The third convention of the I. W. W. was in session in Chicago for eight days beginning September 16, 1907. This was a much less turbulent gathering than the one of the preceding year. DeLeon's chronicler says that: "At the third convention of the I. W. W.... almost complete harmony prevailed. The organization had so far recuperated from the blow it had received the year before that several organizers were being employed and many new locals had been formed."[305] He admits, however, that there was some friction, explaining that the anarchistic element "sounded the only note of discord." This, he says, was the "shadow cast before by the pure and simple physical force craze that came into full swing a year after."[306] This, was a congress of the "proletarian rabble"--the DeLeon-St. John-Trautmann faction. The Sherman faction was no longer in existence. The DeLeonites looked upon the Shermanites as having been from the first nothing more than "a bunch of grafting politicians and labor fakirs." Leaders of the (Chicago) I. W. W. now speak of the 1906 and the 1908 conventions as marking the sloughing-off of the Socialist party politicians at the first, and the Socialist Labor party politicians at the second, respectively. St. John says that at this 1907 convention "a slight effort was made to relegate the politician to the rear."[307] The Shermanites seem to have had no really substantial constituency at any time. However, it appears that this group did have a convention in July, 1907. No proceedings or other documentary records of this convention have been discovered by the writer. The _Miners' Magazine_ remarked editorially that "The Sherman faction that held its convention in July (1907) was but a burlesque, while the Trautmann faction that held its convention in September was but a grim joke. The treasury was empty, and both factions are confronted with debts which cannot be met."[308] The Shermanite journal, _The Industrial Worker_, which had been held by the Sherman group and circulated from Joliet, Ill., appeared in July, 1907, and there seems to be no evidence that any subsequent numbers were issued. Both Shermanites and DeLeonites claimed control of the bulk of those I. W. W. local unions which remained after the breaking away of the Western Federation.[309] Sherman continued to present a brave and optimistic front at the time of the fifteenth convention of the Western Federation. On June 3, 1907, he wrote a letter to the convention urging the miners to re-affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World (_i. e._, the Shermanite faction). If they would only agree to that, he declared, it would "require not more than two months when the so-called revolutionary movement will die of its own weight, as it is only existing at this time under false pretenses...."[310] Neither did the "proletarian rabble" have any very exalted notion of the power of the "reactionaries."