The I. W. W. had already made some headway among the lumber workers, and it was in connection with this element that many believed it most feasible to organize the farm laborers. Secretary Trautmann devoted two solid pages of his report to the discussion of the relation of the farm and forest workers with the city proletariat. He believed that the failure of revolutionary movements was often due to the lack of coöperation between these sections of the working class. He urged the organization to follow among the farm laborers those methods which had already been applied with some success in the lumber camps.
For this work of organizing the farm laborers [he said] we must look for actual support to the thousands and hundreds of thousands of wage-earners in the lumber camps of the United States and Canada. No element is so faithful to the principle, when once understood, as the hard-working pioneer proletarians in the woods, nor a group of toilers who will fight more vigorously ... than those who ... call themselves "lumberjacks." Their relation with the farm laborers and the ... [seasonal] character of their employment should serve as the key to open the field for the organizing of the farm wage slaves. In the summer months most of the lumbermen work as farm hands or in the saw-mills, and many a blacklisted mechanic from industrial centers seeks as a last refuge from the master's persecution employment as constantly shifting farm laborer and lumberman. The Industrial Workers of the World have organized and are organizing with astonishing success the lumbermen in different parts of the country.... But ... their condition will be jeopardized if the I. W. W. fails to organize the workers in the fields in which they seek and secure employment during the remainder of the year, that is mostly in agricultural occupations, ... [and] ... to assure a successful protection of farm laborers and lumbermen, it is absolutely necessary to get the organizations so organized into direct touch through the general administration of the I. W. W. with the organizations of the Industrial Workers in the cities.[263]
An important change in the geographical distribution of propaganda and organizing activities was that suggested to the convention by President Sherman. He thought that these activities of the Industrial Workers of the World should not be immediately spread indiscriminately over all parts of the country, believing it to be most expedient to allow the eastern section of the United States to lie fallow for a time, so to speak. He recommended that