free from the sentimentalism and bourgeois reaction which characterized the gathering of 1905, and the pure-and-simple, destructive tactics of the [1906] assembly; ... [that] it marked a distinct advance in an understanding of the philosophy and structure of the movement and was a gathering typically working-class and loyal ... to the workers....
and that for these reasons there could be no possible doubt of the stability of the organization.[400]
A few weeks after the third convention had adjourned the panic of 1907 struck the country. The I. W. W. was nearly wiped out of existence. Its only organ, _The Industrial Union Bulletin_, was obliged first to appear fortnightly instead of weekly and finally to suspend publication. "Its locals dissolved by the dozens and the general headquarters at Chicago was only maintained by terrific sacrifice and determination...."[401] The report of the General Secretary to the fourth convention explained that when the third convention closed, General Headquarters expected to collect the moneys due from the local unions, but before collections could be arranged "the industrial panic struck the country with all its force, and the misery following in the wake of that collapse was mostly felt in places where the Industrial Workers of the World had established a stronghold." The Secretary went on to say that the revenue for December, 1907, was not more than half what it had been the year before.[402] To aggravate the situation still more were rumors of internal friction between a group of Socialist Labor party followers of Daniel DeLeon and the rest of the organization. Indeed, very soon after the convention, charges were made that the _Weekly People_, the official organ of the Socialist Labor party, was being used against the I. W. W.[403]
This was the beginning of the most serious internal fight in the career of the I. W. W. It was to turn on that same vexed question that seems eternally to plague those who want to construct labor organizations along radical lines--namely, the relationship that should exist between the union and the political parties, especially the Progressive, Labor and Socialist parties. The second clause of the Preamble (spoken of among the "Wobblies" as "the political clause") held the seeds of discord in its apparently harmless assertion that the class struggle "must go an until all the toilers come together _on the political_ as well as on the industrial field." Here we have the phrase which, at the 1908 convention, was to make the revolutionary syndicalists see red and which was finally to result in a bifurcated I. W. W.