Now, why the American workingman can’t have as much sense
as the Arkansas razorback hog has,
is what puzzles me.
-Delegate Pat O'Neil of Arkansas
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Thursday July 6, 1905
Chicago, Illinois - Industrial Unionists Continue to Debate Constitution
Brand's Hall
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The debate over Section Two of Article One continued, without resolution, throughout yesterday's session of the Convention of Industrial Unionists at Brand's Hall in Chicago. With this section of the Constitution the delegates will determine the structure of their new labor organization which they have named the "Industrial Workers of the World."
Our readers can find the Hellraisers report of Day Eight below the fold, but first we offer this example of the careless reporting of the kept press. The reporter appears more interested in demonstrating his skill at mockery than in correctly reporting the facts.
From today's edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune:
RAZOR BACK HOGS HAVE UNION.
------
Delegate to Congress of Industrial Workers
to Profit by the Porcine Example.
-----
The man from Arkansas had his say in the first general congress of industrial workers yesterday, and he startled the delegates in the convention at Brand's hall by declaring that unionism should absorb the instincts of a razor back hog. The razor back hogs band together and "fight for one and all." The man from Arkansas is David Coates. He was speaking in objection to the proposed constitution of the new league.
The plan of the committee was to divide the body into thirteen different councils. One of these chapters provided for "salesman, tobacco men, bakers, and kindred trades." Another for a union of sanitary, municipal employes, and highwaymen. It appeared later that the term "highwaymen" was intended to indicate "street cleaners and such." After debating the greater part of the afternoon the convention adjourned until this morning without action on the constitution.
-----
[Paragraph break added.]
We will point out that the Arkansas razorback hog was introduced to the convention by Del. O'Neil and not by Del. Coates. Del. O'Neil was not speaking against Article I Section 2 of the proposed Constitution, but against the amendment offered by Coates to replace Section 2 of Article I.
And, further, Del. Coates, himself, was not opposed to the proposed Constitution as a whole, but merely offered an amendment to one section of one article of the Constitution.
This is part of what Del. O'Neil said as he introduce the Arkansas razorback hog to his fellow delegates:
DEL. Pat O’Neil: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Delegates, down in our country—I am led to tell a little story, but it will take up but a minute or two—down in our country we have what is called the Arkansas hog. We have got hogs that can outrun anything. They have big bristles on their backs, and if they get after you you want to climb. They will put their bristles up and give a “buh, buh, buh,” and jump right over a hickory sapling. They will jump over a fence and get into a potato patch, and if a man goes after one of them the hog will run to his fellows and they will get in a bunch and if they go for him he had better get up a tree. So I find there is here a spirit of that same kind.
...Now, why the American workingman can’t have as much sense as the Arkansas razorback hog has, is what puzzles me.
Convention of Industrial Unionists
Day Eight-July 5, 1905
MORNING SESSION
Chairman Haywood
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The Convention was called to order at 9:20 a. m. by Chairman Haywood.
Secretary Trautmann called the roll of delegates, read the minutes of the previous day's session, and read a communication of support from the Socialist Labor Party of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
RATIFICATION MEETING.
Del. Daniel McDonald reported that arrangements had been made for the use of Brand's Hall for Friday night, and that advertisement for the event was being arranged.
There was some discussion regarding which delegates would speak at the meeting and Mr. Debs, Mr Moyer, Mr. Coates and Mr. Sherman were proposed. Moyer asked that his name be removed from this list. The question of who will speak at the Ratification Meeting does not appear to be settled at this time.
DEBATE ON SECTION TWO OF ARTICLE ONE
We remind our readers that before the close of yesterday's session, Section 2 of Article I was read to the convention by Del. Hagerty, Secretary of the Committee on Constitution:
The 13 division are based loosely on
Father Hagerty's Chart of Industrial Organization.
Section 2. (a) And shall be composed of thirteen international industrial unions, designated as follows:
Division 1 shall be composed of all persons working in the following industries: Clerks, salesmen, tobacco, packing houses, flour mills, sugar refineries, dairies, bakeries and kindred industries.
Division 2. Brewery, wine and distillery workers.
Division 3. Floriculture, stock and general farming.
Division 4. Mining, milling, smelting and refining coal, ores, metals, salt and iron.
Division 5. Steam railway, electric railway, marine, shipping and teaming.
Division 6. All building employes.
Division 7. All textile industrial employes.
Division 8. All leather industrial workers.
Division 9. All wood working employes excepting those engaged in building departments.
Division 10. All metal industrial employes.
Division 11. All glass and pottery employes.
Division 12. All paper mills, chemical, rubber, broom, brush and jewelry industries.
Division 13. Parks, highways, municipal, postal service, telegraph, telephone, schools and educational institutions, amusements, sanitary, printing, hotel, restaurant and laundry employes.
Central bodies. Central bodies (first) composed of seven or more local unions in two or more industries shall be known as industrial councils; (second) Local unions, in such industries as are not organized and represented on the General Executive Board; (third) Individual members in such places where there is not a sufficient number of workers to organize a local union in any industry.
Del. Coates then offered the following amendment:
DEL. COATES: Mr. Chairman, I want to offer an amendment. The amendment is that the second paragraph of Article 1 shall read “This organization shall be composed of national and international unions embracing all workers of an industry,” instead of thirteen division as made up.
Chairman Haywood repeated the Coates Amendment and called the question:
THE CHAIRMAN: An amendment has been offered to Section 2 of Article 1. There are lots of seconds. The amendment is that Section 2, Article 1 be amended to read “Shall be composed of national and international unions embracing all workers of an industry.” You have heard the amendment. Are you ready for the question?
The delegates were not ready for the question and, in fact, the Coates Amendment was debated for the remainder of the morning session and for the entire afternoon session without resolution.
Several long speeches were made, regarding the Coates Amendment, and we will present excerpts from the speeches of Del. De Leon and Del. Sherman.
Del. De Leon, a member of the Constitution Committee, spoke against the Coates Amendment:
Daniel De Leon
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There is not one single capitalist organization, capitalist concern, capitalist board of directors, but embraces a dozen or more different industries. (Applause). When capitalists come together to organize a newspaper, perforce it is a newspaper that they are going to set up, but to say that they have absolutely nothing to do with the railroad business is to ignore a glaring fact,—by this time, you see, the gentleman has gone beyond the domain of “theory” and has run foul of the field of facts.
If capitalists want to organize a newspaper business, a newspaper company, they look for railroad magnates, for mining magnates, for factory magnates, for financial magnates, and they come together; ostensibly for a newspaper, but de facto to promote the interests of these industries that are amalgamated within or behind that mask of a newspaper. (Applause).
Time was that when we Socialists said these things we were said to he “wild-eyed men.” I think the time has come when Delegate Coates should know from experience and from facts that he can gather from the capitalist press, that we are not “wild-eyed men.” Look at what is going on in New York, now. Capitalists had met to organize an insurance company—an INSURANCE company, mind you. And what are the facts that are now being unearthed?
There is not a banking trust, there is not a railroad trust, there is not a Standard Oil interest, there is hardly a factory industry, but is represented on that board of directors; an examination of the Equitable Life Assurance Society proves that what they have there is ostensibly a “life insurance association,” but de facto a means by which to gather money for the industries that each of these various directors represents. (Applause).
Is it “insurance” that takes Depew there? Is it “insurance” that takes there the man who owns the stocks of the Fall River weaving mills? Oh, no! It is something entirely different. There is a book that I recommend to all of you. It is not a book with a yellow cover; yet it is thrilling enough for yellow covers, although its cover is red.
It is called the “Directory of Directors.” It is a publication from the capitalist camp. It gives a list of the directors in the leading industries of the United States, and the leading corporations of the country. In it you will find innumerable instances of men who pose as directors in one concern and are directors in half a dozen others.
Few comparatively are the instances of importance in which a man is a director in one concern alone. Those men pick themselves out and elect themselves and each other, here out of the railroad business, there out of some other business, but all with an eye to the interests of the various industries that they represent. The capitalist system has reached a point where it is no longer a lot of little individual blisters; it is one general blister. (Applause).
Del. Sherman, also a member of the Constitution Committee, spoke against the Coates Amendment:
Brother Coates is a printer. First of all I will say that I am confident that he has traveled several thousand miles to reach this convention with the right heart. He is here with the spirit of brotherhood, to do something to emancipate the producing class. I know that he is here honest and earnest, and in the argument that he makes against this proposition he personally believes that he is right. I concede that he has got a right to his opinion. He represents the printers, and his contention is that the printers should have an organization of their own. There is an organization of that class existing at the present time.
Does Brother Coates know that the printers don’t work in a way that they can be identified as an industrial organization? Does Brother Coates realize that the printing of this country is done by a printing establishment? Does Brother Coates realize that at the great meat strike in Chicago not many months ago there were over a hundred printers in the printing department of the packing industries that were not included in the packers strike?
Does Brother Coates realize that in the meat industries, the packing industries, they are also running laundries? They are in the laundry business, yet they are in the industrial packers’ business because they do work for the packing industry. They have restaurants too, if you please, in the same industry. Does Brother Coates not realize that under the proposition that he offers here it is nothing more than purely and simply what we have got at the present time—what we are assembled here to tear down?(Great applause).
Last November at Montgomery Ward’s plant all the garment workers walked out into the streets of Chicago and declared a strike. It took some four months to defeat that strike. After the garment workers had been annihilated and defeated the teamsters that were working in the same industry came to the conclusion that they should have assisted the garment workers.
Those are the kind of decisions that the employers like. “Just let us get at you one at a time and we will skin you to a finish.” That is their proposition. (Applause). If the garment working industry were organized on the industrial system there could not have been one man or woman, whether he or she be driving a team, running a sewing machine or working a hand needle, but what would have stopped work and at once have paralyzed that industry. But under Brother Coates’s proposition, before anything of that kind could be done, conciliation must be brought about between five or six executive heads, just as we have got them at the present time.
I would not object if somebody would make a motion to strike out the thirteen lines and make it three. (Applause). What is a mechanic? He is a slave; he is nothing; he is a workingman. I do not recognize one man to be any different than another. He is only one cog in the wheel that goes to make up the general machinery that grinds out the product. (Applause). And I care not whether it requires two or three years to become an efficient mechanic, or whether he is only the common laborer that comes across the water and all he can do is to pick up the shovel and dig and excavate for the factory that is going to accommodate the employes; it is just the same to me. (Applause).
There is no particular business at the present time. Take the transportation department, as the Pennsylvania Company, go up to Monroe street, and on the sidewalk there you find a line of cabs that it has been decided by the City Council belongs to the Pennsylvania Company, that has a full right to the streets of Chicago to stand there to accommodate the people that the Pennsylvania Company, that furnishes transfers, that they may go to other points or to go to other depots.
Go right into the depot; there we find the terminus of the Pennsylvania Railroad; follow it all the way down, with every slave and every one that works for that company as a part of that corporation, away on to Jersey City, and there we find the Pennsylvania with a great monster vessel backed in there, and there the passengers of the Pennsylvania are put onto that boat and transported across. Many of them are going to foreign countries, and they go on a Pennsylvania line because the Pennsylvania people have got lines that run to various ports in Europe.
Away the Pennsylvania Company goes to the foreign ports, and you don’t stop there, but they have their agents that go out representing them and misrepresenting the conditions in this country, and they go into Ireland, they go into Wales, they go into Sweden and in all of the congested ports, and there they misrepresent to them the golden harvests they have in America, and if they come over here they travel by the Pennsylvania lines. It is one straight system all the way through, representing nearly every industry.
And
Del. Sherman further stated:
The powers against labor are nothing. The index finger of the producing class would push every enemy into the sea. All you have got to do is to get them all to push at once. The only enemy that labor has got is labor. Capital never won a strike nor never won a battle. It was labor, and we must educate labor that they must turn around and face one way. There never was but one railroad strike ever won, and that was with an industrial organization, the A. R. U. (Applause).
And it was won against the opposition of the old brotherhoods and all of the political trickery that they could bring into line. It was demonstrated at once when they telegraphed to the seat of the United States government that “transportation was paralyzed, and we want to place this proposition in your hands, and that you run these trains with bayonets.” When labor is organized right and educated, they will own the bayonet. (Applause).
They make them, and after they are made and polished and fitted to the weapon that will do the most destruction you hand them over to the enemy, and you say, “Now I am going back here a few hundred yards to see if it spits you.” Thus far it has given entire satisfaction. It is a well-known fact that there is a prize offered to-day to the man who will create or invent a machine that will destroy the most human lives with a single shot. You have got all these things to contend with, and I beg of you, Brother Coates and your friends, for God’s sake don’t cut off that arm, but put your arm out and come together and work together.
Division does not mean strength. I don’t care how you divide it, it does not mean strength. You have got to unite them. And I believe that the committee has done as well as any committee could do under the circumstances. I took into consideration the Manifesto as we understood that we should work from it. When I say “Manifesto,” I want you to understand that that chart on the back of the Manifesto is not considered the Manifesto. That chart was not in the conference when that Manifesto was adopted. That Manifesto was simply given to a brother who drew it up, and we have given this just as a little outline or diagram showing the centralization of our power.
Not long before the end of the morning session,
Del. Pat O'Neil introduced the Arkansas razorback hog:
DEL. Pat O’Neil: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Delegates, down in our country—I am led to tell a little story, but it will take up but a minute or two—down in our country we have what is called the Arkansas hog. We have got hogs that can outrun anything. They have big bristles on their backs, and if they get after you you want to climb. They will put their bristles up and give a “buh, buh, buh,” and jump right over a hickory sapling. They will jump over a fence and get into a potato patch, and if a man goes after one of them the hog will run to his fellows and they will get in a bunch and if they go for him he had better get up a tree. So I find there is here a spirit of that same kind.
I don’t care whether it is the Typographical Union hog that has jumped into my potato patch or not. Now, why the American workingman can’t have as much sense as the Arkansas razorback hog has, is what puzzles me. Now, I want to ask you just a plain, practical question.
You have got a big strike on right here in this city. The teamsters’ portion of your transportation department are out on strike. About two months ago a large shipment of machinery was made from this city down to Spadra, about thirty-five miles from where I live. Now, mark you, I want to show you that these fellows recognize that an injury to one is an injury to all, in spite of the evidence of John Mitchell to the contrary. When that machinery got there at Spadra our men refused to unload it. Then they went over to Russellville and got a few men, mostly negroes and a few white men, and when they came over there the men had a talk to them, and they too refused to unload it.
Now, mark you, the proposition. The president of our district went down there; Peter Handy, the president of the U. M. M. A., District No. 21, went down to Spadra and ordered the union men of Spadra to unload that machinery under threat of losing their charter. They still refused to do it, and on the day when I left for Chicago twenty-five of them were in the United States jail.
Now, I want to ask you a question, every one of you men who can’t get into your head what industrial unionism means, I want to ask you this question: Suppose when your teamsters refused to handle stuff here, and those non-union teamsters had put that stuff on the train, if we had industrial unionism the railroad could not move the stuff. That is what industrial unionism means, and I am sorry to see any one come here and try to talk along the old, craft union lines.
RATIFICATION MEETING
Del. Daniel McDonald announced that four of the five-member committee desired to withdraw from the committee: Delegates Bradley, Guy Miller, Cranston and McDonald. The Convention granted this request.
The convention adjourned at twelve o'clock until one in the afternoon.
AFTERNOON SESSION
DEBATE ON SECTION TWO OF ARTICLE ONE
The debate on the Coates Amendment to section two of article one continued for the entire afternoon session without resolution. We offer excerpts from the speeches of Del Simons and Del. Coates.
Del. Simons spoke in favor of the Coates Amendment:
![A. M. Simons, International Socialist Review](http://images.dailykos.com/images/124833/small/A_M_Simons__International_Socialist_Review_.png?1421517026)
We are all agreed absolutely on the fact that we want to secure a greater solidarity in working class organization; that we want to reflect in the organization that may come from here the solidarity that is taking place on the industrial field. We are all agreed that trade lines have been all but entirely wiped out. We are all agreed that the lowest man needs the fight the worst; not simply equal to, but needs the fight more than the man who is in the highly skilled trade. We are all agreed upon these things. But now the question comes up as to how to get the application of the views of the committee and of a majority affecting these questions.
Now, when I first saw that chart, I was impressed, as I think every one was who has noticed, with its value for propaganda, with the skillful way in which it was presented and the large number of facts it contained. But I never dreamed that we were going to come to a time when that chart was to become a fetich and that we should accept it instead of the facts. I had no idea that the complex society of to-day could be drawn and illustrated upon this chart so as to express all the facts that we want to express in our organization here.
Then this amendment came up, and it has been stated upon the floor of this convention that to-day the American working class was divided among 127 different divisions. Those divisions of to-day they propose to recombine by another method. They propose to add thirteen more. No, they do not simply propose to add those thirteen, but it is proposed to split the 127 rather up and down this way, and then we propose to crosshatch then with thirteen more, making 13 times 127 sections in which we propose to split the working class of America to-day. I supposed we were going to come here to form an industrial union.
There is not a line upon that chart, as we can see, that provides for organization by industries. That is an organization by departments, if it is anything. Moreover, those departments, I believe—and I believe it has been pointed out here over and over again—instead of being found in the industrial field and transferred to the chart, they were created in the brains of the committee, and then they seek to impose that upon us as a picture of the industrial field. One comrade told us here that if we overturned this position it would destroy the entire work of the committee.
Let me tell you that when your committee attempts to go contrary to the industrial facts, those industrial facts will tear that committee and this organization all to pieces. The thing for us to do here is to look into the industrial relations as they are, and reflect them in our organization. Now, then, what are the conditions? Those industrial relations to-day, as we are to set them forth in our organization, as they have been set forth by every speaker upon this floor, are to the effect that the men that are working in one line of industry have common interests.
There is nothing whatever in the plan that at all applies to the position that Comrade Sherman took and numerous other delegates here, that the men that work for the Pennsylvania Railroad were going to be split into 50 or 500 different divisions. On the contrary, those men are in one industry, and the amendment specifically says “industries.” It proposes that they should be so organized. The thing that we have got to do here is to make our organization fit the industrial situation as it is to-day, not as we happen to consider it in some beautiful picture of things that we would like to see some time in the future.
When we go out from here we are not going to be bothered about 127 organizations, standing ready to jump into this and divide us all up. We are not going to have at the utmost more than ten or eleven industries that would be in a position to organize. Now, I want to call your attention to something that this means.
This means that with the organizations as they are to-day, that the men in any one of those departments where we have a union to-day it may go in there and adopt the name of that department and seize the machinery of that department. It means that a little handful of men can control the machinery of that department and keep up such a hubbub within it as to keep all opposition out and those half dozen men can wield exactly the same power within the central council as the same number of men that might represent fifty or a hundred thousand men in some industry that was fully organized. It simply gives an opportunity for the capture of the machinery by a handful of men in those different departments.
There is another side to it. It is said that this amendment opened up the road to the adoption of the A. F. of L. form of organisation. Don’t you believe it. This method is an absolutely superior method, and I will tell you why; because the object of this is to represent industries, not trades. The chart represents arbitrary divisions, just exactly the same as we say of the men who are the vice-presidents of the American Federation of Labor at the present time. And you are proposing to duplicate the American Federation of Labor Council when you adopt that chart as it stands there to-day.
THE CLOSING ARGUMENT OF DELEGATE COATES.
The Convention having agreed that Del. Coates should be allowed the last word on the Coates Amendment, Brother Coates was granted the floor and stated in part:
My proposition simply means this, that every printer shall belong to the printing industry, whether he works in the packing industry or the oil industry. But just as soon—now, do not misunderstand me—but just as soon as a department of that industry, for instance the packing industry, has a serious grievance they send it on to this General Executive Board for endorsement. They can not strike; they must present their grievance, to this General Executive Board. Now, the packing industry, under my proposition, and the printing industry are separate, industries, and they are in two separate organizations. Under the present scheme of organization in the A. F. of L. the Executive Board could endorse the packers’ strike and the printers would not have to come out.
But under my plan, just as soon as the General Executive Board was notified that the packers had a serious grievance and they endorsed that grievance to the extent of authorizing a strike, before they could send out their order they would immediately notify the industrial organization of printers that had its members there, that when the packers struck every other member of this great organization should strike in that one industry. (Applause) They would not order out the entire printing industry, but this Executive Board would say to us, “Mr. Printer in the packing house, come out just as soon as the packers come out in that house.” There you have an absolutely perfect working organization, and at the same time keep these separate industries separate and distinct.
It has been stated time and time again, and I think Delegate De Leon led off in the statement—at least I have him so reported here—that this grouping is practically laid down in the Manifesto. I do not mean by that that he said that the grouping on the wheel in the Manifesto was a part of the Manifesto; no. But he claimed that this system of organization was practically outlined in the Manifesto. I want to take issue with him on that proposition. The Manifesto, I believe, was adopted solely and wholly without a solitary dissenting voice in that convention called for the purpose of organizing industrially, as industrial organizations.
Delegate Smith told you yesterday that it was. And if you will read the section in the Manifesto applying to this you will find that the Manifesto is absolutely and unequivocally unmistakable upon that proposition. The Manifesto provides for industrial organization internationally and craft autonomy locally. That is, it means that the printing industry shall be in one national organization with power over every one of its various divisions of that industry. That is all my amendment means.
And that is where I come to the proposition that this is a departmental organization. I wish to say to you that if we are to have a president of this department to be a member of this General Executive Board, that there must be only one organization of that department. That is where my amendment differs. My amendment simply says that it must be made up of international and national industrial organizations made up of wage workers in any industry. Some one said, I believe, in the argument, that that was indefinite, that “I don’t understand any such thing as that.”
Some one cried out that this system and the amendment are absolutely indefinite. Can there be anything indefinite in saying that every man and woman in the printing industry shall belong to the printers’ industrial union, and every man in the packers’ industry shall belong to their industrial union, and every toiler in the mining industry shall belong to the mining industrial union? Not at all. It seems to me the clearest and the best proposition or provision that you can put into this constitution.
The reason I did not name specifically every man or every wage worker that should go into that industrial union was that I might overlook some, or I might put some temporarily over in another industry, and when this industrial organization is made up and comes in to this organization for a Charter the Executive Board can very properly look it over and grant it and transact all these things according to circumstances.
If there is any organization that gets into an into an industry where it does not belong, it is only a question of time when experience will teach them and teach this general organization the right place in another industrial group, and it will go there entirely without any contention, because they will go where they can get the best protection.
Chairman Haywood asked Del. Coates a question concerning the organization of the Western Federation of Miners under the Coates plan:
THE CHAIRMAN: Now, I am going to ask this question: If, in your opinion, the skilled blacksmith, the skilled engineer, the skilled smelter, the skilled mill man, the assayer and the other skilled mechanics, or the timberer around the mine, along your line of reasoning, belong to their separate craft organizations, and if they do, would it not destroy what we now are as an industrial organization? (Applause.)
Del Coates responded:
DEL. COATES: I want to say again, no. While I am on trial, that must be my position. I am not afraid to do that. I want to say no; for the reasons that I have said, that under this general organization we are going to have a central power that will compel these people to work together. It makes very little difference to me, if you please, how many divisions we make in this as long as we have that power; only I want the great mass of people whose work is similar in any industry to belong to the one general organization.
Now, I want to say a word about this Western Federation of Miners. It is not under discussion here, and I don’t want to discuss it fully; but the Western Federation of Miners recognize that very principle right now indirectly. Take, for instance, the city of Butte, Montana, and you will find industrial organization. They have a number of organizations, as somebody has pointed out, I believe Delegate McDonald; they have the miners together; they have the pumpmen together; they have the engineers together; they have the ropemen together. But they have one central power that can force them all together.
The convention adjourned until 9 o'clock the next morning with the debate on the Coates Amendment unresolved.
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Proceedings of the First Convention
of the Industrial Workers of the World
-Industrial Workers of the World, Big Bill Haywood
Merit Publishers, 1905
https://books.google.com/...
Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Jul 6, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Brands Hall, Chicago, 1883
http://nucius.org/...
William Haywood, Secretary-Treasurer WFM
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
Father Hagertys Wheel,
from Miners Magazine of April 20, 1905
http://www.gutenberg.org/...
Daniel De Leon
http://spartacus-educational.com/...
A. M. Simons
of the International Socialist Review
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
David C Coates
https://books.google.com/...
WFM Seal
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
CONVENTION-Industrial Workers of the World
EIGHTH DAY-Wednesday, July 5
MORNING SESSION
https://www.marxists.org/...
CONVENTION-Industrial Workers of the World
EIGHTH DAY-Wednesday, July 5
AFTERNOON SESSION
https://www.marxists.org/...
Luke Grant reports to Samuel Gompers
http://www.gompers.umd.edu/...
Grant's Report on 4th-7th Day
http://www.gompers.umd.edu/...
Grant's Report on 8th Day
http://www.gompers.umd.edu/...
In 1905 Luke Grant, the labor editor of the Chicago Inter Ocean, attended the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World. A member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, which was an AFL affiliate at the time, Grant kept Gompers informed of the convention's progress.
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Workers of the World Awaken
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.
-Joe Hill (words and music)
https://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.folkarchive.de/...
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