The I. W. W.: A Study of American SyndicalismBrissenden, Paul F. (Paul Frederick)
History
The I. W. W.: A Study of American Syndicalism
Brissenden, Paul F. (Paul Frederick)
Industrial Workers of the World; Syndicalism
Goldfield, I. W. W. miners received $5.00 for eight hours;
bakers, $8.00 per eight hours and board; dishwashers, $3.00 per
eight hours and board. After three years of I. W. W. prosperity
the Nevada employers, with the aid of the A. F. of L. scabs and
organizers, conservative Irish-Catholic I. W. W. members(!),
detectives, spies, state police and Federal troops, broke up
the I. W. W.[369]
St. John also looks back to the Goldfield period as a kind of an I. W.
W. Golden Age. In his historical sketch of the I. W. W., he writes:
Under the I. W. W. sway in Goldfield the minimum wage for
all kinds of labor was $4.50 per day and the eight-hour
day was universal. The highest point of efficiency for any
labor organization was reached by the I. W. W. and W. F. M.
in Goldfield, Nevada. No committees were ever sent to any
employers. The unions adopted wage scales and regulated hours.
The secretary posted the same on a bulletin board outside of
the union hall, and it was the LAW. The employers were forced
to come and see the union committees.[370]
The I. W. W. member quoted above does not agree with St. John as to
the cause of the downfall of the I. W. W. in Goldfield. The latter
attributes it to the occurrence of a strike during the financial panic
of 1907.[371]
Oddly enough, these anti-political, direct actionist I. W. W.s figured
rather prominently in Nevada state politics at this time. Among the
candidates on the Socialist party ticket in 1906 were the following:
For Governor, Thos. B. Casey, miner, W. F. M.
For State Treasurer, J. W. Smith, waiter, I. W. W.
For Register, General Land Office. T. Chambers, laundry worker,
I. W. W.
For Regent, State University, Frank Myrtle, shoemaker,
I. W. W.[372]
Despite the success which mass organization met with in Goldfield,
the I. W. W. was not at that time at all partial to the idea of mass
organization. F. W. Heslewood declared that he was opposed to taking
into one local union every worker around a town, believing as he did
that the Goldfield practice was contrary to "the very fundamental
principles of industrial unionism...."[373] Another member said:
I claim that we have left the field of mass organization
and have got down to the field of industrial integral
organization. I claim that industrial organization as it shall
be exemplified by the Industrial Workers of the World is of
an organic nature.... We recognize that mass organization is
a thing that is to be abjured when we come into an industrial
organization.... The difference between a mass organization and
an industrial organization is that the mass organization is
destructive ... [whereas the integral] industrial organization
is constructive. It proposes to recognize the laws to the
minutest details that environ, govern and control the working
class.[374]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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