day in the smelters was the chief issue. In
1899 the Colorado legislature had passed an eight-hour law which was
declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the State. To overcome
this difficulty, an amendment to the State constitution was passed in
1902 by a large majority, but the legislature, after having thus
received a direct command to establish the eight-hour law, adjourned
without taking action. Much of the subsequent disorder and bloodshed in
the Cripple Creek region during 1903-1904 is traceable to this failure
on the part of the legislature to enact the eight-hour law. The struggle
in Colorado helped to convince the Western miners that agreements with
their employers were futile, that constitutional amendments and politics
were futile, and from this they drew the conclusion that the
revolutionary way was the only way. William D. Haywood, who became the
central figure in the revolutionary movement of the Industrial Workers
of the World since its launching in 1905, was a former national officer
of the Western Federation of Miners and a graduate of the Colorado
school of industrial experience.[79]

Even before 1905 the Western Federation of Miners, which was out of
touch with the American Federation of Labor for reasons of geography and
of difference in policy and program, attempted to set up a national
labor federation which would reflect its spirit. An American Labor Union
was created in 1902, which by 1905 had a membership of about 16,000
besides the 27,000 of the miners' federation. It was thus the precursor
of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. In the latter the
revolutionary miners from the West joined hands with radical socialists
from the East and Middle West of both socialist parties, the Socialist
party of America and DeLeon's Socialist Labor party.

We shall forbear tracing here the complicated internal history of the
I.W.W., that is the friction which immediately arose between the
DeLeonites and the other socialists and later on the struggle between
the socialists and the syndicalist-minded labor rebels from the West.
Suffice it to say that the Western Federation of Miners, which was its
very heart and body, convinced of the futility of it all, seceded in
1907. In 1911 it joined the American Federation of Labor and after
several hard-fought strikes, notably in Michigan in 1913, it practically
became assimilated to the other unions in the American Federation of
Labor.

The remnant o