In discussing the proposed abolition of the convention, Delegate B. E. Nilsson asserted that only at the second and fourth conventions had anything worth while been done, and that in both these cases all that had been accomplished had been done against the constitution, and concluded with the statement that "this [eighth convention] has cost us over $3,000 and it isn't worth three cents."[619] Delegate Elizabeth Gurley Flynn advocated the abolition of the convention. She said that it was not genuinely representative, inasmuch as all the locals could not afford to send delegates.[620] The proposal was finally defeated. In general, the decentralizers--anarchistic advocates of the doctrine of the militant minority--found themselves decidedly in the minority, and so far unsuccessful. "Fully a hundred of the resolutions," says one prominent anarchist who attended the convention, "were progressive, favored decentralization, and were fathered, mothered, and nursed by half a dozen militants. But every radical resolution," he thought, "was either lost, laid on the table, or amended so that it was useless. The motion for decentralization was lost by three to one, as was the motion to do away with the G. E. B."[621] Another opponent of centralized authority explained how "for two long and tedious weeks they [the decentralizers] presented their ideas ... and the centralists slaughtered them by the _brute force of voting power_...." "The decentralizers held," lie said, "that a revolutionary movement does not depend [so much] upon votes as it does upon the recognition ... of the fact that all minorities are to have an equal voice ... with the majorities ... [because] the minority is always more militant than the majority."[622] In the same issue which carried this statement, the _Voice of the People_ said editorially:
[The decentralization struggle in the I. W. W. is] a war between the advocates of "I am going to save myself" and those of "let me save you."... Centralization in labor unions is nothing less than government by representation, or political action. The advocates of centralization in the I. W. W. are socialists, in fact, if not in profession.... Only when they repudiate labor-union governmentalism will they become real direct-actionists.[623]