It was not to be expected that the field of organized labor would be left undisputed to the moderation of the trade union after its triumph over the extreme methods of the Knights of Labor.The public, however, did not anticipate the revolutionary ideal which again sought to inflame industrial unionism.After the decadence of the older type of the industrial union several conditions manifested themselves which now, in retrospect, appear to have encouraged the violent militants who call themselves the Industrial Workers of the World.
First of all, there took place in Europe the rise of syndicalism with its adoption of sympathetic strikes as one of its methods.
Syndicalism flourished especially in France, where from its inception the alert French mind had shaped for it a philosophy of violence, whose subtlest exponent was Georges Sorel."The Socialist Future of Trade Unions," which he published in 1897, was an early exposition of his views, but his "Reflections upon Violence" in 1908 is the best known of his contributions to this newer doctrine.With true Gallic fervor, the French workingman had sought to translate his philosophy into action, and in 1906undertook, with the aid of a revolutionary organization known as the "Confederation General du Travail," a series of strikes which culminated in the railroad and post office strike of 1909.All these uprisings--for they were in reality more than strikes--were characterized by extreme language, by violent action, and by impressive public demonstrations.In Italy, Spain, Norway, and Belgium, the syndicalists were also active.Their partiality to violent methods attracted general attention in Europe and appealed to that small group of American labor leaders whose experience in the Western Federation of Miners had taught them the value of dynamite as a press agent.
In the meantime material was being gathered for a new outbreak in the United States.The casual laborers had greatly increased in numbers, especially in the West.These migratory workingmen--the "hobo miners," the "hobo lumberjacks," the "blanket stiffs," of colloquial speech--wander about the country in search of work.
They rarely have ties of family and seldom ties of locality.
About one-half of these wanderers are American born.They are to be described with precision as "floaters." Their range of operations includes the wheat regions west of the Mississippi, the iron mines of Michigan and Minnesota, the mines and forests of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and the fields of California and Arizona.They prefer to winter in the cities, but, as their only refuge is the bunk lodging house, they increase the social problem in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and other centers of the unemployed.Many of these migrants never were skilled workers; but a considerable portion of them have been forced down into the ranks of the unskilled by the inevitable tragedies of prolonged unemployment.Such men lend a willing ear to the labor agitator.The exact number in this wandering class is not known.The railroad companies have estimated that at a given time there have been 500,000 hobos trying to beat their way from place to place.Unquestionably a large percentage of the 23,964 trespassers killed and of the 25,236 injured on railway rights of way from 1901 to 1904belonged to this class.
It is not alone these drifters, however, who because of their irresponsibility and their hostility toward society became easy victims to the industrial organizer.The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the propagandist.Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest and living conditions the most uninviting.Moreover, this group forms the industrial reservoir which receives the settlings of the most recent European and Asiatic immigration.These people have a standard of living and conceptions of political and individual ******* which are at variance with American traditions.Though their employment is steadier than that of the migratory laborer, and though they often have ties of family and other stabilizing responsibilities, their lives are subject to periods of unemployment, and these fluctuations serve to feed their innate restlessness.They are, in quite the literal sense of the word, American proletarians.They are more volatile than any European proletarian, for they have learned the lesson of migration, and they retain the socialistic and anarchistic philosophy of their European fellow-workers.
