f the I.W.W. split in 1908 into two rival Industrial
Workers of the World, with headquarters in Detroit and Chicago,
respectively, on the issue of revolutionary political versus
non-political or "direct" action. As a rival to the Federation of Labor
the I.W.W. never materialized, but on the one hand, as an instrument of
resistance by the migratory laborers of the West and, on the other hand,
as a prod to the Federation to do its duty to the unorganized and
unskilled foreign-speaking workers of the East, the I.W.W. will for long
have a part to play.

In fact, about 1912, it seemed as though the I.W.W. were about to repeat
the performance of the Knights of Labor in the Great Upheaval of
1885-1887. Its clamorous appearance in the industrial East, showing in
the strikes by the non-English-speaking workers in the textile mills of
Lawrence, Massachusetts, Paterson, New Jersey, and Little Falls, New
York, on the one hand, and on the other, the less tangible but no less
desperate strikes of casual laborers which occurred from time to time in
the West, bore for the observer a marked resemblance to the Great
Upheaval. Furthermore, the trained eyes of the leaders of the Federation
espied in the Industrial Workers of the World a new rival which would
best be met on its own ground by organizing within the Federation the
very same elements to which the I.W.W. especially addressed itself.
Accordingly, at the convention of 1912, held in Rochester, the problem
of organizing the unskilled occupied a place near the head of the list.
But after the unsuccessful Paterson textile strikes in 1912 and 1913,
the star of the Industrial Workers of the World set as rapidly as it had
risen and the organization rapidly retrogressed. At no time did it roll
up a membership of more than 60,000 as compared with the maximum
membership of 750,000 of the Knights of Labor.

The charge made by the I.W.W. against the Federation of Labor (and it is
in relation to the latter that the I.W.W. has any importance at all) is
mainly two-fold: on aim and on method. "Instead of the conservative
motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,'" reads the Preamble,
"We must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition
of the wage system.' It is the historic mission of the working class to
do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not
only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but to carry on
production when capitalism sh