Charles River Editors

After finishing with 3% of the presidential vote in 1904, Eugene V. Debs helped organize one of the world’s most notorious unions over the coming year. Debts and a number of other prominent labor activists and socialists in Chicago decided to hold a national conference in June 1905, and they extended invitations to socialists and many of the more radical unions. About 200 activists assembled for the 1905 meeting. Many of the attendees were from the Western Federation of Miners, which had been extremely active in organizing unions and strikes throughout the West, including Big Bill Haywood. A number of notable activists attended, including the famous Mother Jones, as well as Lucy Parsons, an activist since her husband was hanged for his part in the Haymarket Affair in Chicago. The result was the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union better known by the acronym IWW.

 The IWW’s members have been known for more than a century as the Wobblies, and no one knows how they got the name, although there are stories that an immigrant had trouble pronouncing the letters. That would be appropriate, because the Wobblies went out of their way to unionize immigrants, who formed a sizable percentage of the American labor force in the years the IWW was influential. The Wobblies quickly became a considerable force in American labor and by far the most colorful union of its era, if not always particularly effective. 

 The Wobblies are still around, but the years of their real effectiveness were rather brief, lasting from about 1905-1919. This work tells the story of how they came about, the peak of their influence, and the lasting legacy they forged.

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