Breaking the Western Federation of Miners
One of the great tragedies caused by dual unionism was the smashing of the Western Federation of Miners. This body of metal miners, organized in 1893, was in its early days a splendid type of labor union. Industrial in form and frankly revolutionary, it carried on for many years a spectacular and successful struggle against the Mine Owners' Association. Brissenden says that its strikes in Coeur d'Alene, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Telluride, Idaho Springs, etc., were "the most strenuous and dramatic series of strike disturbances in the history of the American labor movement." Time after time the miners armed themselves and fought it out with the gunmen and thugs of the mining companies. Their valiant battles attracted world-wide attention.[1]
But this great organization, unquestionably one of the best ever produced by the American labor movement, has long since been wrecked both in point of numbers and spirit. Insignificant in size, it has also become so conservative as to be ashamed of its splendid old name. It is now known as the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. This pitiful degeneration of the Western Federation of Miners was caused directly by dual unionism. Some detail is necessary in order to show how it happened:
To begin with we must understand that in its best days only a few of the W. F. of M. membership, not over 5% at most,[2] were active and revolutionary. This small minority, highly organized, occupied all the strategic points of the union. Thus they were able to communicate something of their own revolutionary spirit to the mass as a whole. The organized rebels literally compelled the W. F. of M. to be a virile fighting organization.
In 1905, the W. F. of M. was one of the unions that formed the I. W. W. It remained part of that organization for about two years, when it withdrew. The militant elements, the ones who had made the W. F. of M. what it was, were bitterly opposed to the withdrawal. For the most part they stayed in the I. W. W. and allowed the W. F. of M. to go its way without them. Hundreds of the best men, including such fighters as Haywood, St. John, etc., deserted the
- ↑ The history of the W. F. of M. gives the lie direct to the argument that prosperity kills the militancy of the workers. That union was made up mostly of American born workers and operated in what was then the most prosperous section of the country, the Rocky Mountain district.
- ↑ Estimated by Vincent St. John, former W. F. of M. militant.
