the greater part of the money expended for paid organizers be devoted to the western States for the next six months, for the following reasons: West of the Missouri River the industrial conditions are in a far better state ... than they are in the eastern States and organizing can be done there without endangering turmoil in the way of lockouts and strikes.... We must get a substantial organization in the West ... before we will be prepared to make a general campaign in the East, as in the eastern States the workers in many of the industries are so poorly paid that a strike or lockout means starvation if finance is not forthcoming.... Hence I feel the necessity of first fortifying ourselves with a good Western membership before exposing the organization to a general assault by the employers of the East.[264] This proposal was, however, not very favorably received by the convention. The committee on reports of officers made, among others, this recommendation, which received the endorsement of the convention: We disagree with our President regarding organizing in the West in preference to the East.... The committee believes that [the fact] that conditions in the East are deplorable is the very reason why organizing work is necessary in the East, that the standard of living may be improved, thus accomplishing a more uniform standard of working-class solidarity.[265] The average member of the Industrial Workers of the World was exceedingly sceptical of the value of undiluted representative democracy for either a labor union or a political state. He suspected that any official might, and probably would, be disloyal. He realized how difficult it is for any organization which depends on representatives to maintain a body of such representatives who really represent. He knew how easy it is for a delegate to be "reached"--to be influenced by one of a score of insidious forms of corruption. This accounts for the stress laid by the Industrial Workers of the World upon the referendum idea, from the very beginning of its existence. Let the acts of delegates in convention be ratified by referendum vote. The convention is the law-making body, but it is always subject to the will of rank and file. All factions, even that one which plotted disruption, united in lip service, at least, to the idea of the referendum. Labor-union democracy must be made democratic by referendum control. How much of all this referendum clamor was "sounding brass" is indicated by some remarks made by Mr. DeLeon (who, of course, believed in the referendum) at the second convention: