The Wobblies left legacy of militancy, organizing

They started in the mining district around Butte, Mont. They coalesced in Chicago in January 1905. They were the forerunners, in the U.S., of the industrial union movement. They openly backed–depending on which source you read–socialism or “syndicalism.” They were “The Wobblies.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Industrial Workers of the World, the leading radical labor movement in the early 20th century.

In aiming to unite all industrial workers, the IWW was in sharp contrast to the American Federation of Labor, a craft-based coalition that accepted capitalism. Even their leaders, Samuel Gompers of the AFL, a Cigar Maker, and William “Big Bill” Haywood, of the Western Federation of Miners, sounded different rhetorical tocsins.

“Long before the coming of the modern Socialist movement it was understood by the economists that all wealth is produced by labor…The theory of surplus value is the beginning of all Socialist knowledge. It shows the capitalist in his true light, that of an idler and a parasite. It proves to the workers that capitalists should no longer be permitted to take any of their product,” Haywood wrote in Industrial Socialism, his key work.

The platform of the Wobblies, adopted at that Chicago convention on Jan. 2, 1905, was even blunter:

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace as 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,” it began.

“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 machinery of production and abolish the wage system.”

The IWW also blasted the AFL, calling it unable to cope with industrial concentration and employers’ power. It also said the federation let bosses pit sets of workers against each other. IWW’s solution — one big union — was as radical as its declaration.

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages 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…By organizing industrially, we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”

IWW recruiting posters often depicted workers rising up and uniting.

No one is sure how the IWW earned the nickname “The Wobblies.” According to the union’s website, one theory holds that the term came from the phrase “wobbling the works” a synonym for “direct action on the job” or “sabotage.” In any event, the name stuck, even as the Wobblies saw their ranks grow in the early 1900s.

The Wobblies achieved some successes after their founding, along with some notable setbacks. They were a moving force in the successful “Bread and Roses” struggle of millworkers in Lawrence, Mass., in 1912, for example — not only by mobilizing the working women, but by publicizing the inhumane conditions for the women and their children. IWW’s numbers reached 250,000 in 1913.

But they suffered a setback in the silkworkers strike in Paterson, N.J., when authorities used legalities to suppress the workers’ civil rights, threaten all with arrest –and eventually charge 2,238 with unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct.

Bail ran as high as $5,000 per worker — a tremendous sum for each of them in that era — and police brutality was rampant on IWW picket lines in Paterson.

The IWW and labor as a whole also suffered a huge setback when two men, Iron Workers Secretary-Treasurer John J. McNamara and his brother James, admitted guilt in the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, because its publisher was the prime mover in keeping L.A. an open-shop town.

Though the McNamaras were not Wobblies, the IWW rallied to defend them and even threatened a general strike if they were prosecuted, reports American Labor, A Bicentennial History. Their admission drastically hurt the IWW and prompted Gompers — whose AFL also defended the McNamaras — to mutter “It won’t do the labor movement any good.”

Labor organizer Joe Hill, executed in Utah in 1915, urged I.W.W. members “don’t mourn ? organize!”

The IWW hit another peak of prominence: The home of labor martyr Joe Hill. Hill was framed for allegedly shooting a grocer in Utah, and executed by firing squad there in 1915, despite worldwide protests — including one from President Wilson–to Utah’s governor.

“Goodbye, Bill,” Hill wired Haywood the day before his execution. “I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!”

Unfortunately, IWW never had the chance: The U.S. entered World War I. IWW’s anti-capitalist and generally neutralist stance–it denounced capitalists as war profiteers–drew attention and a federal crackdown that effectively smashed it.

“Hostility towards the Wobblies reached a fever pitch” after that, American Labor added. “Their threats to shut down factories and sabotage crops sent tremors…throughout the country. It didn’t matter there was little evidence they actually disrupted wartime production…Hundreds were rounded up and jailed, merely on the grounds of suspicion.” Approximately 150 IWW leaders were imprisoned, breaking the movement.

This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

For more information
A wealth of history, as well as news of the union’s current activities, can be found on the IWW website, www.iww.org

Wobblies used this “Pyramid of the Capitalist System” to explain workers’ place in the economy (at the bottom). Click on this image to view a larger version.