Industrial Workers of the World

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD. Founded in Chicago in 1905 by two hundred socialists and trade unionists, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was and remains a revolutionary union combining the principles of Marxist class conflict, European anarchism, and a “home-grown” version of industrial unionism. IWW members, nicknamed “Wobblies,” sought to recruit “unskilled” and exploited immigrant factory workers, African Americans and other workers of color, women, and migratory workers--all of whom were excluded from craft unions of skilled workers belonging to the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The IWW rejected the narrow, craft unionism advocated by the AFL, instead embracing industry-wide unions, socialism, and internationalism.

The IWW sought to create “one big union” through which workers would build sufficient power to take control of the means of production and distribution while, in the short term, pushing for “bread and butter” issues like higher wages, shorter hours, and safer workplaces. The Wobblies did not envision socialism emerging from either elections or a Communist-style vanguard party that would seize power. Instead, once enough workers belonged to the “One Big Union,” they would call a “General Strike” resulting in working-class control over the economy and world. Before this revolutionary shift, the IWW advocated “direct action” on-the-job, i.e. “at the point of production,” to wage effective war on the great combinations of capital. The IWW contended that only unifying all workers into industrial unions could possibly match the power and size of corporations; the IWW model was in sharp contrast to the AFL that literally could operate ten unions in the same industry or even factory. The IWW also castigated the AFL craft structure as being exclusive, which the Wobblies believed undermined working-class solidarity. Plus, all workers—regardless of nationality, sex, or race—had to be organized because, divided, workers would forever be weak.

Delegates to the founding convention included Bill Haywood, then secretary of the Western Federation of Miners; Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the Socialist Party who, in 1894, led the American Railway Union in the Pullman boycott that shut down the country’s railroad network before being crushed by the federal government; Mother Jones, the legendary fighter for miners’ and children’s rights; Daniel De Leon, the leader of the Socialist Labor Party; A. M. Simons, editor of International Socialist Review; Charles O. Sherman, secretary of the United Metal Workers; William E. Trautmann, editor of the United Brewery Workers’ German-language newspaper; Father Thomas J. Hagerty, a renegade Catholic priest and editor of the American Labor Union’s Voice of Labor; and Lucy Parsons, the widow of one of the Haymarket martyrs and an influential Black anarchist. Struggles over issues of political action and administrative structure (especially how much power to vest in the Chicago-based central administration) began at the founding convention. Some conflicts were resolved in 1908, when sectarian socialist feuds and organizational tensions led to the defection of some groups and individuals. Among these were the Socialist Labor Party, which briefly set up an alternative IWW based in Detroit, and the Western Federation of Miners, which joined the AFL in 1911. Similarly, those who believed in “social democracy” stuck with the Debs’ Socialist Party because the IWW, while not anarchist per se, increasingly rejected “electoralism”; accordingly, Big Bill Haywood and most other Wobblies abandoned the Socialist Party by 1913. Those who remained in the IWW focused on “building a new society in the shell of the old” through industrial unions that they hoped would form a new “workers’ commonwealth.” The preamble to the IWW constitution, as amended in 1908, encapsulated the spirit and structure of the IWW in concise, dramatic language. The IWW perspective would not change in any significant fashion thereafter. As amended, it stated:

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

"Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

“These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease to work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

“Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’

“It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”

From its inception, the IWW became known for its militancy, direct-action tactics, dynamic leaders, passionate commitment to a radically new world, and inspiring songs and graphics. IWW membership rolls included workers of all occupations, skill levels, races, and national backgrounds. Immigrants with paid-up union cards in their native countries were eligible for immediate membership. Initiation fees and dues intentionally were extremely low so as not to be a barrier to poorly paid workers. As labor-management contracts were viewed as an interference with labor’s unconditional right to strike, the IWW never signed contracts, a controversial position it did not abandon until the 1930s. Strikes, workers most important weapon, rather than contracts were the fuel for IWW militancy, for strikes built the experience and perspective needed for the General Strike that Wobblies thought would overthrow the capitalist system. Militarism also was condemned, and membership could be denied to anyone who joined a state militia or the police. Labor Day was celebrated on 1 May rather than during the first week in September, the choice of more conservative US unions.

From 1905 to 1914, economic conditions in the United States increased labor discontent with rising prices, stationary or declining wages, a series of depressions, and widespread unemployment. The IWW became a militant expression of “class war” in the United States, directing or taking part in at least 150 strikes in the pre–World War I period. Among the most significant were the Goldfield, Nevada, Miners’ strike (1906–1907); Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers’ strike (1912) nicknamed the “bread and roses” strike; lumber workers’ strikes in Louisiana and Arkansas (1912–1913); Paterson, New Jersey, silk workers’ strike (1913), and; Mesabi Range ironworkers’ strike (1916). Important IWW unions existed in lumber, construction, agriculture, and marine transport. The organization also had some success in numerous eastern textile towns, Colorado’s coal mines, Arizona and Montana copper mines, and oil fields of Oklahoma. Although some criticized the organization for not building stable unions and, at its peak, had only 100,000 dues-paying members, the IWW shook the nation—and world—with an impact far disproportionate to its formal membership.

Among its most signal accomplishments was its fierce commitment to ethnic, racial, and sexual equality. Despite the prevailing racism, sexism, and xenophobia in mainstream US society (and other countries where the IWW operated), the IWW steadfastly preached and practiced equality. The IWW commitment to organizing all workers regardless of workers’ other identities also was referred to as working-class solidarity and captured in its motto, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” which remains popular among some unions. The IWW local that controlled the Philadelphia docks, cigar-makers’ locals in Pittsburgh, and lumber-workers’ union in Louisiana and Texas all were racially integrated. Most notably, Ben Fletcher, an African American, helped organize longshoremen in Philadelphia, then one of the country’s biggest ports, with a workforce roughly one-third Black, one-third East European, and one-third Irish and Irish American. Fletcher was deeply respected and widely in the IWW and among Black radicals from the 1910s into the 1930s. Women such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Matilda Rabinowitz led not only women workers but male workers as well. Flynn traveled widely throughout the nation and became known as “the Rebel Girl”; the Wobblies most famous songwriter, Joe Hill, even penned a song about her. Rabinowitz organized textile workers in New England, cigar makers in Pittsburgh, and auto workers in Detroit. Thousands of Spanish-speaking workers on the East Coast, denied AFL membership on the basis of their ethnic background, became the backbone of the IWW mariners’ unions. They, along with other Wobbly sailors, transmitted IWW ideology and literature across the seven seas, literally. The IWW also had numerous Spanish-speaking members throughout the Southwest’s farms and mines as well as in Mexico including Tampico, the country’s largest oil-exporting port.

The IWW carried out widespread labor education through propaganda leagues, industrial educational clubs, events at ethnic halls, hundreds of thousands of leaflets, libraries in union halls, the Work People’s College in Duluth, Minnesota, clubs and camps for “junior Wobblies,” and “entertainments” that included debates, singing, lectures, and skits. The IWW had a vast network of newspapers, which circulated nationally and internationally. Within the US, IWW newspapers were printed in fifteen languages; in fact, the majority of IWW newspapers published in the US were in languages other than English. Some of its most effective educational material occurred in the IWW’s Little Red Songbook, a major contribution to workers’ culture in America that advertised itself as “songs to fan the flames of discontent.” Sold for just 25 cents and designed to fit in a pants’ pocket, it contained dozens of songs, some of which became classics including “Preacher and the Slave,” Hallelujah, I’m A Bum,” and “There Is Power in a Union.” In addition to the prolific, legendary Joe Hill, IWW songwriters and poets included Richard Brazier, Covington Hall, Laura Payne Emerson, and T-Bone Slim. IWW songs were sung on picket lines, in hobo jungles, and at mass meetings. Ralph Chaplin’s “Solidarity Forever” eventually became American labor’s national anthem, even embraced by the AFL-CIO. IWW graphics, featured on posters and stickers, and IWW cartoons set new standards of excellence and remain admired by professional artists and art historians as well as the politically engaged.

When the IWW tried to recruit members in the “slave market” sections of cities where unemployed workers gathered between jobs, it found itself drawn into fights to protect the rights of free speech and assembly. From 1907 to 1917, Wobblies conducted some thirty such struggles to protect their right to speak on street corners to fellow workers. During these dramatic confrontations, thousands of IWW members and sympathizers filled city jails. Many were seriously injured and a few killed before the organization generally reestablished the First Amendment rights to assemble peacefully, distribute publications, and address gatherings in public. Americans not otherwise attracted to the IWW philosophy took part in these struggles and respected the IWW’s dedication to civil rights. Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, considered the IWW contribution to civil liberties of paramount value. Best-selling author and socialist Upton Sinclair also actively supported the Wobblies.

Before and during World War I, the IWW retained its antimilitary stand and, thus, opposed U.S. involvement in the war. To most Wobblies, the “true” war was the class war between workers and bosses—not wars between nations in which working-class men killed each other and only benefited the rich and powerful. In contrast to the no-strike policy adopted by the AFL after the United States formally declared war, the IWW continued to wage strikes. These wartime strikes gave employers and governments (states and federal) the opportunity to accuse the IWW of treason though the federal government already was plotting to use the war as a pretext to smash the IWW. In September 1917 U.S. Justice Department agents raided IWW offices throughout the nation with warrants branding the entire leadership—over two hundred men and women—as subversives. In what, then, was the country’s longest federal trial, in a Chicago court, nearly a hundred Wobblies, virtually the entire first and second tier of past and present leaders, were sentenced to prison terms of from ten to twenty years, with accompanying fines of $10,000–$20,000 (adjusted for inflation to 2020, that is $165,000-330,000).

Little judicial effort went into protecting IWW members from community hysteria. Employer-funded vigilante groups and “patriotic” leagues proved as likely as police units to raid IWW halls, homes, gatherings, and meetings with impunity. IWW persecution was soon intensified by “criminal syndicalism” laws passed in more than two dozen states, mostly in the West, with the specific objective of destroying the IWW. Every form of intimidation was employed. One infamous incident took place on Armistice Day, 1919, revealing the temper of the anti-IWW campaign. A group of American Legion members in Centralia, Washington, led an attack on the local IWW hall with the goal of destroying furniture and beating up members as had been done in past incidents. IWW Wesley Everest, a war veteran still wearing his uniform, was castrated and lynched for resisting this assault. Seven other Wobblies who resisted were sentenced to jail terms of from twenty-five to forty years and most remained in prison until 1933.

Legal defense and amnesty campaigns began to sap the strength of the IWW, however, and controversy over what terms the jailed members should accept for amnesty racked the membership. Further internal discord arose concerning relations with the nascent Communist movement in the US, a debate that raged among the Left in countries around the globe. At first, the IWW supported the Bolshevik Revolution, since the Soviet Union was the first socialist country in world history, while the Soviet Union actively courted the IWW to join its Communist International. Prominent Wobblies such as Bill Haywood, George Hardy, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Charles Ashleigh were among those attracted to Soviet communism. The IWW, however, became increasingly critical of the Soviet system. Soviet repression of sailors involved in the Kronstadt revolt of 1921 and Russian anarchists, along with the role of communists in the Italian factory crisis of 1920, fed an organizational alienation that became outright, mutual enmity by the early 1920s. Like the IWW, most other anarchist organizations and syndicalist unions rejected the one-party, authoritarian approached advocated by Lenin and Stalin.

The IWW remained committed to the gradual acquisition of control of industry via economic action on the job. This was in contrast to the Communist position that accepted industrial unionism but insisted a “vanguard party” was necessary to overthrow capitalism. More than ever, the IWW demanded democratic bottom-up control of organizations and it grew increasingly skeptical of political solutions and the influence of outstanding individual leaders.

In the 1920s the IWW became a victim of changing industrial technology and changes in the labor force that sapped its areas of greatest strength. Other membership losses were suffered through ruthless employer suppression during “open shop” campaigns and by the growing appeal of the Communist Party. Despite these many challenges, the IWW continued to widely propagate the philosophy of industrial unions, solidarity, and direct action tactics. It retained an organizational presence at sea and among farm workers, and in 1928 led an important strike in the Colorado minefields.

During the Great Depression, the IWW joined with others to set up “unemployed unions” to provide housing and food for the jobless. In 1932–1933 the IWW unit in Detroit was active in the growing protests staged by auto workers. IWW members contributed their militancy and experience in the sit-down strikes and other activities that eventually led to formation of the United Automobile Workers. Similarly, IWW members played important roles in other industries and cities. However, the IWW rarely ended as the union chosen by workers. One exception was in Cleveland, where the IWW gained representation of workers in a dozen or so plants, retaining them until 1950.

Perhaps the IWW’s greatest contribution was in laying the foundation for the tactics and philosophy that led to mass organization of the unskilled, foreign-born, nonwhite, and female workers in unions affiliated with the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, IWW strike techniques—sit-downs pioneered in Schenectady (1906), chain picketing in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1912), car caravans in Colorado (1928), and other innovations—once considered revolutionary, became the practice of the labor movement in general. One CIO union, the International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), which represented West Coast dockworkers, was led by Harry Bridges, a former Wobbly; he and other current and former Wobblies embedded the IWW motto and its antiracist message into the ILWU.

The IWW also left a mark in civil rights, where it inspired liberals to form legal defense organizations to protect the rights of dissenters. IWW agitation against “employment sharks” led to regulation of commercial employment agencies, and IWW agitation against notorious prison abuses helped bring about more humane prison conditions. The IWW also pioneered in the organization of migratory workers, particularly farmworkers. The style and heroism of the IWWs was such that Wobblies have been honored in American literature in a manner unique for labor. Among the many American writers who wrote positively about the IWW are Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, Eugene O’Neill, B. Traven, and James Jones. Joe Hill has become a martyr for all of labor, and a song in his honor gained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, when sung by Paul Robeson, and in the 1960s, as Joan Baez and others introduced it to the anti-war movement and counterculture.

Membership declined in the post-World War II era and remained under a thousand in the late 20th century though it has grown greatly in the 2010s. In the 1960s there was a dramatic resurgence of interest in IWW history and philosophy, resulting in a remarkable wave of books, plays, memoirs, oral histories, and films that deal in part or in whole with the IWW and its legacy. Fred Thompson (1900–1987), who joined the IWW in the early 1920s, served a sentence at San Quentin federal penitentiary, and was first elected to the general executive board in 1928, was an adviser on many of these projects. Thanks to Thompson, the organization donated its archives to Wayne State University in Detroit, where they are available to the general public and scholars. Only a few locals have on-the-job representation, but the IWW has retained a vigorous press and has grown dramatically in the internet age. A generation after the Cold War, socialism is gaining adherents. The IWW message resonates more, in 2020, than any time since the 1960s with members and branches in several dozen countries.

Bird, Stewart, Dan Georgakas, and Deborah Shaffer, comps. Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW. Chicago: Lake View Press, 1985.

Cole, Peter, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer, eds. Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW. London: Pluto Press, 2017.

Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Foner, Philip S. The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905–1917. New York: International Publishers, 1965.

Kornbluh, Joyce L., ed. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology. Rev. ed. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1988.

Rosemont, Franklin. Joe Hill: The IWW and The Making Of A Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2003.

Salerno, Salvatore. Red November, Black November: Culture and Community in the Industrial Workers of the World. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.

Thompson, Fred and Jon Bekken, The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First One Hundred Years. Cincinnati: Industrial Workers of the World, 2006.

IWW History Project: Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1935, Mapping American Social Movements, University of Washington.