The organization held its eleventh national convention in Chicago in May, 1919. This was the first convention held since December, 1916. It was attended by fifty-four delegates and it has been reported that forty-eight of them had never before attended a general convention of the organization. The General Executive Board reported that the organization in 1919 comprised fourteen Industrial Unions, each with its locals in various parts of the country, and a General Recruiting Union, with a total membership of 35,000. Since the convention it is reported that three new Industrial Unions have been formed: an Oil Workers' Industrial Union, a Coal Miners' Union and a Fishery Workers' Union. Nearly fifty amendments to the constitution were adopted by the delegates at the May convention. Most if not all of these have been since approved in a referendum to the membership. The proceedings of the convention have not yet been published. Since the first edition of this book appeared the I. W. W. has launched a monthly magazine called _The One Big Union Monthly_ and several new weekly newspapers. The writer's attention has been called to the erroneous statement (on page 235) in regard to Daniel DeLeon's theory of industrial unionism. This has been revised to accord with the facts. There is added on page 241 some interesting comment from Lenin, the Bolshevik premier of Russia, on DeLeon and on the relation between revolutionary industrial unionism, and the soviet system in Russia. P. F. BRISSENDEN WASHINGTON, D. C., SEPTEMBER, 1919. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION This is a descriptive and historical sketch of the present drift from parliamentary to industrial socialism--as epitomized in the career of the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States. The I. W. W. is now thirteen years old. During the first half of its existence the general public hardly knew that there was such an organization. A few local communities, however, were startled into an awareness of it quite early in its history. The city of Spokane had an I. W. W. "free-speech fight" on its hands in 1909. Fresno, California, McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and Missoula, Montana, all had their little bouts with the "Wobblies" long before the Lawrence strike of 1912 made the I. W. W. nationally prominent.