August 12, 1917
RIOTING MARKS THE TRAIL OF THE I.W.W.
[Final Mention of Becky Edelson in Chronicling America Papers]
Recent Troubles in Arizona and Montana in Line With History of Organization Since Its Foundation
The action of the indignant citizens of Bisbee, Ariz., in
taking several thousand Industrial Workers of the World by the scruff of their
necks and hurling them into the desert for their anti-conscription utterances
and the hanging of Frank Little one of Big Bill Haywood’s chief lieutenants in
Butte, Mon., have served again to bring the I.W.W. into unsavory notice. The
three letters have come to connote all that is violent in American Industrial
life—Lawrence, Paterson, San Diego, Seattle, New York, the list stretches over
the continent and back through the years to the time when Big Bill first arose
to lead those whom he calls his "roughnecks."
For Big Bill is the I. W. W. It is his creation, and even
before It was born back In 1899 he was the storm center of oil the worst mining
disturbances In' the West. Wherever Haywood and the I. W. W, workers go trouble
follows as the night the day, end it often requires the entire efforts of the
police and military forces of a State to keep them from turning their
peacefully started strikes into a shambles. The men who form the organization
are the most uneducated, unthinking, most, easily led and excitable type of
workers, largely of foreign birth, many of whom have never learned the language
of the country of their adoption. When they get started it is mighty hard to stop
them.
Since the war began they have been particularly obnoxious to
many, districts in which they are well organized, chiefly the mining districts
of, the West and some of the mill towns of the East. They have been taught that
war is made by the capitalists, that they owe no patriotism to the country nor
allegiance to any flag but the red flag and that the military power of the
nation is merely the tool of wealthy men who force the workers into their
armies for the protection of their ill-gotten gains. The I.W.W. organization
has done all in its power to foment resistance to conscription, and during the
early days of the Mexican campaign Haywood even proposed a general labor
strike, to prevent the country from declaring war on Mexico.
Because a few I. W. W. agitators have been arrested on
suspicion that they were influenced by the men back of the pro-German
propaganda, the attitude of the organization toward conscription and the
widespread industrial troubles which have added to the burden of officials in
getting the country ready for war it has been suggested that the entire I. W.
W. system was being used by the Germans. But by reading Haywood's remarks of
past years it is readily seen that the actions of his followers in these
troublous days are merely the natural result of his teachings, his resistance
to all present forms of government and the law.
Haywood's Work, Not Hun's.
The dream of the I. W. W. which Haywood preaches is of the
time when the man who works with his hands, the only labor which Haywood
recognizes as productive, is the absolute master of his own product. His ideal
state is one in which each branch of industry shall be run as a whole, for the
workers themselves, when the base system is abolished and a man will profit
directly from his labor. These great industrial units would then have
representatives who would meet and form their own government. The present
system of government is all wrong Haywood claims, but just how he would put his
system into effect ho does not say. First the workers must become all powerful,
they must solve the economic problem, and then they will be able to tackle the
problem of remolding the Government nearer to their hearts’ desire.
"The roughnecks have got to run things," he said
in an interview after the hanging of Little. "The men who make the cars
have got to ride in them. Ours is a roughneck gang. That's what they call us,
but when all our crowd get this thing straight in our minds we will be in a
position to dictate terms to every industry in the world. How? By folding our
arms and completely stopping all work until our terms are met.
"It will be easy. Wage systems will be no more. The
roughnecks, as the highbrows call us, will be the ones running things, and the
highbrows will have to get onto our platform. We are not going up to theirs.
The only right solution of the problem of life in this world is to bring
everybody down to our basis of living."
Through this solidarity of labor, which Haywood says is his
cardinal principle, he believes the workers can accomplish anything they want
to peacefully the only trouble is that it never works out that way. This
doctrine of solidarity came after he had developed, the doctrine of violence,
of striking terror to the hearts of the capitalist class, and he has never got
over his liking for the early method. He defends it by saying that the
capitalists were the first to use violence, and that it is necessary to fight
them with their own weapon. When Ettor and Giovannitti were held for murder in
connection with the Lawrence strike Haywood said:
His Threat of "Hearses."
“If Ettor and Giovannitti die there’ll be more work for the
undertakers, and it won’t be members of the working classes who will ride in
the hearses.”
So when the I.W.W. starts in on a strike it is with the
preconceived idea of getting all it can without fighting and then, if
necessary, resorting to sabotage and revolvers to gain point. In the East the
organization’s efforts in this direction have been confined to a few sporadic
outbreaks in which the agitators have generally contented themselves with
violent verbal outburst against capital and the police and to a few rough and
tumble encounters with nightsticks, but in the West their fights have often
wound up in pitched battles with the militia.
The I. W. W. view of these conflicts was voiced by Frederick
S. Boyd, one of the organizers in the Paterson strike, when he said:
"Wherever the I. 'W, W. has led workers to victory
there has been bloodshed—the blood of the workers. Wherever the I. W. W. has
been victorious the workers have been jailed and clubbed. You have thrown over
the flag of the cops—the stars and prison bars—and have taken as your banner
the red flag of victory, because In the workers' history there has been so much
bloodshed that there is no need to take that flag to any dye house. Wherever
the workers have shed their blood, out of that blood has been created the red
flag, out of this comes the solidarity of the I. W. W."
"To Hell With Courts and Judges."
The I. W. W. workers like this talk. Assailing the flag has
been one of their chief joys in the past, but they don’t do it so frequently
these days, and if they do they are apt to be roughly handled, Take Haywood’s
speech in 1914, for instance, when he was advocating a general strike to prevent
this country going to war.
"The workers under the capitalist system are slaves,"
he said. "Some of them were foolish enough to go to fight under the
American flag in the war with Spain. We don't care for the flag and we are
against patriotism. We have learned that the American flag is not our flag.
There is only one flag in the world for us, and that is the red flag."
This merely emphasizes their lack of respect for any emblem
of organized government and recalls Haywood's famous remark:
"To hell with the courts! To hell with the Injunctions
and to hell with the Judges who grant them!"
So it is little wonder that the I. W. W. have had recourse
to rifles and bombs, and have left a trail of blood across the country wherever
they have carried their propaganda of violent resistance to the grinding
capitalists. Haywood preaches that there is no possibility for the workers to
better their condition by means of the ballot, and that Socialism is too
roundabout a method of gaining their point "Direct action" is a
favorite phrase of the big leader of the I. W. W., when in his more quiet
moments he sits down to expound his doctrines. He can talk well, can Haywood,
and is a much different man when he is discussing workers' wrongs in a small
gathering from the loud, ranting orator appealing to emotions of his uneducated
followers.
Of socialism he says:
“In the first place it will be most difficult for the
Socialist ever to get a majority; secondly, where there is a chance of such on
event the capitalists will find a way to nullify it; and thirdly, even though
the Socialists should get control of the State they would find that the present
form of society cannot be successfully transformed from above downward because
the natural method for such an organic change is to take place from the workers
up through their Industrial unions. The idea of direct possession of industry
by the workers will be far more inspiring to successful action than any
proposal to take industry over indirectly through the State."
In other words, just go up and grab your employer's factory,
and if he doesn't like it put him to work, it is the only way the worker will
ever got a fair deal and a fair return for his labor. That is about the way
Haywood's philosophy can be summed up.
Studied Nights as a Boy Miner.
What manner of man is it who talks this way and who has
gathered together a more or less cohesive organization of 100,000 members,
according to his figures. Those who have known Haywood well, have heard him
discuss his doctrines, think that he is sincere and have a liking for his blunt
forceful way of talking. One of his eyes is partly closed, which gives a
peculiar expression to his heavy face, and he peers at one from the other eye
with a stare that is apt to be disconcerting until on gets used to it. He talks
fluently and can use good English if he wants to, and strangely enough writes
poetry, pretty good poetry, too, say those who have heard it. But there are not
many who know that the man who preaches striking terror to the capitalists
spends some of his off moments in scribbling verse.
Haywood is thoroughly one of the workers he leads. He is 48
years old, the son of a miner Salt Lake City, and when he was 9 he went to work
the mine. He bought books and studied nights, acquired a fair knowledge of mine
crafts, and as he grew to his majority acquired much influence in the camps
because of his superior knowledge and his ready speech. When the Western
Federation of Miners was organized in Silver City, Idaho, he became of the
leaders in it and finally became chairman of the executive board. When the
Coeur d'Alene strike took place in 1899 he was by far the most powerful man in
the federation and was already planning the formation of the Industrial Workers
of the World.
That Idaho strike and the strikes in California which followed
it form one of the worst chapters in American labor history, and through it all
Haywood rode, the guiding figure of the disturbance. The dynamiting of mills by
the miners was offset by the brutality of the military forces, and a bitter
hatred was engendered. A whole town was locked up at one time in the bull pen
of Coeur d’AIene by troops, the Governor of Colorado suspended the writ of
habeas corpus, and Judge Advocate General became famous by saying "To hell
with the Constitution." The fruits of that fight lasted for years, and
finally, in 1906, when Haywood was secretary and treasurer of the federation,
Gov. Steunenberg was killed by a bomb as the direct result of the labor
trouble. Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone were tried for the murder in one of the most
sensational labor trials the country has ever seen, and wore acquitted. That
added greatly to Haywood’s popularity and his power grew rapidly.
A year before he was arrested for murder Haywood was
chairman of conference in Chicago at which the I. W. W. was formed. Included
the most radically inclined of those in labor union and in a short time had
earned the violent opposition of the American Federation of Labor, which has
fought it at every turn. Indeed, Haywood always claimed that he would have won the
last Colorado strike in a few weeks if the railroad unions had cooperated and
refused to take troops into the field. So he might; his men were running things
in their own sweet way up to that point even though the advent of the troops
didn't bettor matters any. The usual result of an I. W. W. strike in mining
country followed, with the exception that the Colorado riots were probably the
worst there have ever been In the country and aroused national indignation both
against the strikers and those who attempted to curb them.
But despite the proposition of the Federation of Labor the
I. W. W. has slowly grown in numbers, its members thoroughly Justifying
Hayward's term “roughnecks,” for they are for the most part the unskilled
laborers. As a matter of fact Haywood has said that he doesn’t want skilled men
in his, ranks: he prefers the underdog who is so far under that he is willing
to do anything to help himself, and to whom the rabid speeches of Haywood and
the policy of direct action have the greatest appeal. It is for them that
Haywood modelled the preamble of the I. W. W., which reads:
"The working class and the employing class have nothing
In common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want ore found among mil
lions of 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 earth and
the machinery of production and abolish the wage system. The trade unions aid
the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working
class has interests in common with their employers. 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. '"
One dollar should never earn another dollar, is another of
Haywood's sayings.
"The dollar is nothing more than the badge of servitude
of one class to another," he says. "In order that one dollar shall
earn another, In the interests of private ownership, the means of life have
been so monopolized that millions of little children ore living In a condition
of starvation, are deprived of their childhood, and to a very large extent of
the opportunity of going to school and thus improving their lot.
"Foe to Marriage."
"Private ownership breaks down the home, mocks at love
and makes women slaves. It has cut down wages to such a point that marriage is
impossible, and by this means it has driven five millions of women into
factories where they can earn a bare existence under the condition of wage
slavery. In order to hold on to their private ownership it is necessary for the
capitalists to debauch the courts, to bribe legislatures, to buy voters, thus
pulling the pillars from under a free government.
"The capitalists go further than this. When they do not
own the press they subsidize it, color all the news, suppress information and
enlarge, exaggerate and distort the news to suit their interest. The capitalists
also control the armed forces of the nation through their control of the
Government, and no one will deny that the Government is owned by the great
interests. They also control the State militia and the State volunteers, and
they have caused armories to be built in all industrial centers, where the
youth of the country is taught the art of murder.
"These armories are not put in the industrial towns In order
to guard against foreign invasion; they are put there in the interest of the
capitalists in order that they may over-awe labor and prevent any uprising of
the workers in the nature of strikes.
"The politicians might perhaps have done something for
the people if they were elected by the people. The whole business of politics,
however, is a fake and a sham, and very few legislators are elected by the
people. Even if this is not so, politics is not a field in which the workers
can hope under present conditions to achieve anything serious in the direction
of bettering their lot because a very large percentage of the workers have no
means of redressing their demands through political channels."
And here is where Haywood makes his strong appeal to the
class of workers he has enlisted under his banner of violence.
8,000,000 Worker Can't Vote.
"There are eight million women and children who work
but have no vote; there are four million black men and some millions of
foreigners who have either not been vested with a vote or, as in the case of
the negro, have been vested with a vote and then have been deprived of the
right to use it and all of these people are industrial factors.
"There is only one solution, and that is that the
producing class shall receive the full social value of their labor, that there
can be no peace as long as the few are living in luxury and the many in
poverty, so long as the many are producing in toil and wretchedness and the few
enjoying their wealth in idleness and unproductiveness.
"The more you, go into the question the more you see
that no final settlement can take place until the control of industry is in the
hands of the workers. At the present time the major part of the produce of
industry is going into the pockets of people who have never even seen the
machinery of a factory. It is not going to the inventor nor to the designer,
nor to the manager, nor to the workers. It is going to the shareholders, who
have simply sent out their dollars to make other dollars for them.
"The brain operating all industry is under the cap of
the worker, and by this I mean the laborers, managers, superintendents and all
who are actually concerned in industry. And we want to bring about a condition
where it will be impossible for the capitalist to shut down on industry on any
pretext whatever. It is not our object to dislocate, disrupt or destroy
industry, but to continue industry for use and profit.
"In order to bring this about, we believe that the use
of any and every weapon is justified. We believe in direct action and that
means action by the mass, and anything the people do in mass is the right thing
at the time, for it gives expression to the conditions of the time among the
masses."
Groups of His Democracy.
Based on his Idea of government by the workers, Haywood has
worked out a division of industry into six large groups: the department of raw
materials, agriculture and fisheries; the department of mining; the department
of industrial manufactures; the department of construction, which looks after
housing and sheltering of people and plants; the department of transportation,
and the department of public service, which includes sanitation, hospitals,
education, literature, art, music and entertainment.
"These six departments,” he says, "could be made
into an ideal industrial democracy in which there will be no capitalists and
none but producer, excepting of course such persons as worn from one cause or
another incapable of productive labor.
The erection of his industrial democracy must be carried out by the workers
themselves, it cannot be effected by legislation, for we can hardly expect the
capitalists to hand over their power and their property. The workers must be
prepared to exert their own power, and they control in fact all the power there
is in the world, for they can stop every wheel and bring the world to a
stand-still."
However, when the pressure of the I. W. W. has been exerted
anywhere to stop every wheel it has merely succeeded in making that section of
the world exceedingly active. The Haywood hordes leap so quickly to riot and
oppose so menacing a front to the law that they have been put down ruthlessly
wherever they have become active. The only large strike they ever won was the
Lawrence strike, and in that they succeeded in getting wage increases for the
mill hands only after several persons had been shot and killed. The Paterson
strike was a failure and the I. W. W. leaders, Haywood, Carlo Tresca, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Becky Edelson and others, were either arrested or run out of
town.
When they claim the right of free speech they merely assert
their right to assail everything of the established order, to preach their
gospel of "No God, no flag, no country," and invariably end in a
disastrous clash with authority. Their most notable effort in this direction
was made on the Pacific coast in 1912, when they descended in force upon San
Diego and precipitated such disorder that they were rounded up by angry
citizens, as the men of Bisbee were, and driven out of town. They began this
free speech agitation simultaneously in Portland, Ore.; Fresno, Cal., and
Spokane, Wash.
Orators Mauled In Fresno.
In Fresno the conflict that speedily arose between the
police and the street speakers of the I. W. W. wound up by the citizens Jumping
on the orators and beating them up within an Inch of their lives. Scores of the
agitators were arrested, but were finally released upon their promise to leave
town. They began to gather again near Los Angeles, and then announced their
intention of marching on Ban Diego. They did so, but were met by forty-five
deputy constables and armed citizens and made to go down on their knees and
kiss the Stars and Stripes. Then they were pointed north and told to move fast.
After deciding that they could not get Into San Diego in a
body they broke up into small groups and took trains into the city, started
their speaking and wound up as usual in fights that led to jail.
Finally, after several weeks, two policemen wore shot from
ambush and the vigilantes becomes so heavy handed in their treatment of the I.
W. W. members that Gov. Johnson appointed an investigator to get at the root of
the trouble. The investigator scored the vigilantes for their extreme methods
and finally brought about a reduction of the violent hysteria which made the
city an unpleasant abiding place for months.
The free speech fight in Spokane began in 1909 and wound up
in 1916 in Everett in a fight between a posse and the I. W. W. in which six men
were, killed and forty shot another reason for the invasion was a strike of the
shingle workers, which led to the expulsion of all members of the organization.
The agitators' paper at last called for 2,000 volunteers to go to Everett and
win the tight for "free speech" and 250 of Haywood's followers
embarked on the steamboat Verona and started from Seattle for the seat of
trouble.
Beat Their Way to Butte.
They were met at the wharf by the Sheriff and a posse, and
when they were told they could not land they opened fire and the Sheriff was
the…
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Continued from First Page.
…first to fall. After a battle in which more than 1,000
shots were fired the steamboat withdrew loaded with dead and injured. That was
the end of that attempt to "establish free speech." Several of the I.
W. W. men were tried for murder, but were not convicted.
This policy of calling men to rush to the support of I. W.
W. organizations wherever they have started trouble is one of the reasons why
their strikes are always attended with so much bitterness and bloodshed. When
the I. W. W. trouble started at Butte, Mon., which has finally resulted in the
hanging of Little, between 2.000 and 3,000 I. W. W. members rushed there by the
hobo method of riding the rods or in empty freight trains. Many of them were
intercepted and turned back, but enough got through to add seriously to the
menace.
In Bisbee the same thing occurred. The town was flooded with
strangers, bearers of the red card of the I. W. W., who stirred up racial
hatred, inflamed the workers, talked anti-conscription until they were hoarse,
hurled at the Government and did not desist until the indignant citizens threw
them out of the town. That no serious fighting occurred in Bisbee was due
solely to the careful preparations of the armed vigilantes, and not to the
restraint of the armed vigilantes, and not to the restraint of the I. W. W.
members, as Big Bill Haywood proudly claimed.
Their open intention to hinder the Government in every way
possible by tying up copper mines and threatening to burn crops is quite in
keeping with the rest of their doctrines. One of Big Bill’s maxims is to strike
when the employer or the user of goods can least afford a check in the output
of his plant. The machinery of Government was never speeded up as it is now to
turn out the machinery of war and to the I.W.W. it is the ideal time to throw a
wrench into the wheels of preparation.
The strikes in the copper mines and melting centers
threatened a short time ago to handicap the government seriously and there was
every indication that they would spread. So bad did the ?????? ?? come that
Senator Thomas of Colorado openly charged in the Senate that there was
collusion between ???? agents and the Industrial Workers foment trouble in
camps where large numbers of Austrians and Germans were employed. Senator
Ashurst suggested that there might be ???? ?? connection between the work of
??? ???? of the United States and the ???? disorders.
However, if Big Bill
Haywood and his “roughneck” followers succeed in making plenty of trouble that
??? to be happy. Whenever ???? ??? squelched in one place they ??? up in
another, and although ???? ??? ??? seem to have advanced ???? ??? ??? of their
workers to any great ???? through their methods ?? ???? not as much as have the
???? ????? organizations of labor ???? ?? ?? ??? power enough to throw ?? ??
??? ???? due for an “uplift.”
“They can’t stop up,” says Big Bill. “No matter what they do
we ??? go on and on until we—the country ??? of the world—will take ???? ?? all
production and work which we ?? ??. The man who makes the wagon will ride in it.
