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WOBBLIES

"One Big Union."

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a national industrial union, was formed in Brand's Hall on the North Side of Chicago on 27 June 1905. Leading union officials—including William "Big Bill" Haywood, Eugene Debs, Charles Moyer, Mother Jones, Father Thomas Hagerty, and Daniel De Leon—hoped to accomplish on a national scale what the Western Federation of Miners had done in the West for mining labor. Though the Western Federation of Miners was the largest constituency, other prominent unions that played a role in the IWW formation were the American Labor Union and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. The founding convention, borrowing its symbolism from the American Revolution, was called "The Continental Congress of the Working Class," and Haywood was named chairman. In his opening remarks Haywood incorporated classic Marxist economic theory that became central to the IWW doctrine: "The aims and objectives of this organization should be to put the working class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters."

Syndicalism

The IWW advocated syndicalism, a revolutionary worker-controlled society. This Utopian view of the IWW was a backlash against the growing conservatism of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) under Samuel Gompers. Consistently deriding the IWW as leftist agitators, Gompers had an informant inside the IWW to keep him posted of developments. Leaders of the IWW failed to believe that Gompers's craft union structure, which was formed around individual industrial craftsmen such as pipe fitters or boilermakers, would succeed against the powerful and growing trusts, especially in light of several failed strikes—most notably the steel strike of 1901 that ended the union at U.S. Steel. The IWW thought organizing along industrial, rather than craft, lines would result in more power. At the outset the IWW had more than forty trades united. And unlike the AFL, the IWW recruited unorganized workers regardless of job skill, race, or sex. The goal of "one big union" for all industrial workers was the primary aim of the IWW.

Organization

The new union took its organizational scheme from the "Wheel of Fortune," created by Father Hagerty, one of the founders. The IWW was divided into seven divisions: agriculture, mining, transportation, building, manufacturing, public service, and distribution of foodstuffs. Each department was further subdivided into industries and divided further into individual crafts or trades.

Bargaining Strategy

Initially the IWW rejected conventional collective bargaining and arbitration as too indirect. Its direct methods included strikes, boycotts, propaganda, violence, and sabotage to win labor concessions. Strikes of a violent nature were its trademark, and the miners' strike at Goldfield, Nevada (1906-1907), revealed its radical strategies. In addition to their organizing activities, IWW members were also proponents of the First Amendment right to free speech, an advocacy that came about when union members were arrested for speaking out on labor issues. Wobblies, as IWW members were known, would descend on towns that had restricted speech, mounting soap boxes spread out over a town. As soon as one Wobblie was arrested, another would take his place, until the jails and courts were clogged with cases. The strategy was successful in raising the conscience of taxpayers who doubted the wisdom of tax money being spent to keep the Wobblies in jail for crimes as minor as illegal speech. Later the IWW dropped its more radical methods and adopted collective bargaining as a strategy.

Peak

Though hundreds of thousands of union cards were issued, many workers joined the IWW only for short periods of time. At its peak around 1912—in part because of the notoriety around the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts—the IWW had sixty thousand members, though its labor gains affected the lives of millions of workers indirectly. The most active members were those workers in the areas of mining, construction, lumber, migratory agriculture, and textiles, as well as immigrants and those who had been blacklisted.

Fractious Union

The IWW declined in membership soon after its founding because of the varied interests of its constituents. At its 1906 convention several rightwingers defected over a dispute with Socialist members who advocated revolution. The increased factionalism, as well as the 1907 economic crisis and governmental repression (especially during World War I, when many of its leaders and members were jailed), also added to its decline. In 1907 the backbone of the union, the Western Federation of Miners, defected, leaving the union with fewer than ten thousand actual members. In 1908 the Socialist Laborites who favored Daniel De Leon left the union over the issue of whether the union should pursue a political or economic agenda. Disagreeing with the IWW's lack of affiliation with a political party and its intent to pursue direct economic action by its members as its principal tool, De Leon formed a separate organization. The IWW's Utopian stance embodied in the phrase "We shall be all" continued to be one of never making peace with the capitalists, whom it considered enemies of the working class. Despite these serious setbacks in organizing, the IWW has endured as a union.