home-rule and referendum statutes enacted by a middle-class electorate. The I. W. W. leaders were not unaware of the effect of the geographical environment. B. H. Williams, the editor of _Solidarity_ puts it in this way: We see in the West, individualism in practice, combined with a theory of collective action that scoffs at individual or group initiative by general officers and executive boards and conceives the possibility of "direct action" in all things through the "rank and file." Hence the proposal ... for minimizing the power of the general administration. He explains that the eastern delegates come from a different environment. Industry in the East is highly developed and centralized. They don't think of Pennsylvania in a geographical sense. Without the individualistic spirit himself, the eastern worker nevertheless recognizes the value of individual initiative in promoting mass action and in executing the mandates ... of the organization. The problem before the sixth convention was to preserve the balance between these two sets of ideas. In that the convention succeeded admirably.[628] Another industrialist thinks that "the western part of the country, being very little developed industrially, has a tendency to develop individualism in the minds of the workers.... On the other hand, the workers in the large industrial centers develop a strong collectivism which expresses itself in mass action," and which requires a "close[ly] centralized organization."[629] The western local union is usually a "mixed" union, and it is therefore not directly connected with any "shop" or industry. It is more nearly a propaganda club. It usually has a hall of some kind for meetings, and in many cases this hall is open all the time. Sometimes there is a "jungle kitchen" attached and meals can be served to itinerant Fellow Workers who are passing through. This means that there is naturally more hall-room conversation and less solid "shop talk" in the western local than there is in the strictly industrial shop organization of the East. Many members felt that too much time was wasted in talking politics and religion. At the eighth convention there was some criticism of the loquaciousness of the western "wobbly" and of his personal appearance as well. To-day you have got to have a man go up and address the public that looks like a human being [said Delegate Olson]. [See what] you have got in the western country by their ragged agitators; you have got nothing but disappointment, and then you holler at the General Secretary.... If the rank and file were educated well enough to make use of the organization instead of arousing animosity they would do away with this spittoon philosophy.[630]