Industrial Workers of the World

Based on Wikipedia: Industrial Workers of the World

In the summer of 1905, a motley crew of socialists, anarchists, and radical union men gathered in Chicago to declare war on American capitalism. They called themselves the Industrial Workers of the World. Their enemies called them dangerous. Their friends called them Wobblies.

Nobody knows for certain where that nickname came from. Some say it was a Chinese restaurant owner in Vancouver who couldn't pronounce the "W" in "I.W.W." and said "I Wobble Wobble" instead. Others claim it derived from a "wobble saw," a circular blade that cuts in both directions—just as the union cut across all trades and industries. The truth is lost to history, but the name stuck.

The Continental Congress of the Working Class

The meeting that birthed the Wobblies began not with the grand 1905 convention but with a quiet planning session in Chicago the year before. Seven men gathered to sketch out something unprecedented: a union that would welcome everyone.

Think about what that meant in 1905. The American Federation of Labor, the dominant union organization, operated on craft principles. Carpenters joined one union. Plumbers joined another. Electricians had their own. This made a certain practical sense, but it had a devastating consequence: workers in the same factory, doing different jobs, belonged to different organizations with different interests. When the carpenters went on strike, the plumbers might cross their picket line. Management could play one trade against another.

The Wobblies saw this as suicide by fragmentation.

When 200 radicals assembled for the official founding convention on June 27, 1905, a one-eyed former miner named William D. Haywood—everyone called him "Big Bill"—opened the proceedings with words that still crackle with defiance:

This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism.

The Continental Congress. Haywood wasn't comparing their gathering to a labor meeting. He was comparing it to the American Revolution.

An Injury to One

The Wobblies built their philosophy on a single, devastating observation: workers and owners have nothing in common. This wasn't a negotiating position. It was an axiom. Their constitution stated it plainly:

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.

From this premise flowed everything else. If workers and owners were natural enemies, then workers needed to stop fighting each other and unite against their common opponent. Skilled and unskilled. Native-born and immigrant. White, Black, and Asian. Men and women. The Wobblies welcomed them all.

This was radical in the deepest sense. In an era of segregation, when most unions explicitly excluded Black workers and Asian immigrants, the Industrial Workers of the World threw open its doors. When the American Federation of Labor organized workers by trade—dividing them—the Wobblies organized by industry, uniting everyone who worked in the same shop under the same banner.

Their motto borrowed from the Knights of Labor, an earlier union that had proclaimed "an injury to one is the concern of all." But the Wobblies sharpened it: "an injury to one is an injury to all." Not just a concern. An actual injury. Your pain is my pain. Your fight is my fight.

The Immigrant Backbone

The founding convention drew heavily on the Western Federation of Miners, hardened veterans of the brutal labor wars in Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. But the union's membership quickly diversified into something remarkable for its time.

Finnish immigrants formed an outsized portion of the Wobbly ranks—somewhere between five and ten thousand members at the union's height. This wasn't accidental. Finland in the early twentieth century was a hotbed of radicalism, and Finns who emigrated to America often brought their politics with them. They congregated in mining regions like Duluth, Minnesota, where they published Industrialisti, the only daily newspaper the Industrial Workers of the World ever produced. At its peak, the paper ran ten thousand copies per issue—in Finnish.

Swedish immigrants swelled the ranks too, particularly those who had been blacklisted after the great Swedish general strike of 1909. Locked out of employment in their home country, they crossed the Atlantic and found a home among the Wobblies. They established Scandinavian Socialist Clubs and built the infrastructure of a transnational radical movement.

The influence flowed both ways. The Swedish syndicalist union known as the SAC (Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation, or Central Organization of Swedish Workers) formed in 1910, explicitly modeled on Wobbly tactics and strategies. Ideas that germinated in Chicago warehouses and Montana copper mines took root in Stockholm and Malmö.

One Big Union

The Wobblies called their vision "One Big Union." The phrase sounds almost naive today, a utopian slogan. But the concept had steel teeth.

Traditional unions negotiated contracts. The Wobblies distrusted contracts. A contract, they argued, bound workers for a fixed period—usually years—during which they promised not to strike. This was surrender dressed up as victory. The bosses got labor peace. The workers got whatever crumbs the contract specified. And if conditions changed, if prices rose or work sped up, workers were legally obligated to keep their mouths shut until the contract expired.

The Wobblies wanted something different: perpetual leverage. If workers in one department walked out, workers in every department should walk out with them. If miners in Arizona struck, longshoremen in Philadelphia should refuse to load the copper. One Big Union meant that the entire working class could shut down the entire economy at will.

This terrified people in power. It was meant to.

The Wobbly Shop

But the Industrial Workers of the World wasn't just about strikes and conflict. They had a positive vision too, a model for how work itself should be organized. They called it the Wobbly Shop.

In a Wobbly Shop, workers elected their own managers. Decisions flowed from the bottom up, not the top down. This was industrial democracy—the application of democratic principles to the workplace itself.

Think about how strange this was, and still is. Most Americans accept that political democracy is good. We elect our legislators, our mayors, our presidents. We would never accept a system where political leaders appointed themselves and ruled by decree. Yet in the workplace, that's exactly what we accept. The boss gives orders. Workers obey. The Industrial Workers of the World asked a simple question: why?

If democracy was good enough for government, why wasn't it good enough for the factory floor?

The Boomtown Battle

The Wobblies first captured national attention in Goldfield, Nevada, in 1906. Goldfield was a classic western boomtown—tents and shacks thrown up around newly discovered gold deposits, thousands of fortune-seekers flooding in, money and violence everywhere.

The Industrial Workers of the World organized the miners. They organized the hotel workers. They organized anyone who would listen. By early 1907, they felt strong enough to flex their muscles. They demanded that the mine owners refuse to employ members of the rival American Federation of Labor carpenters' union.

This was classic Wobbly hardball. They weren't just organizing workers—they were trying to drive out the competition.

The mine owners pushed back. They banded together and announced that they would hire no Industrial Workers of the World members at all. They staged a lockout, shutting down the mines entirely and vowing to remain closed until they had broken Wobbly power.

The lockout split the Goldfield workforce. Conservative workers resented the Wobblies for provoking the confrontation. Radical workers blamed the bosses. The solidarity that the Industrial Workers of the World preached turned out to be harder to achieve than their rhetoric suggested.

The Rocky Marriage with the Western Federation of Miners

The Western Federation of Miners had been instrumental in founding the Industrial Workers of the World. Men like Big Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John served as leaders in both organizations. The Western Federation of Miners became the Wobblies' "mining section," bringing thousands of experienced, battle-tested union men under the new banner.

But the marriage was troubled from the start.

Many rank-and-file members of the Western Federation of Miners were uncomfortable with the Wobblies' open radicalism. They wanted higher wages and better conditions. They didn't necessarily want to abolish capitalism. At the 1906 Industrial Workers of the World convention, a majority of Western Federation of Miners delegates walked out in protest.

Then came the Steunenberg affair. Frank Steunenberg had been governor of Idaho during the violent labor conflicts of the 1890s. He had called in federal troops against striking miners and was hated throughout the Western Federation. In 1905, someone assassinated him with a bomb at his front gate.

The authorities arrested three Western Federation of Miners leaders—including Big Bill Haywood—and charged them with conspiracy to commit murder. The Industrial Workers of the World poured resources into their defense, raising funds and hiring lawyers. The case became a national cause célèbre.

When the defendants were acquitted, you might think it would have been a victory for both organizations. Instead, it created a peculiar problem: the Wobblies had prepared for martyrs. Martyrs generate sympathy, donations, outrage. Acquitted defendants generate... relief, and then people move on. Meanwhile, much of the American public remained convinced that the mining leaders were guilty and had simply escaped justice on a technicality.

The Western Federation of Miners formally left the Industrial Workers of the World in 1907. Haywood, increasingly radical, eventually left the Western Federation of Miners and devoted himself entirely to the Wobblies. But the Industrial Workers of the World never stopped wanting the western miners back.

In 1908, Vincent St. John hatched a scheme to retake the Western Federation of Miners from within. He wrote to sympathizers in various locals, encouraging them to get themselves appointed as convention delegates by pretending to share whatever views their locals held. Once assembled at the convention, these secret Wobbly loyalists would vote in a pro-Industrial Workers of the World slate of officers. "Once we can control the officers of the Western Federation of Miners for the Industrial Workers of the World," St. John promised, "the big bulk of the membership will go with them."

The scheme failed. But it reveals something important about the Wobblies: for all their talk of solidarity and worker unity, they could play dirty politics with the best of them.

The Peak and the Crackdown

By 1912, the Industrial Workers of the World had grown to roughly 25,000 members. That might not sound like much compared to the American Federation of Labor's millions, but the Wobblies punched far above their weight. They organized strikes that made national headlines. They published nearly a hundred newspapers and periodicals in nineteen different languages. They established over 900 union locals in more than 350 cities across 38 states and five Canadian provinces.

They also developed a distinctive culture. Wobbly cartoons, produced by unpaid rank-and-file members, satirized the union's enemies and spread its message. The most famous Wobbly cartoon character was Mr. Block, created by Ernest Riebe—a square-headed worker who kept getting duped by bosses and politicians but never learned his lesson. The legendary Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill wrote a song about Mr. Block, cementing the character in labor movement lore.

August 1917 marked the union's numerical peak: an estimated 150,000 members. But this number comes with an enormous asterisk. The Industrial Workers of the World had spectacular membership turnover—an estimated 133% between 1905 and 1915. Workers joined in huge numbers during strikes and economic crises, then drifted away when conditions stabilized. The Wobblies were less a stable organization than a perpetual insurgency, flaring up wherever conditions were right.

And then the crackdowns began.

World War I changed everything. The Wobblies opposed the war—they saw it as workers killing workers for the benefit of capitalists—and this opposition made them targets. The federal government raided Industrial Workers of the World halls across the country, seizing documents and arresting leaders. In Canada, the government simply banned the organization outright, making membership illegal by order in council on September 24, 1918.

The First Red Scare—the wave of anti-radical hysteria that swept America after the war—devastated what remained. Socialists, anarchists, and union radicals of all stripes faced arrests, deportations, and mob violence. The Wobblies, with their explicit rejection of capitalism and their multiracial membership, made perfect targets.

The Schism

Government repression weakened the Industrial Workers of the World. Internal conflict nearly destroyed it.

In 1924, the organization split in two. The details of the schism—who said what to whom, which faction controlled which assets—matter less than the result. The Industrial Workers of the World that emerged was a shadow of its former self. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, while other unions grew powerful under the New Deal's legal protections, the Wobblies struggled to survive.

The Second Red Scare of the 1950s—the McCarthy era—brought another wave of persecution. At various points, the union teetered on the edge of extinction.

And yet it didn't die.

The Revival

The 1960s and 1970s brought the New Left, and with it a new generation interested in radical alternatives to mainstream unionism. Young activists discovered the Wobblies' history, their songs, their uncompromising vision. The Industrial Workers of the World experienced a modest revival, attracting members who saw in it something missing from conventional labor organizations.

Today, the Industrial Workers of the World still exists. It remains small—nowhere near the 150,000 members of 1917—but it persists. It still welcomes all workers. It still promotes industrial unionism and workplace democracy. It still inscribes on its banner the revolutionary watchword: abolition of the wage system.

Whether that vision is utopian fantasy or deferred possibility depends on who you ask. But after more than a century of persecution, schism, near-death experiences, and revivals, the Wobblies are still here. They're still singing their songs. They're still dreaming of One Big Union.

An injury to one, they insist, is still an injury to all.

The Conflict with Other Unions

The Wobblies didn't just fight bosses. They fought other unions too, and these battles reveal the tensions at the heart of the American labor movement.

The American Federation of Labor regarded the Industrial Workers of the World as dangerously radical. The Wobblies returned the sentiment, viewing the American Federation of Labor as hopelessly conservative—collaborators with capitalism rather than opponents of it. The two organizations competed for members, sometimes violently.

In April 1916, the Industrial Workers of the World picketed anthracite coal mines around Scranton, Pennsylvania. These mines were organized by the United Mine Workers of America, an American Federation of Labor affiliate. The Wobblies considered the United Mine Workers too reactionary because they signed contracts with mine owners—those fixed-term agreements that the Industrial Workers of the World believed hamstrung workers.

The confrontation created a surreal spectacle. United Mine Workers officials—union men!—called for police protection so their members could cross Wobbly picket lines. The Pennsylvania State Police arrived in force and ensured that the American Federation of Labor miners could go to work unmolested by the Industrial Workers of the World pickets.

Union members crossing picket lines with police protection. The labor movement attacking itself. This was the logical endpoint of the Wobblies' all-or-nothing approach: if you weren't with them, you were against them, even if you were a fellow worker carrying a union card.

The Butte Riot

Perhaps no episode better illustrates the chaos of intra-union conflict than what happened in Butte, Montana, in 1914.

Butte was a copper mining town, and copper mining towns in early twentieth-century America were rough places. The Western Federation of Miners had organized Butte and held it as one of their strongest locals. But not everyone was happy with the Western Federation's leadership.

In 1914, dissident miners—angry at what they saw as the Western Federation's complacency—formed a new union. They demanded that all Butte miners join their organization or face beatings. Riots erupted. The new union had no official affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World, but many of its leaders were Wobbly members or sympathizers, and the press treated it as an Industrial Workers of the World operation.

The uprising failed. The new union couldn't supplant the Western Federation. But the prolonged conflict between the two organizations had a consequence that neither intended: the mine owners stopped recognizing any union at all. Butte, one of the most thoroughly unionized mining towns in America, became an open shop. For twenty years—from 1914 to 1934—no union had power there.

The Wobblies had set out to unite all workers. In Butte, their methods divided them so thoroughly that the bosses won.

Legacy

The Industrial Workers of the World never achieved its ultimate goal. Capitalism still stands. The wage system endures. There is no One Big Union controlling the means of production.

But the Wobblies left marks on American history that outlast their organizational strength.

They proved that multiracial unionism was possible decades before the Congress of Industrial Organizations integrated mass-production industries in the 1930s. They developed tactics—the sit-down strike, the slowdown, the work-to-rule—that later unions would deploy to powerful effect. They created a culture of protest that echoes through folk music and radical movements to this day. Joe Hill's songs are still sung. The Wobbly little red songbook is still printed.

And they posed a question that mainstream labor movements have never quite answered: if democracy is valuable in politics, why not in the workplace? If workers create the wealth, why shouldn't workers control how that wealth is created?

The Wobblies' answer was too radical for most Americans then, and remains so now. But the question persists. Every time workers form a cooperative, every time employees demand a voice in management decisions, every time someone asks why the people who do the work don't get to make the rules, they're walking ground the Wobblies cleared more than a century ago.

The Industrial Workers of the World may be small today. But its ghost is enormous.