It certainly is not quite true that the first convention was "captured" by the DeLeon element, as so many insinuate. DeLeon was elected to no office and neither of the General Executive Board members elected at large were members of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Debs insists that "DeLeon did not 'capture' the organization and Debs is not 'disgusted' with it."[168] The dominance of DeLeonism was, then, a supremacy of ideas. These ideas may have been "insane delusions" and finally disastrous to the harmony of the movement; but they were presumably defended by their chief sponsor and his followers, in firm conviction that they were essential to the growth of the movement. DeLeon said on the floor of the convention, "When I came to Chicago to this convention, I came absolutely without any private ax to grind or any private grudge to gratify. In fact ... I have had but one foe ... and that foe is the capitalist class."[169]
Hermann Richter, now general secretary of the Socialist Labor party wing of the I. W. W., writes in a recent number of their official organ: "During the proceedings of the [first] convention it became apparent that not all delegates understood, or were in free accord with the spirit and intent of the organization."[170] This was very natural considering the composition of the gathering. The sequel proved that this was the least of the troubles in embryo at that first convention.
All this friction and internal discord was naturally made to loom large in the editorials of the _American Federationist_; Gompers, in fact, squinted hard enough at the Chicago conference to see absolutely nothing in it. The August (1905) number contained the following, under the caption "Those 'World Redeemers' at Chicago":
After an effort of more than six months ... the distribution of tons upon tons of circulars and "literature" throughout America and every other country throughout the globe ... what was the result? The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse, and a very silly little mouse at that.... And out of this material [the S. T. and L. A. and the A. L. U.] they proclaim themselves the "Industrial Workers of the World." Their nerve is so colossal that it is positively ludicrous. Of course the two and a half million ... workmen in the trade-union movement are entirely oblivious that they are included.... The wheel of fortune, otherwise known as ex-Father Hagerty's chart, was adopted as a "plan" of organization. This plan is so unique and so fantastic that we accord it space in our columns and thus give it historic importance.... [And finally he prophesies that] as time goes on the active participants in the labor movement of the future, students, thinkers, historians, will record the Chicago meeting as the most vapid and ridiculous in the annals of those who presume to speak in the name of labor, and the participants in the gathering as the most stupendous impossibles the world has yet seen.[171]