The most recent conflict between the I. W. W. and the Mine Workers was in the anthracite region around Scranton, Pennsylvania. In April, 1916, entirely against the will of the United Mine Workers, according to a conservative writer, the I. W. W. leaders decided to close down certain of the collieries about Scranton. The method ... was to picket the collieries in the early morning hours, from four o'clock until seven, to urge the men not to go to work, and then, if unsuccessful by that means, to drive them off by force.[659] At about this time (1914) Eugene Debs, one of the founders of the I. W. W., was again urging the formation of a great revolutionary industrial union. He proposed to begin with the two big miners' unions--the Western Federation and the United Mine Workers--which organizations were to form the head and center of the new union. It is vain to talk about the I. W. W. [he said]; the Chicago faction, it now seems plain, stands for anarchy. So be it. Let all who oppose political action and favor sabotage and the program of anarchism join that faction. The Detroit faction, for reasons not necessary to discuss here, will never amount to more than it does today. A new organization must be built with the miners, the leading industrial body, at the head of the movement.[660] "The consolidated miners and the reunited I. W. W.," he said, "would draw to themselves all the trade unions with industrial tendencies, and thus would the reactionary federation of craft unions [A. F. of L.] be transformed from both within and without, into a revolutionary industrial organization."[661] In the same article Debs advocated a reunion of the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties, and William English Walling in commenting on Debs' proposal for uniting the W. F. M. and the U. M. W. says that such an outcome "if not immediately probable, is decidedly possible."[662]