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While the I.W.W. was backward in many respects,
in others it displayed great strengths. It was genuinely proletarian.
As an effective mass labor organization, it showed
a fighting spirit long since vanished from white workers.
We are referring to an open anti-Amerikanism. The
I.W.W. urged workers to reject any loyalty to the U.S.
Unlike the majority of Euro-Amerikan "Socialists," the
I.W.W. linked "American" nationalism with the
bourgeois culture of lynch mob patriotism. Just as the
I.W.W. was the last white union movement to be socialist,
it also represented the last stratum of white workers to be
in any way internationalist.
Great boldness relative to the usual settler tradeunionism
characterized the I.W.W. First, it promoted unity
on the broadest scale then attempted, in the U.S. including
not only the "Dago" and "Hunky" but also explicitly
declaring that industrial unionism meant the inclusion
of Mexicanos, Asians, Afrikans, Indians and all nationalities.
Second, it undertook the most militant campaigns
of union organization and struggle, expressing the
desperate needs of the most exploited white workers.
Third, the I.W.W. was able to advance industrial unionism
here by learning from the more advanced and experienced
immigrants from Old Europe.
Because of this, the I.W.W. was able to launch
strikes and unionization drives on a scale never seen before
in the U.S. In the years after 1905 the "Wobblies" led an
escalating explosion of union struggles: Hotel workers in
Arizona, lumberjacks in Washington, textile workers in
Massachusetts, seamen in ports from Chile to Canada,
auto workers in Detroit, and so on. And there were many
notable victories, many successful strikes. It must be emphasized
that to workers used to seeing only defeats, the
1.W.W's ability to help them win strikes was no small matter.
For example, in 1909 the I.W.W. helped the immigrant
workers at the McKees Rocks, Pa. plant of the
Pressed Steel Car Co. (a subsidiary of the U.S. Steel trust)
win their strike. This was of national importance, since it
was the first time that workers had won a strike against the
mammoth Steel Trust. That strike, which taught so much
to union militants here, was led by an underground
"Unknown Committee" representing both the I.W.W.
and the various European nationalities. The "Unknown
Committee" had the knowledge of veterans of the 1905
Russian Revolution, the Italian labor resistance, the German
Metal Workers Union, and the Swiss and Hungarian
railway strikes. It is clear that through the I.W.W. the
more experienced and politically educated European
workers taught their backward Amerikan cousins how to
look out after their class interests. (22)
In 1914 the I.W.W.'s Agricultural Workers
Organization (A.W.O.) pulled off an organizing feat unequalled
for fifty years. They established the "world's
longest picket line," running 800 miles from Kansas up to
Rapid City, South Dakota. In distant railroad yards
I.W.W. strongarm squads maintained a blockade, in
which non-union workers were kept out. Confronted with
a critical labor shortage at harvest time, the growers had to
give in. This was the biggest agricultural labor drive in the
U.S. until the 1960s. The A.W.O. itself grew to almost
70,000 members, becoming the largest single union within
the I.W.W. In fact, at the 1916 I.W.W. Convention the
A.W.O. actually had a majority of the votes (252 out of
335 votes). (23)
But by 1920 the I.W.W. had declined sharply. Not
from failure in an organizational sense, but from both it
and the strata that it represented having reached the limits
of their political consciousness. The I.W.W. was able to
build industrial unions of the most exploited white workers
and to win many strikes, but past that it was unable to advance.
Its local unions usually fell apart quickly, and many
of its victories were soon reversed. The landmark 1909
steel industry victories at McKees Rocks and Hammond,
Indiana were reversed within a year. The 1912 Lawrence,
Mass. textile strike - the single most famous strike in U.S.
trade union history - was also a great victory, and the
I.W.W. also crushed there by the next year. This was the
general pattern.
The external difficulties faced by the I.W.W. were
far greater than just the straight-forward opposition of the
factory owners. The Euro-Amerikan aristocracy of labor
and its A.F.L. unions viciously fought this upsurge from
below. During the great 1912 Lawrence, Mass. textile
strike, the A.F.L.'s United Textile Workers Union scabbed
throughout the strike. The A.F.L. officially backed the
mill owners. In McKees Rocks, Pa. the skilled workers of
the A.F.L. Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers used guns to break a second I.W.W. strike.
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And the factories and mines were not isolated, but
were part of settler Amerika, where the masses of petitbourgeois
farmers, small merchants and professionals
joined the foremen, skilled craftsmen and supervisors in
backing up the bosses. The European immigrants
represented perhaps only one-seventh of the white population,
and were greatly outnumbered.
The I.W.W.'s weaknesses, however, primarily
reflected its inner contradictions. The syndicalist outlook,
while sincerely taken by many, was also a convenient cover
to avoid dealing with the question of settlerism. Using the
ultra-revolutionary sounding syndicalist philosophy the
I.W.W. could avoid any actual revolutionary work. In
fact, despite its anti-capitalist enthusiasm the I.W.W.
never even made any plans to oppose the U.S. Government
- and never did. Similarly, its Marxist vision of all nations
and peoples being merged into "One Big Union" covering
the globe only covered up the fact that it had no intention
66 of fighting colonialism and national oppression.