation of Labor.

free from the sentimentalism and bourgeois reaction which characterized the gathering of 1905, and the pure-and-simple, destructive tactics of the assembly; ... it marked a distinct advance in an understanding of the philosophy and structure of the movement and was a gathering typically working-class and loyal ... to the workers....

and that for these reasons there could be no possible doubt of the stability of the organization.

FOOTNOTES:

Letter to the author, dated October 21, 1912.

Letter dated April 19, 1916.

Secretary-Treasurer St. John put it at 5,931, ; Prof. Barnett makes it 6,700, Apparently the administration included the Western Federation of Miners when they reported to the Stuttgart Congress, 28,000 members.

DOCTRINAIRE VERSUS DIRECT-ACTIONIST

The outlook was certainly not encouraging for those who had pinned their faith to the idea of industrial unionism. The prospect for the new unionism was not bright. In 1908 the United Brewery Workmen, another large and important industrial union, patched up their differences with the American Federation of Labor and went back into the craft-union fold. The Western Federation of Miners--the most militant and one of the two or three really powerful unions organized on the industrial plan--had withdrawn, and finally, in May, 1911, joined the American Federation. At the sixteenth convention of the Western Federation, held in the summer of 1908, President Moyer said:

I believe it is a well-established fact that industrial unionism is by no means popular, and I feel safe in saying that it is not wanted by the working class of the United States. The Knights of Labor, the American Railway Union, the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, the Western Labor Union, the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, the American Labor Union, and last, the Industrial Workers of the World ... because they failed to receive the support of the working class....

NOTICE.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This is to inform you that the Executive Board of the Western Federation of Miners has decided to terminate the services of William D. Haywood as a representative of the Western Federation of Miners in the field, the same to take effect on the 8th day of April, 1908.

Sherman DeLeon Trautmann.

Socialist Party. Nihilist.

The Socialists were "abandoned" in 1906, leaving the field to the "proletarian rabble":

DeLeon ... St. John ... Trautmann.

The "Socialist Laborites" were sloughed off in 1908, and we had

The DeLeonites. The St. John-Trautmann group.

Later Trautmann abandoned the "Bummery" and joined the DeLeonites. We now have in 1917:

The DeLeon-Trautmann The St. John-Haywood group. group. Industrial Union.)

which is the present setting, primed for further hyphen-smashing!

Rudolph Katz, a member of the Socialist Labor party, writes that after the third convention

When the convention was called to order by Mr. St. John on September 21, 1908, there were twenty-six delegates in attendance, controlling an aggregate of seventy votes. Two delegates were debarred from seats in the convention--Max Ledermann of Chicago and Daniel DeLeon of New York--and St. John was made permanent chairman.

We were five weeks on the road . We traveled over two thousand five hundred miles. The railroad fare saved would have been about 0. We held thirty-one meetings. The receipts of the first week from literature sales and collections were .02. The second week, .66. The third week, .78. The fourth week, .10. The fifth week, .57. Total, 5.13. These figures do not include the song sales. The song sales were approximately 0.

"The very same fellows," writes Katz, "who dared DeLeon to come to the Fourth Convention, closed the doors to him when he arrived ... and his credentials were rejected on flimsy pretenses."

DeLeon was given the floor to state his case, and he did state it in his characteristic fashion. The "Overall Brigade" were seated all in a row on one side of the hall, a tough-looking lot. Vincent St. John was in the chair with sinister mien, wielding the gavel and everything that could be wielded to keep DeLeon out of the convention. Alongside of St. John sat Trautmann, ... he, too, looked as though he had traveled all the way from Seattle by freight train.

DeLeon expressed his opinion of the "Overall Brigade" very soon after the convention:

Out of this element Walsh picked ... the "Overall Brigade"; and to the tune "I'm a bum, I'm a bum," very much like the tune of "God wills it! God wills it!" with which Cuckoo Peter led the first mob of Crusaders against the Turks, Walsh brought this "Brigade" to the convention. Some of them ... were among the "delegates." Most of them, I am credibly informed, slept on the benches on the Lake Front, and received from Walsh a daily stipend of 30 cents. This element lined the walls of the convention.

The report of the General Secretary-Treasurer expresses the position of the simon-pure industrialists of the St. John-Trautmann faction.

Shall the economic organization be permitted to outline and pursue its course in the efforts to bring the workers together on the industrial field, the only essential, and, if necessary, on the political without the interference and self-assumed guardianship of any political party,... or shall the economic organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, be turned into a tail of a political party and its functionaries and its officers be obedient to the commands and the whims emanating from the emissaries of such political party?

The proposition to strike out the seductive and dangerous words about the "political field" was adopted and the second paragraph of the new preamble now reads: "Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system."

On November 5, 1908, a conference assembled in Paterson, N. J., of delegates sent by the locals that remained true to the principles of the Industrial Workers of the World. They attended to the interrupted work of the general organization, electing a General Executive Board and other officials, and attended to such other work as the organization required for its growth and progress.

F?licien Challaye, one of the intellectuals among the French syndicalists, expresses this common idea very concisely. He says that, "... le parti politique est un agr?gat d'?l?ments h?t?rog?nes, r?unis par le lieu artificiel d'une opinion analogue: des hommes venus de toutes les couches sociales s'y condoient, ?changent leurs obscurs et st?riles bavardages, cherchent ? associer par de louches compromis leurs int?r?ts antagonistes."

The eastern membership, on the other hand, more nearly approximated the State Socialist type of radicalism. They were inspired by a group of Socialist Labor party men at whose head was Daniel DeLeon. They abjured anarchy, believed in authority , were disillusioned about State Socialism and spared no bitterness and pettiness in criticizing the Socialist party and its program of State Socialism and reform in general. Reform in general was to them anathema. They were revolutionary Marxists--doctrinaire to the bone--saturated with the dialectic.

A further reason for conceding to the Direct-Actionists the original name and label is that the Direct-Actionists are the ones who, since 1908, have done by far the most extensive organizing and propaganda work. It was the "Bummery" which aroused hope and apprehension at Little Falls, at Lawrence, at Wheatland, and on the Minnesota iron range, and baffled the authorities in its dramatic "free speech fights" at Spokane, Fresno, Paterson, San Diego, Seattle, and Everett. Their membership, though small, is three times that of the Detroit organization.

Direct action and sabotage were condemned by DeLeon and approved by St. John. DeLeon's opposition was not based upon moral grounds. He simply had no confidence in the efficacy of these methods. He was firmly convinced that the habitual indulgence in sabotage and in destructive tactics in general was a poor preparation for a working class which expected some day to manage and control the industries of the world. It was a poor educational policy.

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