At the seventh convention held in Chicago in September, 1912, there were present forty-five industrialists; twenty-nine of these being delegates from as many regular local unions; one delegate each represented the two National Industrial Unions which were component parts of the I. W. W., viz., the Textile Workers and the Forest and Lumber Workers; seven were General Executive Board members, and seven "fraternal delegates" from the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Locals in eight states and in British Columbia were represented.[588] During the time the convention was in session, Joseph J. Ettor, a member of the General Executive Board, was awaiting trial in the Essex County jail in Salem, Mass. He wrote to the delegates that all of the past term's progress is mainly due to the policies adopted, particularly by the sixth annual convention, and ... I feel it an urgent duty on my part to advise that as much as conditions will allow, the lines laid down by the last convention be ratified....[589] The General Executive Board specifically recommended to the convention the use of direct action as a weapon of the working class. The only effective weapon that the workers have with which to meet this condition [runs the Board's report] is to [sic] render unproductive the machinery of production with which they labor, and have access to. Militant direct action in the industries of the world is the weapon upon which they must rely and which they must learn to use.[590] With the growing interests of the I. W. W. in the workers in the agricultural and lumber industries came a realization of the need for some kind of a land policy. Delegate Covington Hall presented a petition which was adopted as a resolution by the convention: Why not ... proclaim today [the resolution asks] what we will be compelled to proclaim tomorrow--a land policy? Why not base this policy on the motto of the Russian peasant, "Whose the sweat, his the land," and couple this with a new I. W. W. motto: "Whose the sweat, theirs the machines"? In other words, proclaim that we will recognize no title to machinery except that which vests its ownership in the users.[591]