The question of "political action" and the bitter and disruptive controversy which waged on that subject at the fourth convention had now become the overshadowing issue. The "Wobblies" use the expression "political action" in referring to almost every conceivable form of political activity, voting, elections, legislation, _etc._, and also, more vaguely, in regard to the relationship which does or should obtain between labor organizations and political parties, particularly between radical labor bodies and radical political parties. For some time before this gathering it was evident that the administration was becoming fatally divided against itself. The DeLeon-St. John-Trautmann faction had survived in 1906, to be _the administration_--the I. W. W.--but in less than two years the sentiment in the organization had developed two sub-factions, so to speak. The I. W. W. appears to develop by fission. The organization originally was a compound of adherents of Sherman DeLeon { St. John or } Trautmann. { Haywood. } { Socialist } { Anarchist, or } Socialist Party. { Labor Party.} { _Industrial_ } Nihilist. { Socialist. } The Socialists were "abandoned" in 1906, leaving the field to the "proletarian rabble": DeLeon ... St. John ... Trautmann. The "Socialist Laborites" were sloughed off (or they "ditched the Anarchists," as they themselves would put it) in 1908, and we had I. II. The DeLeonites. The St. John-Trautmann (S. L. P. or Detroit I. W. W.) group. (Chicago I. W. W., "Bummery.") Later Trautmann abandoned the "Bummery" and joined the DeLeonites. We now have in 1917: I. II. The DeLeon-Trautmann The St. John-Haywood group. group. (The Workers' International (Surely _the_ I. W. W.!) Industrial Union.) which is the present setting, primed for further hyphen-smashing!