[252] _Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention_, p. 107. [253] _Ibid._, pp. 50-51. [254] The bolting delegates were: Mahoney, McMullen, Hendricks and R. R. McDonald. [255] Especially important are the various reports on the Second I. W. W. Convention, appearing in the issue of October 18th. [256] In general the members of the two Socialistic parties were arrayed in opposing camps--the Socialist party men siding with the Shermanites and the Socialist Labor men with DeLeon, of course. [257] _Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention_ (1906), p. 271. [258] Vincent St. John had been a member of the Western Federation of Miners since 1894 and was in 1906 a member of the executive board of that organization, but refused to leave the convention and join the seceding Miners in 1907, choosing rather to bolt the W. F. of M. and remain with the I. W. W. [259] "St. John has given the mine owners of the [Colorado mining] district more trouble in the past year than any twenty men up there. If left undisturbed he would have the entire district organized in another year." (Statement attributed to mine-owners' detectives and printed in the _Rocky Mountain News_, Feb. 28, 1906, and quoted by Geo. Speed in a letter to the _Weekly People_, April 7, 1906, p. 5, col. 1.) [260] Report of General Secretary-Treasurer, _Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 57-8. [261] For complete itemized statement cf. the report of the auditing committee, _vide Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention_ (1906), pp. 579-94. The cash balance was for some time after the close of the convention inaccessible to the general officers. _Cf. supra_, p. 145. CHAPTER VI THE STRUCTURE OF A MILITANT UNION With its "house-cleaning" job off its hands, the convention now turned its attention to some of the specific problems of policy and constructive work. The activities of the past fourteen months had brought new and challenging questions to the fore. One of the most important was the problem of the agricultural laborer. Attention centered upon the farm laborers and the lumber workers. Most of the industrialists agreed that the coöperation of the country workers--farm laborers and lumbermen--and the city proletariat was absolutely necessary for the success of revolutionary industrialism. The agricultural elements of the working class [said one of the delegates at the second convention] are going to be the last and hardest to be organized into this economic organization, and ... while we may have the wage slaves of the industrial centers organized, when the crisis comes we will find [them] ... in an economic organization and bucking against a combination of capitalists and agriculturists, and when that time comes we will of necessity have to exercise our political rights and overthrow that opposition.[262]