Violence and the Labor Movement

This volume is the result of some studies that I felt impelled to make when, about three years ago, certain 7 sections of the labor movement in the United States were discussing vehemently political action versus direct action. A number of causes combined to produce a serivons and critical controversy. The Industrial Workers of the World were carrying on a lively agitation that later culminated in a series of spectacular strikes. With ideas. and methods that were not only in opposition to those of sthe trade unions, but also to those of the socialist party, the new organization sought to displace the older organi-. nations by what it called the one Big Union. There 3 were many in the older organizations who firmly believed in industrial unionism, and the dissensions which arose were not so much over that question as over the antagonistic character of the new movement and its advocacy here of the violent methods employed by the revolutionary section of the French unions. The most forceful and active spokesman of these methods was Mr. William D. Haywood, and, largely as a result of his agitation, la grave generate and le sabotage became the subjects of the hour in labor and socialist circles. In 191 Mr. Haywood and Mr. Frank Bohn published a booklet, entitled Industrial Socialism, in which they urged that the worker should use any weapon which will win his fight. They declared that, as the present laws of P.