The "proletarian rabble" recognized that the power of the opposition would be fatally undermined if it lost the active support of the Western Federation of Miners. It has been seen that they did finally lose that support when the W. F. M. finally cut loose entirely from anything and everything calling itself I. W. W. This--the most staggering defection of all that the young I. W. W. had to face--had been rather plainly foreshadowed as early as the fall of 1905. Within three months of the adjournment of the first convention the report was circulated among various unions in the West that the Western Federation had refused to join the Industrial Workers of the World.[252] This rumor was without foundation. The Western Federation _did_ join the I. W. W. Immediately after the close of the first convention [according to Secretary Trautmann's report] the officers of the Western Federation of Miners reported to the members of that organization the actions of the first convention, and a referendum was issued for the purpose of having the work of the delegates ratified by the rank and file. At the end of August, notice was received that the members of the Western Federation of Miners had approved, by a big majority, the actions of the delegates in installing that organization as an integral part of the Industrial Workers of the World, and on September 1, 1905, the Western Federation of Miners became the Mining Department of the Industrial Workers of the World.[253] But this was not to be for long. Although the break did not come for some months after the second I. W. W. convention, some premonitory evidences of disaffection came to the surface at that meeting. As will be seen, there were several things which aggravated the trouble in the Mining Department. The deposition of President Sherman by the delegates to the second convention, and the consequent confusion, especially in regard to finances, resulted in the bolting of the convention by the delegates of the Mining Department (the Western Federation of Miners).[254] From the close of the second convention until the summer of 1907 the Western Federation was nominally a part of the Industrial Workers of the World, but was all this time becoming more and more alienated in spirit. For all practical purposes, January 1, 1907, may be regarded as marking the termination of the Federation's connection with the I. W. W. This whole controversy between the I. W. W. and its Mining Department, _i. e._, between the "proletarian rabble" (the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction) on the one hand, and on the other the "reactionaries" (the Sherman-Hanneman faction), supported for the most part by the Western Federation of Miners--all this frenzy of squabbling is given a great deal of space in the _Miners' Magazine_ (the official journal of the Western Federation) during the last three months of 1906.[255]