I. W. W. in the Pacific N. W.:
Rebels of the Woods
ROBERT L. TYLER
FOR OVER a decade the Industrial Workers of the World
preached its gospel of the "One Big Union" and the
"General Strike" from corner soap boxes, sang its irreverent
songs, badgered police, and fought pitched battles with vigilantes. With vaunting ambition it planned to incorporate all workers, but in practice it attracted mostly the seasonal laborers of Western orchards and farms, logging camps, and mines. The story of the I.W.W. is part of the history of labor in the post frontier West, and many scenes of the drama are set in the Pacific Northwest.
Founded in 1905 by a heterogeneous group of radicals who
hoped to put the conservative American Federation of Labor
out of business, the I.W.W. soon became not the threatening
rival of the A.F.L. its founders intended, but a small fraternity
of itinerant rebels and hoboes. These workers were attracted to
the I.W.W. because it supplied a home and a meaning for their
aimless lives. Structurally, the I.W.W. appealed to them because
it made no political demands upon them, because it charged low
initial fees and dues, because it allowed seasonal workers to
transfer from one constituent union to another without red tape
or new fees. It appealed psychologically because it satisfied social
needs and because it seemed to be an organization really their
own, not something created for them by middle-class socialists, welfare workers, or the Salvation Army.
Whatever its practical accomplishments or its lasting effects
upon the American labor movement, the I.W.W. is remembered
for its "personality," something that has continued to captivate
poets, novelists and journalists. Zealous, individualistic, and free
from ordinary social constraints, Wobblies1 acted with humor or
fanaticism, from idealistic motives or from malice, but always
1. The origin of this name for I.W.W. members is variously described. The
most popular version attributes it to a Chinese restaurant owner in Alberta, Canada, who catered to an I.W.W. clientele and who responded to criticism by saying "Eye Likee Eye Wobbly Wobbly." Stewart Holbrook. "Wobbly Talk," American Mercury, VII (January, 1926), 62.
with a raggedy dash. They were activists
official program was merely an over-s
Marxism. They acted primarily out of
battle to the "master class," and made ha
out their program in subtle detail. Being
their attitudes, theories, and practices d
preached sabotage, or "direct action," i
charged with destruction of property by
they explained, with apparent sinceri
meant nothing more criminal than s
playing pranks on the boss. They pract
and made the red I.W.W. membership
to ride the freight trains. The national h
this practice, explaining that the work
organized voluntarily. They waxed ind
of their treatment in jails but at the sam
tional notions of justice to preach the
tarian" morality. The I.W.W. probably revealed its char songs, for it was famed as a singing o song book-affectionately called the "lit through numerous editions, and the cu twenty-eighth.2 Almost everyone is fam Preacher and the Slave," composed by Joe Hill, convicted and executed for m Long haired preachers come out every Try to tell you what's wrong and what But when asked how 'bout something They will answer with voices so sweet Chorus You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die. Ralph Chaplin, the I.W.W.'s most accomplished poet, wrote one song, "Solidarity," sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body," that is still sung at union meetings and on picket lines: When the Union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. 2. I.W.W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent (Chicago, I.W.W., 1945).