Chinese and Japanese workers play that role today, as does the yellow race in general. All workers can be organized regardless of race or color, as soon as their minds are cleared of the patriotic notion that there is any reason of being proud of having been born of a certain shade of skin or in an arbitrarily fenced off portion of the earth..
A significant number of Black workers joined the IWW, as it was the only working-class organization in the United States at the time that openly and consistently welcomed them. In their organizing in the South and also on the East Coast, the IWW was the only union Blacks could join to fight for better conditions on the job. At no time did the IWW organize segregated unions. Starting in the IWW made a concerted appeal to Black workers to join. Its publications, including in the Jim Crow South, were filled with vigorous denunciations of racism.
The wrongs of the Negro are not confined to lynching, however. When allowed to live and work for the community, he is subjected to constant humiliation, injustice and discrimination. In the cities he is forced to live in the meanest districts, where his rent is doubled and tripled, while conditions of health and safety are neglected in favor of the white sections.
Almost everywhere all semblance of political rights is denied him.. Throughout this land of liberty, so-called, the Negro worker is treated as an inferior; he is underpaid in his work and overcharged in his rent; he is kick about, cursed and spat upon; in short, he is treated, not as a human being, but as an animal, a beast of burden for the ruling class.
In , more than half of the , workers in the southern lumber industry were Blacks who worked the lowest-paid, unskilled jobs. The union opened its doors to Black workers, but organized them into separate locals in accordance with Jim Crow laws. Despite intense repression, lockouts, the blacklisting by the employers of several thousand workers, and efforts to divide workers along color lines, by early the union had a membership of around 25,, half of whom were Black.
When Haywood arrived and was told that Black union members were meeting separately according to Louisiana law he replied:. You work in the same mills together. Sometimes a black man and a white man chop down the same tree together.
You are meeting in convention now to discuss the conditions under which you labor. Why not be sensible about this and call the Negroes into this convention? If it is against the law, this is one time when the law should be broken.
These blew up quickly in various cities around the country, including Spokane, San Diego, and Fresno. The IWW responded with a tactic to make the costs of persecuting free speech quite expensive. IWW branches sent out calls across the country for their members to ride freight trains to the various cities where the free speech fights were taking place, to get arrested in turn and fill up the jails to make more arrests impossible.
Go to Missoula. Fight with the Lumberjacks for Free Speech. Are you game? Are you afraid? Do you love the police? Have you been robbed, skinned, grafted on? If so, then go to Missoula, and defy the police, the courts and the people who live off the wages of prostitution.
In Spokane, the IWW waged a free speech fight throughout for the right to protest fraudulent job placement agencies and the ability to make speeches in favor of unionism. After having several members harassed and arrested, the local IWW put out the call:.
As the months wore on, more and more Wobblies rolled into Spokane to join the struggle for free speech and be arrested. Eventually, several hundred IWW members would be held at one time, stuffed eight or ten into jail cells built for three or four inmates. Despite a successful legal challenge by the IWW, the city fathers banned all public street meetings as well as indoor meetings, and sent police to raid the IWW hall and arrest all of its inhabitants, continuing in their attack on free speech.
Spokane banned the publishing, sale, and distribution of the IWW newspaper and even arrested the newsboys who hawked it on the streets.
But the Wobblies held the line, giving educational meetings, agitational speeches and organizing revolutionary sing-alongs under brutal conditions inside the jail. After an initial lull during the summer, another wave of IWW members descended on the town in the winter of that year, continuing to make the ongoing imprisonment of roving agricultural workers as expensive as ever.
Finally, in the early spring of , the city sued for peace, caving in to virtually all of the IWW demands and ending their persecution of free speech. The little minority of the working class represented in the IWW blazed the trail in those ten years of fighting for free speech [] which the entire American working class must in some fashion follow.
Bread and roses In the IWW made its first major breakthrough with the enormous textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The IWW acted quickly and sent organizers to Lawrence to help their small local of or so members organize and lead the spontaneous strike. With an elected strike committee of sixty delegates, representing each of the fifteen major ethnic populations and occupational groupings, the strike was a model for how to organize the immigrant working class.
The Greeks and Poles are out so strong and the Germans all the time, But we want to see more Irish in the good old picket line. Forced into shameful living conditions in squalid tenements, working a normal week of fifty-six hours for poverty wages malnutrition was a particularly pernicious cause of death among the children of the mill hands and almost entirely shunned by the AFL, the textile workers of Lawrence had long been expected to explode in angry rebellion, and the wintry month of January would prove to be the time.
For years the employers have forced conditions on us that gradually and surely broke up our homes. They have taken away our wives from the homes, our children have been driven from the playground, stolen out of schools and driven into the mills, where they were strapped to the machines, not only to force the fathers to compete, but that their young lives may be coined into dollars for a parasite class, that their very nerves, their laughter and their joy denied, may be woven into cloth.
The IWW sent a cunning and talented twenty-seven-year-old organizer, Joseph Ettor, to run the strike. Prepared for this battle by previous organizing experience in the western reaches of the IWW, Ettor led a brilliantly organized strike the likes of which had never been seen. Foner wrote of the Battle of Lawrence that. All mills on strike and their component parts, all crafts and phases of work, were represented. The committee spoke for all workers. The principle of national equality was also carried out in the sub-committees elected: relief, finance, publicity, investigation, and organization.
Thus every nationality group had its own organization in the management of the strike, and complete unity was obtained for this working class machine through the general strike committee.
The strikers shut down the mills from wall to wall, with no textiles able to be produced at any point throughout the walkout. Monster mass meetings were held every weekend throughout the nine-week strike, for the strikers to vote on and ratify the decisions made by the strike committee, facilitated by a small army of interpreters.
Continuous mass pickets of thousands patrolled the mill area of the town, completely encircling each mill to ensure that no scabs were able to work. Massive parades took place every few days, with anywhere between 3, to 10, workers marching and singing the Internationale in their own languages.
Ten thousand of the striking workers joined the IWW. Facing armed militias paid for by the hostile mill owners, brutal police attacks, and widespread arrests of hundreds of strikers, as well as the leadership of the competing AFL textile workers union who came to Lawrence in an attempt to call off the strike, the IWW held out.
Newspapers carried stories and images of the malnourished and ragged children of the strikers across the country as they arrived at their new temporary homes, which played a role in tipping public opinion in favor of the strike. When Lawrence police attacked a delegation of the children on their way to the train station with their mothers, ruthlessly beating down and arresting children and parents alike, national outrage ensued, leading to an eventual Congressional investigation of the living and working conditions of the striking families.
With every innovative tactic used by the strikers, the mill owners and city leaders oftentimes interchangeable upped the ante. The state militia insituted martial law for a time, leading to the death of an eighteen-year-old Syrian mill hand he was bayonetted in the back while running from advancing troops.
Private detectives from the Pinkerton agency were brought into the town to spy on strike leaders, provoke riots, and terrorize families. Local clergy who would play ball were enlisted on the side of the mill owners, who instructed them to denounce the strike and the IWW. And, at the behest of the city council, the rival AFL union was brought in to attempt to end the strike by signing agreements for the skilled workers and sending them back to work. The IWW kept calm and held out through all of these challenges to win a stunning victory, wresting pay raises of 5 to 22 percent to all of the striking workers, payment of overtime, and promises of no retaliation from the mill owners.
The Lawrence strike still holds the imagination of radicals today who want to build a multi-ethnic, fighting labor movement, as it certainly did in The success in the Lawrence strike launched the IWW into the national arena, with as the year in which they scored organizing victories in different industries across the country: on the railroads, in textiles, steel, lumber, metalworking, longshore jobs, agriculture, and even cigar rolling, once a bastion of AFL craft unionism.
It is in this period, between and the end of World War I, that the IWW made its most impressive gains in terms of membership and political impact among the American working class. Because of its willingness to organize women, people of color, the unskilled and foreign-born workers oftentimes these overlapped , the IWW grew in numbers and influence.
In Philadelphia, the IWW organized longshoremen across color lines to win united multiracial strikes against the shipping bosses. In Louisiana, it organized lumber mill workers into integrated local unions, breaking Jim Crow segregation laws, a practice not accepted by other unions until decades later.
They also organized migrant agricultural laborers in California and across the West, winning some gains in anticipation of later union drives among farm laborers in the s and again in the s and s. During this period, at its height, the IWW could claim 40, dues-paying members. But there were still nagging political questions which remained unanswered. And the IWW was still losing plenty of strikes for every victory, as in the large Paterson, New Jersey silk strike which went down to defeat only a year after Lawrence, or the defeat of the rubber workers strike in Akron, Ohio.
Was it a betrayal of revolutionary principle to set up permanent strike funds, so the IWW stood a chance of winning long strikes? Or to sign contracts with management? Within a year of their crowning victory in Lawrence, the IWW local declined from over 10, members to roughly , with most of their militants being driven out of the mills and blacklisted. Within the organization, rumblings could be heard that pointed to a different method, as storm clouds gathered on the horizon.
The war The heyday of the IWW began to pass as major political developments played out on the world stage. World War I erupted across Europe in the fall of , splitting the world socialist movement over support or opposition to the war. The socialist parties of the Second International had failed the test of history. With the coming US involvement in the war, the federal government began ramping up a Red Scare to use as a bludgeon against all radical forces across the country.
The IWW was organizing and leading strikes in the industries pivotal to the war effort copper mining, lumber, rubber, among others and became a natural target for state repression. While local unions, affiliated publications, and individual members were left free to express their opposition to the mad butchery of the imperialist war, the general executive board officially discouraged open agitation against the war and did not take any open position against it. By July , federal troops began to be used to suppress industrial conflicts, to raid I.
Seen As Traitors By the end of , hundreds of I. In the next two years Wobblies and members of the Union of Russian Workers and other labor organizations would be "arrested at their workbenches, held incommunicado, and denied counsel or a chance to contact families and collect belongings," according to historian Alice Wexler. At a time of fear, repression, and anti-radical hysteria, membership in the I.
Decline By , I. Internal discord over relations with the growing American Communist movement divided the membership. That same year, at a mass trial in Chicago, I.
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The founding convention took place in Chicago. Big Bill called the convention to order by pounding a piece of board on the podium. He announced that the purpose of the meeting was to create a working-class movement to free workers from the "slave bondage of capitalism" and to bring workers "up to a decent plane of living.
The delegates at the convention condemned the American Federation of Labor for failing to organize the vast majority of industrial workers. Their goal was to organize the working class to declare one big general strike to "take possession of the earth and the machinery of production. The delegates split over one important issue.
The socialists at the convention, like Eugene V. Debs , wanted the IWW to engage in politics and elections. But the anarchists believed that the election system was merely a tool of capitalism. They rejected political participation and argued for "direct action" in the form of strikes, worker demonstrations, and even sabotage.
The two sides finally compromised by agreeing that the IWW would operate in both areas, but would not become attached to any political party. The willingness of the IWW to sign up almost anyone gave it the reputation of being a union of hoboes, drifters, and other lowlifes. During the early years of the IWW, the Wobblies had some successes.
For example, a strike by Nevada gold miners won them an eight-hour day. But after winning a strike, the IWW often failed to follow up and establish a strong, permanent local union. In addition, IWW leaders were often arrested and accused of violent acts.
Two trials in particular stand out. In , Big Bill Haywood was put on trial for the bombing murder of a former Idaho governor. Defended by famed attorney Clarence Darrow, Big Bill was acquitted when the only witness against him proved to be a liar. In , union organizer Joe Hill was tried, convicted, and executed in Utah for murdering a store owner during an armed robbery. The IWW considered Hill innocent and rallied supporters with his memory.
Others believed him guilty. The question of his guilt still causes controversy. The IWW met annually in Chicago. Bitter arguments between the socialists and anarchists weakened the union. One thing, however, drew the Wobblies together--the so-called "free speech fights" in Western cities. IWW union organizers held street meetings, condemning employers for the low pay and poor working conditions of lumberjacks, migrant laborers, and other unorganized workers.
In several cities, employers persuaded the local government to pass laws banning IWW speakers from public places. The Wobblies resisted and held mass meetings, which resulted in many arrests that crowded the jails and clogged the courts. In some towns, vigilantes, supported by employers and the police, beat up the Wobblies.
Things came to a climax in when vigilantes and police shot to death five Wobblies in Everett, Washington. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, more than 40, immigrant textile mill workers, including women and children, worked hour weeks at low wages between 12 and 16 cents per hour.
In , the Massachusetts state legislature reduced the legal work week for women and children to 54 hours. In response, the mill owners immediately cut the pay of all workers. To cries of "short pay! The small struggling IWW local union called for a general city-wide strike. Overwhelmed by the massive walkout, the IWW local called for outside help. They set up a strike board made up of two representatives from each of the 25 immigrant groups participating in the strike.
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