Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW

321 Pages·2017·20.257 MB·English

by  Peter Cole, David Struthers, Kenyon Zimmer

WOBBLIES OF THE WORLD
i
Wildcat: Workers’ Movements and Global Capitalism
Series Editors:
Peter Alexander (University of Johannesburg)
Immanuel Ness (City University of New York)
Tim Pringle (SOAS, University of London)
Malehoko Tshoaedi (University of Pretoria)
Workers’ movements are a common and recurring feature in contemporary capitalism.
The same militancy that inspired the mass labour movements of the twentieth century
continues to define worker struggles that proliferate throughout the world today.
 For more than a century labour unions have mobilised to represent the political-
economic interests of workers by uncovering the abuses of capitalism, establishing
wage standards, improving oppressive working conditions, and bargaining with em-
ployers and the state. Since the 1970s, organised labour has declined in size and influ-
ence as the global power and influence of capital has expanded dramatically. The world
over, existing unions are in a condition of fracture and turbulence in response to ne-
oliberalism, financialisation, and the reappearance of rapacious forms of imperialism.
New and modernised unions are adapting to conditions and creating class-conscious
workers’ movement rooted in militancy and solidarity. Ironically, while the power
of organised labour contracts, working-class militancy and resistance persists and is
growing in the Global South.
 Wildcat publishes ambitious and innovative works on the history and political econ-
omy of workers’ movements and is a forum for debate on pivotal movements and la-
bour struggles. The series applies a broad definition of the labour movement to include
workers in and out of unions, and seeks works that examine proletarianisation and class
formation; mass production; gender, affective and reproductive labour; imperialism
and workers; syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and
political movements.
Also available:
Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today
Edited by Aziz Choudry and Mondli Hlatshwayo
Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class
Immanuel Ness
The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa
Luke Sinwell with Siphiwe Mbatha
Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres
Jamie Woodcock
Wobblies of the World
A Global History of the IWW
Edited by Peter Cole, David Struthers,
and Kenyon Zimmer
First published 2017 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer 2017
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by
them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 9960 7 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 9959 1 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0151 7 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0153 1 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0152 4 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest
sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental
standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part I: Transnational Influences on the iww 27
1 “A Cosmopolitan Crowd”: Transnational Anarchists, the
iww, and the American Radical Press 29
Kenyon Zimmer
2 Sabotage, the iww, and Repression: How the American
Reinterpretation of a French Concept Gave Rise to a New
International Conception of Sabotage 44
Dominique Pinsolle
3 Living Social Dynamite: Early Twentieth-Century iww–
South Asia Connections 59
Tariq Khan
4 iww Internationalism and Interracial Organizing in the
Southwestern United States 74
David M. Struthers
5 Spanish Anarchists and Maritime Workers in the iww 89
Bieito Alonso
Part II: The iww in the Wider World 103
6 The iww and the Dilemmas of Labor Internationalism 105
Wayne Thorpe
7 The iww in Tampico: Anarchism, Internationalism, and
Solidarity Unionism in a Mexican Port 124
Kevan Antonio Aguilar
8 The Wobblies of the North Woods: Finnish Labor Radicalism
and the iww in Northern Ontario 140
Saku Pinta
9 “We Must Do Away with Racial Prejudice and Imaginary
Boundary Lines”: British Columbia’s Wobblies before the
First World War 156
Mark Leier
v
contents
10 Wobblies Down Under: The iww in Australia 168
Verity Burgmann
11 Ki Nga Kaimahi Maori (“To All Maori Workers”): The
New Zealand iww and the Maori 186
Mark Derby
12 Patrick Hodgens Hickey and the iww: A Transnational
Relationship 204
Peter Clayworth
13 “The Cause of the Workers Who Are Fighting in Spain Is
Yours”: The Marine Transport Workers and the Spanish
Civil War 212
Matthew White
14 Edith Frenette: A Transnational Radical Life 228
Heather Mayer
Part III: Beyond the Union: The iww’s Influence and Legacies 237
15 Jim Larkin, James Connolly, and the Dublin Lockout of
1913: The Transnational Path of Global Syndicalism 239
Marjorie Murphy
16 Tom Barker and Revolutionary Europe 253
Paula de Angelis
17 P. J. Welinder and “American Syndicalism” in Interwar
Sweden 262
Johan Pries
18 “All Workers Regardless Of Craft, Race Or Color”: The First
Wave of iww Activity and Influence in South Africa 271
Lucien van der Walt
19 Tramp, Tramp, Tramp: The Songs of Joe Hill Around the
World 288
Bucky Halker
Index 301
vi
Acknowledgments
Like many great ideas, this book was born while drinking beers with
friends. The three of us were presenting papers on our different research
projects during the 2008 conference of the Pacific Northwest Labor
History Association. Dave and Kenyon already were friends and met Peter,
for the first time, that rainy weekend in Vancouver. We vaguely discussed
putting together a book on the history of the Wobblies around the world,
but promptly forgot about our idea—like many such grand alcohol-fueled
notions. Over the next few years, we emailed each other intermittently, and
even organized a panel on the topic at the 2012 meeting of the American
Historical Association, but all of us were busy with various other work
and life commitments. Eventually, in 2015, our lives converged, windows
opened, the sun shone, and we finally undertook this project. From there,
it moved surprisingly fast. We already knew many other folks, around
the world, who shared our interest in—or rather, fascination with—the
Wobblies. We reached out to many of them and put out a “call for papers”
to make sure we reached a wider network of scholars, both in the academy
and outside of it, who studied the iww.
We would like to thank every contributor to the book who (for the most
part) submitted drafts on time, and all of whom were passionate about the
project. We are proud of this book and trust everyone else involved is, too.
We also thank one of the Wildcat series editors, Manny Ness, for his stead-
fast and enthusiastic support from the get-go, as well as the six anonymous
reviewers who commented on the project. Thanks, also, to David Shulman
at Pluto Press and the incredible team of committed, skilled workers who
help this global publishing house spread the word about the Wobs and so
many other important subjects, past and present.
Peter Cole thanks his partner, Wendy Pearlman, who listened to count-
less tales about the Wobblies (some of them even true), and provided moral
and intellectual support; he also thanks his co-conspirators (um, co-editors)
for their friendship and thoughtfulness. Dave Struthers thanks his wife
Irina Shklovski for listening to him talk about the past, his daughter Freya
for taking him to the skatepark, Devra Weber for first introducing him to
the iww in a labor history seminar, his co-plotters for making this collabo-
ration a pleasure, and the contributors for keeping him excited every time
he sat down to read drafts. Kenyon Zimmer thanks his wife Rafia Mirza
vii
acknowledgments
for her support throughout, Salvatore Salerno for first introducing him to
the hidden anarchist connections to the iww, Robert Helms for taking time
out of a visit to the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam
to scan rare documents for him, and his co-editors for their hard work,
patience, and humor.
Finally, we would like to thank all of those, dead and alive, who keep the
Wobbly flames burning. We know that Wobblies and fellow travelers are
committed to a more just and equitable world. So are we—that’s why we
imagined and, now, helped create this book. Thanks for reading!
viii
Introduction
Peter Cole,
David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer
This book proudly proclaims itself the first-ever global history of the
Industrial Workers of the World (iww, or Wobblies). In this collection
of essays, 20 scholars from around the world begin a long-overdue con-
versation about the iww as a global phenomenon. Although the union’s
official membership never was numerically as large as mainstream unions,
its influence during its early years—1905 into the 1920s—was enormous
in the United States, where it was founded, and worldwide. The iww was
part of a global upsurge of anarchism and syndicalism, which in the early
twentieth century, before the Russian Revolution and birth of the Soviet
Union, arguably occupied the central positions among the global Left as
the dominant anti-capitalist ideologies. Subsequent scholarship focusing
on western Europe and those leftist currents that fed into social democratic
state structures has obscured the influence and vibrancy of anarchism and
syndicalism around the world. Syndicalism envisioned replacing capitalism
with a socialist economy, but simultaneously, maintained great suspicion
of state power and centrally planned systems, and viewed the labor move-
ment as the primary vehicle for revolutionary change. In every industrial
and industrializing nation in the world, varieties of syndicalism emerged
by the early twentieth century, but few were better known or more globally
influential than the iww’s “revolutionary industrial unionism.”
Wobbly ideals, Wobbly branches, and Wobbly members traveled far and
wide, gaining adherents and fellow-travelers across the proverbial seven
seas, with sailors and shipping being central, then as now, to the global
economy. However, nearly all scholars who have examined the iww focus
narrowly on the iww experience in a single nation, usually the United
States, and neglect the rich archive of non-English-language sources.1
Fortunately, in 2017, the world and even academic scholarship are
changing. In recent years, global and world history have become major
1