When Larry, Parritt, and Hugo talk about “The Movement” in The Iceman Cometh, they are referring to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), better known by the nickname “Wobblies” (there is no clear answer as to where that came from; it may derive from terms related to workers’ sabotage or a slur used against workers). Exploring who the Wobblies were can help further illuminate the aforementioned characters in O’Neill’s play.
The IWW was founded in Chicago, Illinois 1905 by representatives of 43 groups on a promise to replace the narrow craft unionism of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) with large industrial unions. They were successful in organizing the neglected immigrant steel and textile workers, miners, timber, and harvest workers. Among the founders were William (Bill) Haywood, Daniel De Leon, and Eugene Debs. The preamble to the IWW Constitution states, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.”
The IWW grew in power under Haywood’s leadership. Their tactics and rhetoric were radical and they were often in the news for their sensational behavior. Some members participated in the first sit-down strikes in United States history. They reached across racial lines and included women as well. The IWW rejected the tenets of the Socialist Party, which was concerned with electoral victory and often ignored class struggle.
The IWW’s greatest successes were in the Pacific Northwest. In its first decade members participated in over 150 strikes, created more than 900 unions in more than 350 cities and towns in 38 states and 5 Canadian provinces. The group utilized strikes, boycotts, slowdowns, and sabotage to achieve their goals.
Problems were present throughout the IWW’s history, and factions among leaders existed almost immediately. The IWW also refused to sign contracts with management after winning strikes, meaning they could build no real membership base and maintain work standards in stable urban communities. They did not set up health or death benefit funds for members and had no permanent strike funds. They ignored politics and avoided class struggle anywhere else but the workplace; thus, they opposed women’s suffrage and old age pension legislation.
Problems came from the outside as well. Joe Hill, an IWW organizer and author of famous IWW ballads and hymns, was arrested on a disputed murder charge and ultimately executed in 1915. He became a folk hero for the movement.
The IWW began to diminish in power when America began to mobilize for World War I in 1917. It was the only labor organization to oppose participation in the war. Leaders even proposed limited copper production in western areas, which led to prosecution under the Espionage and Sedition Act. The general crackdown on Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, and general radical sentiment adversely affected the IWW.
Ultimately, as Joe Richard writing for the International Socialist Review explains, “the IWW tried to be both a union and a revolutionary organization at the same time, and in attempting this, never fully succeeded at either.” He concludes, “Yet it must be said that in its day the IWW was the most advanced working-class organization the United States had yet produced. The IWW wrote one of the most inspiring and brilliant chapters of the workers movement in the United States. A forerunner of events to come, the legacy of the IWW contains much that is imperative for the contemporary labor movement to relearn, with its rejection of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, its emphasis on building power on the shop floor through the mobilization of the rank and file, and its radical appeal to the urgency and necessity of solidarity.”
The IWW still exists today, but its power is nowhere near what it once was.
