Industrial Workers of the World
By Joyce L. Kornbluh

Meeting in Chicago in 1905, more than 200 socialists and trade unionists launched the IWW, a union based on the principles of Marxist class conflict and the indigenous American philosophy of industrial unionism. Soon nicknamed the Wobblies, the IWW sought to recruit unskilled and exploited immigrants, nonwhites, women, and migrant workers who were excluded from craft unions of skilled workers organized by the AFL.

The IWW sought to create "one big union" through which workers would own the means of production and distribution. This transformation of society would stem from a process of nonpolitical revolution and on-the-job actions that would wage effective war on the great combinations of capital. The IWW opposed the conservative defense of exclusive craft interests and the AFL craft structure, which Wobblies claimed were frequently at the expense of unskilled or semiskilled workers.

Delegates to the founding convention included Bill Haywood, then secretary of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM); Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Socialist Party (SP); Mother Jones, the legendary fighter for miners' and childrens' rights; Daniel DeLeon, the leader of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP); A. M. Simons, editor of International Socialist Review; Charles 0. Sherman, secretary of the United Metal Workers; William E. Trautmann, editor of the United Brewery Workers' German-language newspaper; Father Thomas J. Hagerty, editor of the American Labor Union's Voice of Labor; and Lucy Parsons, widow of one of the Haymarket martyrs. The struggle over issues of political action and administrative structure that began at the convention were not resolved until 1908. By that time, secretarian socialist feuds and organizational tensions had led to the defection of many groups and individuals. Among these were the SLP ' which set up what it called the real IWW in Detroit (1905), and the WFM, which joined the AFL in 1911. Those who remained in the IWW now focused on "building a new society in the shell of the old" through industrial unions that would become the basis of the new "workers' commonwealth." The preamble to the IWW constitution, as amended in 1908, encapsulated the spirit and structure of the IWW in concise but dramatic language. The IWW perspective would not change in any significant fashion thereafter. As amended, it stated:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

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.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease to work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

The IWW soon became known for its revolutionary tactics of direct action, its dynamic leaders, and its inspiring songs and graphics. IWW membership rolls included workers of all occupations, skill levels, races, and national backgrounds. Immigrants with paid-up union cards in their native countries were eligible for immediate membership. Initiation fees and dues were extremely low so as not to be a barrier to poorly paid workers. As labor-management contracts were viewed as an interference with labor's unconditional right to strike, the IWW would not sign contracts, a controversial position it did not abandon until the 1930s. Strikes rather than contracts were the fuel for IWW militancy, for strikes built the experience and perspective needed for the general strike that Wobblies thought would overthrow the capitalist system. Militarism was condemned, and membership could be denied to anyone who joined a state militia or the police. Labor Day was celebrated on May 1 rather than during the first week in September, the choice of more conservative unions.

From 1905 to 1914, economic conditions in the United States aggravated labor discontent with rising prices, stationary or declining wages, a series of depressions, and widespread unemployment. The IWW became a militant expression of class war in the United States, directing or taking part in at least 150 strikes in the pre-World War I period. Among the most significant of these were the Goldfield, Nevada, miners' strike (1906-07), the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers' strike (1912), the lumber workers' strikes in Louisiana and Arkansas (1912-13), the Paterson, New Jersey, silk workers' strike (1913), and the Mesabi Range ironworkers' strike (1916). Important IWW units existed in lumbering, construction, agriculture, dock work and marine transport. The organization was also briefly successful in numerous eastern textile towns, in Colorado's coal mines, in the copper mines of Arizona and Montana. and the oil fields of Oklahoma. Although the organization was criticized for not building stable unions and at its peak had only 100,000 duespaying members, the IWW shook the nation with an impact disproportionate to its size.

Not least among its accomplishments was the erosion of sexual, racial, and ethnic divisions within the working class. The IWW local that controlled the Philadelphia docks, the IWW cigar-makers' locals in Pittsburgh, and the IWW lumber-workers' union in the South were racially integrated. Ben Fletcher, the African American who was the major leader in Philadelphia, was considered a national IWW leader as well. Women such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Matilda Rabinowitz led not only women workers, but male workers as well. Flynn traveled throughout the nation and was known as "the rebel girl." Rabinowitz organized textile workers in New England, cigar makers in Pittsburgh, and auto workers in Detroit. Thousands of Spanish-speaking workers on the East Coast who had been denied AFL membership on the basis of their ethnic background became the backbone of the IWW mariners' unions. The IWW also had numerous Spanish-speaking members throughout the Southwest.

Widespread labor education was carried on through propaganda leagues, industrial educational clubs, events at ethnic halls, hundreds of thousands of leaflets, national circulation of newspapers (printed in fifteen languages), libraries in union halls, the Work Peoples College in Duluth, Minnesota, clubs and camps for "junior Wobblies," and "entertainments" that included debates, singing, lectures, and skits. Some of the most effective educational material was published in the IWW's Little Red Songbook, a major contribution to workers' culture in America. In addition to the prolific and legendary Joe Hill, IWW songwriters and poets included Richard Brazier, Ralph Chaplin, Covington Hall, Laura Payne Emerson, and T-Bone Slim. IWW songs were sung on picket lines, in hobo jungles, and at mass meetings. Chaplin's "Solidarity Forever" eventually became American labor's national anthem. IWW graphics and IWW cartoons set new standards of excellence and are admired by professional artists and art historians as well as the politically engaged.

When the IWW tried to recruit members in the "slave market" sections of cities where the unemployed gathered between jobs, it found itself drawn into fights to protect the rights of free speech and assembly. From 1907 to 1917, Wobblies conducted some thirty such struggles to protect their right to speak on street corners to fellow workers. During these dramatic confrontations, thousands of IWW members and sympathizers filled city jails. Many were seriously injured and a few killed before the organization generally reestablished the First Amendment rights to assemble peacefully, distribute publications, and address gatherings in public. Americans not otherwise attracted to the IWW philosophy took part in these struggles and respected the IWW's dedication to civil rights. Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, considered the IWW contribution to civil liberties of paramount value.

Preceding and during World War 1, the IWW retained its antimilitary stand and opposed U.S. involvement in the war. In contrast to the no-strike policy adopted by the AFL after the United States entered the conflict actively, the IWW continued to lead strikes. These wartime strikes gave employers and the government the opportunity to accuse the IWW of treason. In September 1917 U.S. Justice Department agents raided IWW offices throughout the nation with warrants branding the entire leadership-over 200 men and women-as subversives. In the major trial in Chicago, nearly 100 Wobblies, virtually the entire first and second tier of past and present leaders, were sentenced to federal prison terms of from ten to twenty years, with accompanying fines of $10,000-$20,000.

Little judicial effort went into protecting IWW members from community hysteria. Employer-funded vigilante groups and patriotic leagues were as likely as police units to raid IWW halls, homes, gatherings, and meetings with impunity. The persecution was soon intensified by criminal syndicalism laws passed in many states with the specific objective of destroying the IWW. Every form of intimidation was employed. An infamous incident that took place on Armistice Day, 1919, is indicative of the temper of the anti-IWW campaign. A group of American Legion members in Centralia, Washington, led an attack on the local IWW hall with the goal of destroying furniture and beating up members as had been done in past incidents. IWW Wesley Everest, a war veteran still wearing his uniform, was castrated and lynched for resisting the assault. Seven other resisting IWWs were sentenced to jail terms of from twenty-five to forty years and most remained in prison until 1933.

Legal defense and amnesty campaigns began to sap the strength of the IWW, and controversy over what terms the jailed members should accept for amnesty racked the membership. Further internal discord arose concerning relations with the nascent American Communist movement. At first the IWW was sympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution, and in 1920 the Bolsheviks asked the IWW to join the Communist International. Prominent Wobblies such as Bill Haywood, George Hardy, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Charles Ashleigh were among those attracted to Soviet communism. The IWW per se, however, became increasingly critical of the Soviet system. Events such as the repression of the Kronstadt revolt of 1921 and the role of Communists in the Italian factory crisis of 1920 fed an organizational alienation that became outright emnity by the end of the 1920s.

The IWW held to its belief in the gradual acquisition of control of industry by economic action on the job. This was in contrast to the Communist position that accepted industrial unionism but insisted that a "vanguard party" built on democratic centralism was necessary for the overthrow of capitalism. More than ever the IWW demanded democratic bottomup control of organizations and it grew ever more skeptical of political solutions and the influence of outstanding individual leaders.

In the 1920s the IWW became a victim of changing industrial technology and changes in the labor force that sapped its areas of greatest strength. Other membership losses were suffered through ruthless employer suppression during the "open shop" campaigns of the period and by the appeal to some workers of the CP. Despite these problems, the IWW continued to propagate widely the philosophy of industrial unions, the necessity of absolute solidarity, and the tactics of direct action. It retained an organizational presence at sea and among farm workers, and in 1928 it led an important strike in the Colorado mine fields.

During the Great Depression, the IWW joined with others to set up "unemployed unions" to provide housing and food for the jobless. In 1932-33 the IWW unit in Detroit was active in the growing protests staged by autoworkers. IWW members contributed their militancy and experience in the sit-down strikes and other activities that eventually led to formation of the UAW. IWWs played similar roles in other industrial centers, but rarely ended as the union chosen by the workers. An exception took place in Cleveland, where the IWW gained representation of workers in a dozen or so plants, a representation it would retain until 1950.

Perhaps the IWW's greatest contribution was in laying the foundation for the tactics and philosophy that led to mass organization of the unskilled, foreign-born, nonwhite, and female workers in the CIO and AFL unions of the 1930s and 1940s. IWW strike techniques, the sit downs, pioneered in Schenectady (1906), the chain picketing in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1912), the car caravans in Colorado (1928), and other innovations-once considered revolutionary, became the practice of the labor movement in general.

The IWW also left a mark in the civil rights field, where it aroused liberals to form permanent defense organizations to protect the rights of dissenters. IWW agitation against "employment sharks" led to regulation of commercial employment agencies, and IWW agitation against notorious prison abuses helped bring about more humane prison conditions. The IWW also pioneered in the organization of migratory workers, particularly farm workers. The style and heroism of the IWWs was such that Wobblies have been honored in American literature in a manner unique for labor radicals. Among the many American writers who have written positively about the IWW are Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, Eugene O'Neill, B. Traven, and James Jones. Joe Hill has become a martyr for all of labor, and a song in his honor gained great popularity in the antiwar movement of the 1960s.

IWW headquarters has remained in Chicago. Membership has declined to under a thousand and only a few locals have on-the-job representation, but the IWW has retained a vigorous press. Since the 1960s there has been a resurgence of interest in IWW history and philosophy, resulting in a remarkable wave of books, plays, memoirs, oral histories, and films that deal in part or in whole with the IWW and its legacy. Fred Thompson (1900-87), who joined the IWW in the early 1920s, served a sentence at San Quentin, and was first elected to the general executive board in 1928, was an advisor on many of these projects. Thompson, the official IWW historian, was called upon by virtually every researcher on the IWW and dedicated himself to preservation of an authentic IWW history. The single most important element in that effort occurred when the organization donated its archives to Wayne State University in Detroit, where they are available to the general public as well as scholars.

REFERENCES

Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All New York: Quadrangle, 1969.

Foner, Philip S. The Industrial Workers of the World- 1905-1917. New York: International Publishers, 1965.

Kornbluh, Joyce L., ed. Rebel Voices-An IWW Anthology. Rev. ed. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1988.

Miles, Dione, comp. Something in Common-An IWW Bibliography, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.

Salerno, Salvatore. Red November, Black November: Culture and Community in the industrial Workers of the World. Albany: State University of New York, 1989.

Thompson, Fred, and Patrick Murfin. The lWW-lts First Seventy Years- 1905-1975. Chicago, 1976.