The "decentralist agitation" first assumed definite form at a conference of the Pacific Coast locals of the I. W. W. held at Portland, Oregon, in February, 1911. At this conference the eight-hours movement, plans for the establishment of agitation circuits for organizers, and--this most of all--the evils of centralized authority were discussed.[624] At this conference was established the Pacific Coast District Organization, known among the I. W. W.s as the "P. C. D. O." This organization was an interesting compromise between the idea of absolutely self-governing locals on the one side and servile locals completely controlled by a bureaucratic national machine on the other. It undertook to exercise some of the sovereign functions of "Headquarters." According to a member of the General Executive Board,
this P. C. D. O. was to have its own due stamp books, headquarters, General Secretary, General Executive Board, and paper--this paper was the [_Industrial_] _Worker_. But the P. C. D. O. made no success ... because of not having a strong enough ground to build upon in order to interest the western membership.[625]
It was believed in some quarters--especially at "Headquarters"--that the real purpose of the Western Slope constituency which organized the P. C. D. O. was to disrupt the I. W. W., or to effect a secession from the national body. Some months after the Conference above referred to an editorial appeared in _Solidarity_--the administration, organ. It declared that their purpose
was to disrupt the I. W. W. and form an independent organization in the West. The Conference itself proposed that the G. E. B. reduce the _per capita_ [tax] to the P. C. D. O. to five cents and allow the locals in that district organization to buy their stamps directly from the district headquarters.... The final conclusion of the sixth convention was that such an organization as the P. C. D. O., for purposes of closer unity, localized activity and propaganda, was fully justified and should be supported, but efforts to divide or disrupt the organization as a whole would be fought to the bitter end.[626]
The administration saw in the P. C. D. O. a very subversive _imperium in imperio_, and when the eighth convention met, the G. E. B. issued the following statement concerning the western promoters of the P. C. D. O. idea: