The administration saw in the P. C. D. O. a very subversive _imperium in imperio_, and when the eighth convention met, the G. E. B. issued the following statement concerning the western promoters of the P. C. D. O. idea: Decentralization is what they want. To gain this point of control in the movement, they begin with the officials by saying they have too much power, and to break up the machine we must divide up in various parts, do away with the General Executive Board and the General Office. The first move ... was ... when the scheme of a Pacific Coast District Organization was launched under the mask of perfecting more organization [_sic_] in the I. W. W. At the [P. C. D. O.] convention held in Portland, Ore., they were to establish a western headquarters, ... get control of the western organ, _The Industrial Worker_, elect their own General Executive Board, and get out their own due-books and stamps, _etc._ This idea ... is now prevailing in various sections throughout the organization. The P. C. D. O. scheme ... failed because of [lack of] support [and] died with its first convention because of the fact that it smacked of disruption and decentralization....[627] In the I. W. W., as in all voluntary organizations covering areas of continental magnitude, doctrines are allocated territorially. There are many points of contrast between the eastern and the western constituencies of the Industrial Workers of the World. At present we are only concerned with the eastern and western attitudes toward the idea of decentralization. The western environment drives the _petit bourgeoisie_ to demand _political_ home rule or local autonomy in legislative government. The result is the recent remarkable spread of the initiative, referendum and recall in the three Pacific Coast states. In these same three states we find the chief strongholds of _industrial_ autonomy. The life of the western proletarian imbues him with the more individualistic kind of rebellion which expresses itself in the more or less coherent demand for an industrial state made up of self-governing local groups of workers. The results have been the partially successful drive from the West for the referendum idea in union government, the chronic decentralist mutterings which have constantly emanated from the West, the open but unsuccessful decentralist attack at the eighth convention and--the P. C. D. O. In the long run the decentralist pressure has had its effect and the organization, as already intimated, is now less centralized than it was a decade ago. The writer realizes that the analogy between western political pioneering and labor-union or industrialist pioneering in that section must not be pushed too far. For example, the ultimate result of I. W. W. decentralization is anarchist communism, which is quite different from the kind of political society resulting from the