[635] _Ibid._, p. 56, col. 2. [636] Report to the Seventh Convention, _Industrial Worker_, Oct. 24, 1912, p. 6, col. 1. [637] Onlooker, "The Question of Decentralization," _Voice of the People_, Oct. 9, 1913, p. 4, col. 2. [638] Alexander Berkman, "The I. W. W. Convention," _Mother Earth_, Oct., 1913, vol. viii, pp. 233, 234. [639] Ben Reitman, "Impressions of the Chicago Convention," _Mother Earth_, October, 1913, vol. viii, pp. 241-242. [640] Editorial, "Sensationalism _vs._ Organizing Ability," _Solidarity_, Aug. 23, 1913. CHAPTER XIV RECENT TENDENCIES The mutual hostility between the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W. has not lessened since 1907. This antagonism has been most acute in Arizona, Nevada and Montana mining camps. In the Arizona-Montana territory the feeling on the side of the Federation is indicated by the following extract from a letter written to the twenty-first convention of that organization by a member in Jerome, Ariz. We are very sorry [he writes] that we are unable to send a delegate to Denver, but we have the fight of our life here with an I. W. W. bunch. They are coming here from all over; already they have got in some dirty work by getting some of our members to quit the W. F. M., ... there seems to be a concerted movement on the part of the I. W. W. to get in where the W. F. M. are doing good work and disrupt the union.[641] It is not unnatural that there should be increasing friction between the two organizations, inasmuch as the Western Federation has become on the whole more conservative, while the I. W. W. has grown constantly more revolutionary. In June, 1910, the W. F. M. voted for affiliation with the American Federation of Labor and the alliance was finally consummated in May, 1911. "What the mine owners failed to do by force," declares the I. W. W., "they have accomplished through Civic Federation methods. The process will doubtless continue, until the W. F. of M, becomes as completely the football of metalliferous mine owners as the United Mine Workers is of the coal barons."[642] At its twentieth annual convention in 1912, the W. F. M. now not only divorced from the I. W. W., but wedded to the A. F. of L., reversed its traditional embargo on agreements and accepted the policy of entering into contracts with the operators.[643] Article V, section 4. of the Federation's _Constitution_ (1910 edition) stipulated that "no local union or unions of the W. F. M. shall enter into any signed contract or verbal agreement for any specified length of time with their employers." This clause was stricken out in 1912. The revised edition of the _Constitution_ for that year expressed the new policy of the Federation (now the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers) in these terms: "Local unions or groups of local unions may enter into wage agreements for a specified time, providing such agreements have the approval of the Executive Board...."[644]