Industrial Workers of the World

IWW demonstration in New York, 1914

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a democratically-run, international union, founded in 1905 in the United States, with a dedication to industrial unionism and a long history of organizing across gender and racial lines. Members are often called "Wobblies".

From Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism:

The IWW had been founded in the United States in 1905, as the joint heir of the anti-racist, anti-sexist, internationalist traditions of the Knights of Labor founded in 1869, which had dominated organised American labour with a peak of 700,000 members by 1886 (weirdly, while the Knights had a large black membership, it violently opposed Chinese immigration, it also established sections in Canada and Australia, only closing up shop as a shadow of its former self in 1949), and of the explicitly anarcho-syndicalist traditions of the Central Labor Union (CLU) of 1883–1909. Despite intense repression and splits over the question of the majority’s opposition to electoral politics, the IWW rose to about 250,000 members in 1917 in the US alone, and in its incarnation as the “One Big Union,” perhaps 70,000 members in Canada in 1919. It was above all a movement of the poorest and most marginal workers—poor whites, immigrants, blacks, Asians, and women—many of whom worked in insecure and dangerous jobs as dockworkers, field hands, lumberjacks, miners, and factory operatives—and earned its stripes organising across racial lines in the American South. It was also an international phenomenon, with IWW groups and unions, and IWW-inspired organisations forming in Argentina, Australia, Britain, Canada, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, Peru, Siberia, South Africa, Ukraine, and Uruguay; it had direct influence on the global labour movement as far afield as Burma, China, and Fiji; and in more recent times, it established sections in Iceland, Sweden, and Sierra Leone.

Preamble to the IWW Constitution:

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 the 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 means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

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 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 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.

Founding Convention

In 1904, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) leaders called a Chicago meeting of six radical spokesmen, who in turn invited thirty radicals to a conference in Chicago on 2 January 1905. Attendees wrote the Industrial Union Manifesto and invited all who agreed with it to a public convention, chaired by "Big Bill" Haywood, on 27 June at Chicago's Brand Hall. Nearly 200 delegates from 34 organizations showed up. The June convention approved the IWW constitution, including a clause in the Preamble calling for "political," meaning electoral action. A sizable minority opposed this clause, while the faction represented by the Socialist Labor Party's Daniel De Leon strongly supported it.

Six months after the June convention, the governor of Idaho was killed by a bomb at his house. Harry Orchard was arrested, and Orchard implicated WFM leaders including Haywood. At the 1907 trials, Haywood and the other WFM leaders were acquitted and Orchard was exposed as a perjurer with contradictory statements. The WFM, upset at how the IWW's radical politics hurt their image during the trials, voted in 1907 to leave the IWW, and it fired Haywood.

At its 1908 convention, the IWW removed from its constitution's preamble the clause advocating "political" action. De Leon started a rival IWW, which changed its name in 1915 and dissolved in 1925. It was "a propaganda arm of the Socialist Labor Party."

Free Speech Campaigns

From 1907 to 1916, the IWW fought about 30 free speech struggles. One was in the city of Spokane, Washington, which banned non-religious street meetings and soapbox speaking in 1909. Wobblies began speaking in defiance of the ban and on 2 November, thousands defined the ban. By the end of the month, over 600 had been arrested. In March 1910, the city agreed to release the free speech prisoners and let the Wobblies speak on the streets.

In Fresno, California, police were breaking up IWW meetings and arresting members. In May 1910, when they arrested Frank Little, Little called the IWW's headquarters in Chicago and asked for them to send people for a free speech campaign. Over 150 Wobblies went to Fresno and many other workers went as well. Thousands defied the street speaking ban and filled the jails. The city overturned the ban in March 1911 and released the free speech prisoners.

1912 Lawrence textile strike

Children of Lawrence, MA strikers sent to live with sympathizers in New York City during the work stoppage 1912

In January 1912, 25,000 workers went on strike for 10 weeks in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They won their demands for significant wage increases. A slogan of the strike read, "We want bread and roses too."

On 11 January, women at Everett Cotton Mills were denied their full wages, so they walked out of work. The town's mill workers held a mass meeting and formed a strike committee with two delegates from each nationality. The strike committee demanded a 15 percent wage increase, double-pay for overtime work, and no discrimination against workers who participated in the strike.

AFL leaders denounced the strike. The AFL's United Textile Workers president John Golden dismissed the strike as "anarchistic" and "revolutionary," while AFL president Samuel Gompers complained it was a "class-conscious industrial revolution".

Days into the strike, police found dynamite planted in three places in Lawrence. They suspected the IWW was behind it. Later, a contractor named Ernest Pitman, who built the American Woolen Company mill, confessed that the textile corporations orchestrated the planting of the dynamite in their Boston offices in an attempt to frame the strikers. On 29 January, a woman striker Ann LoPizzo was killed when police tried breaking a picket line. Strikers said a cop shot her. Police arrested the IWW members Ettor and Giovannitti and charged them with inciting the murder. The police then imposed martial law, banned public meetings, and arrested the striker Joseph Caruso for the murder.

Strikers sent their children to other cities where sympathizers housed them. On 24 February, mothers brought 150 children to the Lawrence train station to send the kids to Philadelphia. At the station, police clubbed and arrested mothers and children. The clash, writes Lawrence Kornbluh in Rebel Voices, "was the turning point of the Lawrence strike. Protests from every part of the country reached Congress."

On 12 March, American Woolen Company agreed to all the strikers' demands. The rest of Lawrence's textile companies fell in line, too, by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Ettor and Giovannitti sat in jail. They received much public sympathy after Pitman confessed the textile companies were behind the planting of the dynamite. The IWW continued agitating, and on 26 November, Ettor and Giovannitti were acquitted.

1913 Paterson silk strike

In 1911, silk manufacturers in Paterson, New Jersey introduced new technology that had workers use four looms at once instead of two. Workers complained this automation would raise unemployment and lower wages. On 27 January 1913, 800 workers at Doherty Silk Mill walked out of work, and on 25 February, thousands of silk workers joined the strike and attended a mass meeting. Within a week, 25,000 workers were on strike. Bill Haywood told Outlook magazine, "There's a red card in the home of every silk worker." Kornbluh says Haywood's claim "was but a little exaggerated". Only 9000 workers were paid-up IWW members in Patterson, but many more were active and simply behind on dues. Strikers established a finance committee and a relief board, two relief stations, a restaurant, a grocery, and a drug store.

In May and June, police arrested an average of 100 workers a day. Private detectives hired by the mill workers killed 2 workers during the strike, and no one was tried for the murders. On 7 June, Patterson workers performed a pagent at Madison Square Garden to an audience of 15,000. It was a reenactment of their strike. Despite being a financial failure, it received positive reviews.

On 18 July, the ribbon weavers withdrew from the strike committee, ending prospects for an industry-wide settlement. The strike collapsed that month.

Wheatland Hop Riot

In 1913, 2,800 men, women and children arrived to work at E.B. Durst's hop farm in Marysville, California. Durst hired over twice the number of workers he had space for. Workers were given no drinking water all day except for lemonade they had to pay for, and they all had to share just nine outdoor toilets. They disposed of garbage in irrigation ditches, producing a nauseating stench and the spread of dysentery. About 100 of the 2,800 workers were IWW members. 30 of them formed a local upon arrival, and these IWW members wielded significant influence over the mass of workers.

On 2 August, three days after they arrived, the workers held a mass meeting. At the meeting, workers appointed a committee to demand drinking water twice a day, wage increases, separate toilets for men and women, and better sanitary conditions.

The IWW called their own meeting on 3 August, and 2,000 workers attended. Two cars of deputy sherrifs arrived and a deputy fired a shot into the crowd. Fighting broke out, and the district attorney, a deputy sheriff, and two workers were killed. The episode became known as the Wheatland Hop Riot. Police arrested hundreds of suspected Wobblies and tortured some of them in prison. One prisoner committed suicide and another "went insane from police brutality." Blackie Ford and Herman Suhr were convicted of second-degree murder, sentenced to life imprisonment, and jailed for over ten years.

The workers' agitation did have an impact on the industry. In the year following the riot, 40 new IWW locals formed in California. In 1917, the IWW Hop Pickers' Defense Committee claimed the IWW's boycott had cost California farms $10 million a year. The farm owners claimed that the workers' actions cost them $15 million to $20 million since 1914. Additionally, farm owners hired private police to deal with the IWW, costing the farm owners another $10,000 a year on average.

Timber Organizing

In 1917, the IWW organized the Lumber Workers' Industrial Union No. 500 in Spokane, Washington, which demanded an eight-hour day, Sundays and holidays off, more sanitary food and dining conditions, better housing, free hospital service, semimonthly pay, an end to child labor, and an end to anti-IWW discrimination. They went on strike on 1 July, and by August they "paralyzed more than 80 percent of the lumber industry in western Washington." In many areas, nearly 90 percent of loggers joined the IWW.

In March 1918, the Northwest's lumber industry announced it would switch to an eight-hour day. The IWW took credit for the victory.

In November 1919, the IWW's hall in Centralia was trashed, and Tom Lassiter, a blind newsstand operator and IWW sympathizer, was kidnapped, left in a ditch, and told he'd be killed if he returned to town. The IWW rented a new hall. On 11 November, at an Armistice Day parade welcoming returning veterans, marchers stopped at the IWW hall and suggested storming it. As marchers rushed to the hall, shots were fired from the hall, from a nearby hotel room, and from a nearby hillside. Three members of the American Legion were killed. Wesley Everest, a Wobbly, ran from the hall and was chased by a mob. He offered to give himself up to any police officer in the crowd, but the mob rushed to get him. Being rushed, he shot and killed a legionnaire. The mob knocked Everest unconscious and dragged him to jail. That night, a group entered the jail, took Everest, and castrated and lynched him.

Under pressure from the powerful American Legion, police arrested over 1,000 suspected Wobblies. Seven Wobblies were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 to 40 years in prison. Years after the trial, six jury members gave an affidavit saying they would have voted to acquit the Wobblies if they had known all the facts.

Opposition to World War I

The IWW declared its opposition to World War I in 1914: "We as members of the industrial army will refuse to fight for any purpose except the realization of industrial freedom." The IWW were accused of being foreign agents, and in 1917 federal agents arrested 184 Wobblies, who were charged with interfering with the war effort, encouraging resistance to the draft, conspiring to cause insubordination in the military, and injuring citizens selling ammunition to the government. They were tried in three groups: in Chicago, Sacramento, and Wichita.

External Links

Chronology of the IWW

A brief history of the IWW outside the United States