There Is Power in a Union
Written by Joe Hill
Would you have freedom from wage slavery?
Then join in the grand Industrial band
Would you from mis’ry and hunger be free
Then come, do your share, like a man
(Chorus)
There is power, there is power
In a band of workingmen,
When they stand hand in hand
That’s a power, that’s a power
That must rule in every land,
One Industrial Union Grand
Would you have mansions of gold in the sky
and live in a shack, way in the back?
Would you have wings up in heaven to fly
And starve here with rags on your back?
(Chorus)
If you’ve had enough of the “blood of the lamb”
Then join in the grand industrial band
If, for a change, you would have eggs and ham
Then come, do your share, like a man
(Chorus)
If you like sluggers to beat off your head
Then don’t organize, all unions despise.
If you want nothing before you are dead
Shake hands with your boss and look Wise
(Chorus)
Come, all ye workers, from every land,
Come, join in the grand industrial band
Then we our share of this earth shall demand.
Come on! Do your share, like a man.
(Chorus)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Book I - Kindling the Fire
Introduction: The Continental Congress of the Working Class
Introduction: The Continental Congress of the Working Class
At 10 AM sharp on Friday, June 27th, 1905 at Brand’s Hall in Chicago, William Dudley “Bill” Haywood gaveled the Founding Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World to order with a board of wood. The hefty thirty-six-year-old mine leader boomed out an opening speech to his audience, comprised of two-hundred and three delegates representing radicals from across the nation:
“In calling this convention to order I do so with a sense of the responsibility that rests upon me and rests upon every delegate that is here assembled. This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism. There is no organization, or there seems to be no labor organization, that has for its purpose the same object as that for which you are called together to-day. The aims and objects of this organization should be to put the working class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.”
The delegates met his speech with thunderous applause and raucous cheers. These delegates came from forty-three organizations and collectively represented some 142,930 workers. However, at the time of the convention only twenty-three of these organizations, representing 51,430 workers, came with orders to install them as members of the industrial union. The other twenty organizations, representing 91,500 workers between them, possessed no such orders to affiliate with the I.W.W. Among those organizations planning to affiliate 48,000 workers were represented by five unions: the Western Federation of Miners, American Labor Union, United Metal Workers, United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
Over the course of eleven days, the convention would hammer out a constitution for the new union, approving it by a margin of over 42,000 in favor and nearly 7,000 against. Said constitution affirmed the name “Industrial Workers of the World” as the name for the new union, established an internal organization model based on Rev. Thomas J. Hagerty’s “Wheel of Fortune,” and provided membership to any worker, regardless of age, national origin, race, sex, or skill. Also, on the agenda were the elections of a President and a General Secretary-Treasurer, to which Charles Sherman and William E. Trautman were unanimously elected. Much to Eugene V. Debs, who was representing the Socialist Party of America as a fraternal delegate, disappointment the newly elected officers of the I.W.W. declined to formally affiliate the union with the Socialist Party.
A later (circa, 1920) rendition of “Father Haggerty’s Wheel” displaying the constituent unions of the Industrial Workers of the World.
The first great internal struggle for the union would arise at the 1906 convention, as radical delegates; led by Daniel De Leon, of the Socialist Labor Party, and General Secretary-Treasurer Trautmann; dissatisfied with President Sherman’s leadership, attempted to depose him. Sherman was accused of financial impropriety and not taking the radical declarations of the founding convention to heart. As James P. Cannon, later observed:
“Charles O. Sherman, the first general president of the IWW, was an exponent of the industrial-union form of organization. But that apparently was as far as he wanted to go, and it wasn’t far enough for those who took the revolutionary pronouncements of the First Convention seriously.”
As part of their platform, the radicals adopted a plank, originally suggested by a proposal published in the Industrial Worker, which called for the abolishment of the presidency, in order to properly dispose of Sherman. Opposing the radicals stood the more conservative wing of the Western Federation of Miners, some of whom threatened a walkout from the convention if the radicals had their way. It seemed to many observers the new organization was prone to split and fade into irrelevance as many radical organizations had done before.
In the end fate would have it that the radicals would have their way. With control of an astounding majority of delegates the radicals saw to it that the presidency was abolished, just as their platform had called for. Incensed, the dethroned Sherman called for a walkout in the face of what he viewed as a hostile takeover of the I.W.W. by “beggars, tramps, and proletarian rabble.” However, at the urging of Haywood and Moyer, no more than a handful of other individuals followed their former President from the gathering. As it were the I.W.W. had survived its first test, avoiding a potentially disastrous split that threatened to mortally wound the nascent organization. [1]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] - Here lays the primary POD: Frank Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, is never assassinated by Harry Orchard, and thus the W.F.M. trio (Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone) are never implicated in his murder. Allowing Haywood and Moyer to be present at the 1906 I.W.W. Convention, whereupon their charismatic leadership and connections to both factions is put to use in preventing several locals from following Charles Sherman out as they did OTL. In addition, Moyer, absent a stint in jail is spared the conservative turn he took in OTL, leaving him a continued radical leader for the Western Federation of Miners.
Last edited: