[74] "Industrialism or revolutionary unionism," _The New Review_, Jan. 11, 1913, vol. i, p. 47. [75] _Proceedings, Sixteenth W. F. M. Convention_ (Report of President Moyer), pp. 17-18. [76] _Cf._ Louis Levine, "The Development of Syndicalism in America," _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxviii, pp. 460-462 (Sept., 1913). _Cf._ also Selig Perlman, "From Socialism to Anarchism and Syndicalism" (1876-1884), pp. 269-300 (vol. ii, chap. 6), in Commons and others, _History of Labor in the United States_. [77] There is an excellent description of the older industrial unions, particularly the Western Federation of Miners and the United Brewery Workmen, in William Kirk's monograph, _National Labor Federations in the United States_, pt. iii, "Industrial Unions," pp. 117-150, _Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science_, ser. xxiv, nos. 9 and 10. CHAPTER II THE BIRTH OF THE ORGANIZATION[78] (1905) The Industrial Workers of the World, now more generally known as the I. W. W.[79] was organized at an "Industrial Union Congress" held in Chicago in June, 1905. This first or constitutional convention had its inception in an informal conference held in that city, in the fall of 1904, by six men of prominence in the socialist and labor movement. These conferees were: William E. Trautmann, editor of the _Brauer Zeitung_, official organ of the United Brewery Workmen; George Estes, President of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; W. L. Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; Isaac Cowen, American representative of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers of Great Britain; Clarence Smith, General Secretary-Treasurer of the American Labor Union; and Thomas J. Hagerty, editor of the _Voice of Labor_, official organ of the American Labor Union.[80] Several others not present at this conference were at that time actively interested in the matter and coöperated in carrying out these prenatal plans. Two of them, Eugene V. Debs and Charles O. Sherman, General Secretary of United Metal Workers International Union, were destined to play important rôles in the organization. These men were impelled by a common conviction that the labor unions of America were becoming powerless to achieve real benefits for working men and women. This feeling was confirmed and intensified by many recent events in the trade-union movement. It was not the more conservative, "aristocratic" unions alone which were found wanting. Even those labor organizations of the industrial and radical type, such as the American Labor Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, were believed to be, for one reason or another, quite unprepared to negotiate--much less to fight--with the ever more highly integrated organizations of employers. At the constitutional convention in June, 1905, Clarence Smith of the American Labor Union explained the reasons for initiating the movement.