Led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

Name______

Date_____

A.P.U.S. History

Mrs. Civitella

The Wobblies

During the years of Socialist party growth, a parallel effort to revive industrial unionism emerged

Led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

The beginnings of this groups was the Western Federation of Miners which had been organized in Butte, Montana in 1893

As prices of gold and especially silver declined wages were cut resulting in many strikes

Throughout the 1890s the Western Federation had many violent confrontations with mine owners who frequently raised private armies against the miners

1905 was the founding convention of the IWW

The IWW was against the AFof L’s philosophy of organizing only skilled workers

Leader Daniel De Leon argued that the IWW “must be founded on the class struggle” and “the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class.”

Like the Knights of Labor, the IWW was to be one union including both skilled and unskilled workers

The IWW came to be called the Wobblies based their organization that the government needed to be destroyed and replaced by one big union

the Wobblies supported the Marxist class struggle but at the workplace rather than in politics

resistance at the point of production and ultimately by means of a general strike, they believed that the workers would bring about a revolution

The term syndicalism describes this kind of workers’ radicalism

How the union would govern was never clearly defined

The Wobblies included some socialists, the Western Federation of Miners, and lumbermen from the west

William D. “Big Bill” Haywood of the Western Federation was the ultimate leader that held these groups together

The Wobblies went on to try to recruit migratory workers in the West and ethnic groups of the East

The largest Wobblies victory was the Textile strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts

The demise of the Wobblies was brought about by the fact that their members were branded as anarchists, lazy, and criminals

The IWW was crippled by WWI when most of its leaders were jailed for conspiracy because of their militant opposition to the war

Remaining Wobblies were arrested during the Palmer Raids of 1919-1921

Big Bill Haywood fled to the Soviet Union, married a Russian women, and was honored in 1928 when he died and was buried behind the Kremlin wall