Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World. Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) counted its membership only in the tens of thousands even at its peak. However, from 1906 until the early 1930s, its combination of revolutionary unionism, tactical experimentation, racial inclusiveness, and cultural creativity enabled the IWW to influence organized labor out of proportion to its numbers.

Inspired by European theorists of anarcho‐syndicalism and by the growth of low‐wage, unskilled, and insecure jobs within American industry, the IWW differed from the more conservative American Federation of Labor by seeking to organize all workers into “One Big Union” across lines of skill, nationality, and gender. Disdaining gradual gains and collective bargaining, the IWW sought the “Abolition of the Wage System.”

The IWW enjoyed its greatest success in the extractive and textile industries. Affiliated briefly with the Western Federation of Miners, the Wobblies (as IWW members were called) led mass strikes among miners at Goldfield, Nevada (1906–1907), and on the Mesabi Iron Range (1916). Its activities in the forests of Louisiana and Texas resulted in fiercely contested strikes in 1912–1913. More successful organizing marked IWW campaigns among timber workers in the Pacific Northwest. Although it also recruited agricultural workers, domestic servants, longshoremen, and cigarmakers, the IWW's most stirring and publicized moments came in the Lawrence, Massachusetts (1912), and Paterson, New Jersey (1913) textile strikes. The Wobblies' ability to maintain unity among highly diverse immigrant workers, to emphasize dignity as well as wages as strike goals, and to dramatize the issues of child labor and industrial safety made these struggles significant.

The early IWW suffered severe repression. Between 1907 and 1917, the union waged many “free speech fights” to exercise First Amendment rights. During and after World War I, IWW members were prosecuted under state “criminal syndicalism” laws and federal espionage statutes. Mob attacks on union halls and on individual Wobblies such as Frank Little and Wesley Everest, later revered as martyrs, further damaged the IWW. Internal conflicts and legal repression drained the IWW during the 1920s. By the 1930s, the organization was a shadow of its former self.

The IWW's lasting contributions to the U.S. labor movement were indirect and largely cultural. The founders included such well‐known radical leaders as Mary “Mother” Jones, Eugene V. Debs, and William “Big Bill” Haywood (1869–1928), a Utah‐born miner who had joined the Western Federation of Miners in 1896. Its leading figures included the labor songwriter Joe Hill, the poet Covington Hall, and the humorist T‐Bone Slim. The anthem of organized labor, Solidarity Forever, was written by the Wobbly Ralph Chaplin. The IWW also pioneered mass civil disobedience to secure free speech, the use of sit‐down strikes, and integration with African‐American–led labor organizations.
See also Labor Movements; Mining; Progressive Era; Radicalism; Strikes and Industrial Conflict; Textile Industry.

Bibliography

Melvyn Dubofsky , We Shall Be All, 1969.
Salvatore Salerno , Red November, Black November, 1989.

David R. Roediger