1917.08.12: RIOTING MARKS THE TRAIL OF THE I.W.W.







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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…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.