More notes, as always. Incidentally, anyone know of any material on the IWW in Spanish or in Portuguese? Or, know of where I can look other than google?
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/86.3/thelen.html
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Bourne.html
Transnational history questions the nature of the nation and state, at least as categories for scholarship. While nations and states remain important, they are considered as historical, and as objects of historical inquiry rather than factors determining the shape of inquiry.1 That is to say, transnational history rejects methodological nationalism - or, more polemically, “the tyranny of the national” - defined as the assumption of the “apparent naturalness and givenness of a world divided into societies along the lines of nation-states.”2 At the same time, while “the need to expand the boundaries of [historical] inquiry beyond the nation-state, to internationalize the subject and render it more cosmopolitan” has been recognized, “there is confusion over the appropriate perspective and methodology.”3
Parsing out the degree to which IWW much historiography can be considered as transnational vs methodologically nationalist is a difficult task. On the one hand, there is a sort of transnational thread which runs through much writing on the IWW, even if this thread is deliberately downplayed on occasion. A number of IWW histories place the IWW in a context of international labor and radical movements; the circulation of ideas within those movements; the transnational flows of migrants to, from, and through the U.S.; international events such as the First World War; and, to a lesser extent, the global economy. [Expand, give examples.] On the other hand, much of IWW history has sought to establish the IWW as a particularly American entity. This may have been in part an attempt to protect the contemporary IWW at the time - or to retroactively vindicate the IWW after the fact - from critics which used claims the IWW being un- and anti-American to underwrite all sorts of attacks on the IWW, only the least of which were rhetorical. [Expand.]
*
I would like to suggest some areas that a transnational approach to history - understood as a rejection of methodological nationalism - is appropriate to the study of the Industrial Workers of the World. A transnational approach is in keeping with the perspective declared by many members and publications of the IWW, and is appropriate to the transnational character of intellectual and cultural circulation within and through the IWW. Workers “have no country,” declared the Industrial Worker.4 The Red Flag” held that “the workers’ flag is deepest red,” against any particular national flags, irrespective of whether the workers were French or German, living in Moscow or Chicago. This sentiment would have been particularly striking in the eve of the First World War. Within the IWW, the song was first published in the Industrial Union Bulletin in 1908, in an article by James Wilson that asked “What is a “patriotic air” of which we hear so much and which is so much reverenced? Generally a song of praise to the virtues, such as hatred, cruelty, and avarice. The masters would persuade us that robbery is just, that cruelty is kind; and that hatred is pure love, when done under the particular flag of a national band of robbers. (…) They would teach our children at home to worship a piece of cloth consecrated by the stripes of negro slaves, and therefore a fit emblem to wave over the “bull-pen” of our own times.”5
The origins of the“The Red Flag” are transnational as well. The song was written in 1889 in England by James Connell. Connell claimed he was inspired by a dockworkers strike in London, land reform movements in Ireland, radicals in Russia, and the execution of anarchists in Chicago in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing. The song was originally sung to the tune of a Scottish Jacobite song, “The White Cockade” and later sung to the tune of a German song, “Tannenbaum.”6
*
There is an additional sense of transnational history regarding the IWW. David Thelen writes that “the history we write emerges from the way we engage audiences.” For Thelen, part of moving beyond the national as a methodological framework within U.S. history means reading work by and writing for scholars from outside the U.S.7 In this sense, there are several other ways that a transnational approach is useful to the study of the IWW. The study of the influence of the IWW elsewhere in the world, both by emulation and by IWW members who left the U.S., is a relatively uncharted field. Similarly, other parts of the world outside the areas where the IWW operated is a relevant topic as well, as many members brought experiences of life and conflict in other locations into their experiences in the IWW. For both of these, scholarship by historians outside the U.S. is a valuable and largely untapped resource. In addition, more simply, the work of scholars in other countries and other languages is just as relevant as work done in the U.S. in English. Insofar as one can expect insight in any work of historical scholarship, the neglect of non-anglophone scholarship on the IWW negelects potential resources. Thelen makes a stronger claim about the importance of reading work by non-U.S. based scholars. “Foreign scholars, who by definition introduce texts and events from one culture to audiences from another, develop two approaches that can widen our approahces to the American past. First, foreign audiences expect comparison (….) Second, the foreign audiences of Americanist abroad occupy borderlands in which scholars must translate.” As a result, non-U.S. scholars can help U.S. based historians “jump start some stalled and overspecialized conversations.”8 [I must admit, I have found it tremendously difficult to find secondary sources on the IWW in languages other than English. I read Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, but reading ability alone is insufficient. I just don’t know where to look, other than google, for material in other languages on the IWW. I’ve found some material on the Italian reception of the IWW, but this is through one of my other interests, the history and marxist theory emerging out of the Italian far left in the 1960s and 1970s. I stumbled across IWW references in pursuit of material on that subject. Beyond that I’ve had little success finding non-English language IWW related material, particularly scholarly material.]9
Dubofsky is correct in a sense which he likely didn’t anticipate when he wrote that “IWW influence and effectiveness can not be measured in terms of organization membership” alone. (Dubofsky, 473. Dubofsky cites the tumult of the 1960s for a renewal of IWW scholarship during that decade. Within the US the IWW was an occasional reference point for people in the New Left. For one example which included members in the IWW in the 1960s, see Rosemont and Radcliffe Dancin’ in the Streets!. Rosemont’s introduction details his and his collaborators’ IWW membership and their own transnational connections and travels. Aside from attention paid to events and thinkers from around the world, the group corresponded with and met members of the far left groups Solidarity in London and members of the Situationist International in Paris. See also the references to the SDS - of which Rosemont was also a member - being inspired by or drawing upon the memory and history of the IWW in Bob Black’s essay and in Carl Davidson’s The New Radicals In The Multiversity And Other SDS Writings On Student Syndicalism.)The memory of the IWW, its vision, tactics, and experiences have been put to use in other contexts after the union’s heyday. The uses of IWW history internationally offer another area where a transnational approach is relevant, though strictly speaking this would be a comparative and intellectual or cultural history rather than solely IWW history. For example, the IWW has been invoked by some on the Italian left for some time. In the 1990s a project was put forward to start an organization based on the IWW, and in the early 21st century the labor activist group Chainworkers have cited the IWW as an inspiration for a Europe-wide network of retail workers and welfare/labor rights advocates. [Cite.] In the 1970s in Italy the IWW was also a source of inspiration, and a way to intervene in political debates at the time. The historian and leftist Bruno Cartosio states that
“When we approached the IWW in Primo Maggio, the journal that Bologna, Franco Mogni, Primo Moroni and myself started in 1972 (and appeared in 1973), we studied the wobblies as an example of a non-leninist organization of the working class. And we were interested both in reviving the debate on workers’ organization and in reintroducing it into the Italian - and the
international, or at least European - left.”10 (For a point of comparison on what Cartosio and company were rejecting, see Steve Wright, “A Party of Autonomy?” and Bologna, “The Tribe of Moles.” Uses of the history and memory of the IWW would itself make for an interesting comparative project, spanning both historiography linked to political views - Foner’s history, for instance, while very useful, definitely reflects his adherence to the Communist Party’s outlook - and radical movements and organizations which could themselves perhaps be compared to the IWW within the history of radicalism and social movements.)
“[T]he first issue” of Primo Maggio, “appearing in September 1973 (…) was largely devoted to the Wobblies. Soon to become something of a myth among Italian New Leftists interested in American problems, actually the IWW - with its complex dialectic of spontaneity and organization, independence from parties’ politics, and deep, although temporary, participation in early twentieth-century mass struggles - seemed to sum up the main points of the project for a militant, bottom-up history indicated by the magazine.” (Fasce, 603. Primo Maggio aspired to be at one and the same time both a history journal and a living leftwing project in the present, connected to Italian movements and the organization Potere Operaio. See Steve Wright, Storming Heaven, 191-193 for the discussion of the IWW in Primo Maggio in particular. There is much on Primo Maggio over all throughout the book. See also material by Sergio Bologna [below], and the articles by Fasce and Bonazzi respectively.)
[Cut this later:
Sergio Bologna describes Primo Maggio as follows:
“While it is true that its founders were members of Potere Operaio (Lapo Berti, Franco Gori, Andrea Battinelli, Guido de Masi, myself), its main focus was on placing itself within a network of initiatives of self organisation at the level of political culture and formation ‘at the service of the movement’. Primo Moroni’s bookshop Calusca in Milan was the most original and important of these initiatives. If Primo Maggio had not joined this network, it would have never exercised the influence that is only today being recognised. From this standpoint, Steve Wright is right to place it in the tradition of Italian operaismo. In fact while Primo Maggio explicitly recognised itself in that experience and openly claimed continuity with it, for Negri operaismo was already dead in 1973 and the history of operaismo was concluded with the end of Classe Operaia. Primo Maggio was also able to produce interesting, new and forward looking material in the analyses of financial capital, the welfare state, history and class composition because its editorial board comprised of comrades who differed in age and experience from ‘classical operaismo’, such as Cesare Bermani, Bruno Cartosio, Marco Revelli, Christian Marazzi and Marcello Messori.
The fundamental difference between Primo Maggio and Autonomia Operaia and the reason it seems wrong and confusing to put them in the same basket lies in their concept of their roles as intellectuals. At Primo Maggio, we aimed to change the rules of the status of disciplines; we were interested in innovating in the areas of the methodology of history, sociology, economics and political science. We felt very close to journals such as Sapere, which had a similar role in the field of scientific disciplines (physics, medicine etc.); but since we did not think of ourselves as new Braudels or Einsteins or Webers, we, like the comrades at Sapere, felt that in the end the most important objective was that of changing the ‘social role’ of the university lecturer, doctor, physicist, sociologist, lawyer, architect and so on. On this premise the role of the political intellectual needed to change too, from being a new Lenin or a new Robespierre, into being a ‘service provider’ for the decentralised movement, capable of offering the movement a better understanding of itself, of opening up new possibilities. This is how we prematurely came to perceive that the Fordist mode of production was declining to give way to a new mode of production, now conventionally called ‘postfordism’, which contained in itself both elements of liberation from work, and elements of increased capitalist exploitation.” (From his review of Storming Heaven.)
Bologna also writes that “Primo Maggio was not even a political elite. Rather, we had refused our role as a political elite to put ourselves instead in the role of that techno-scientific intelligentsia which excavated within the disciplines. So, we wanted to excavate within the historical disciplines to make history in another way. You read Primo Maggio and it is not a political journal, in the sense that it is a journal … for the transformation of historical methodology. In the sense of transformation also of historigraphical language which has an enormous importance in political language.” (From his interview with Patrick Cunninghame.)
Unrelated but I like it very much:
“Without a clear understanding of Fordian forms of labor, we will never arrive at a true, deep awareness of the meaning of flexibilisization in the New Economy, and we can never grasp the fundamental differences between these epochs. Moreover, there would otherwise be a danger of our being tempted to consider the new so new and incomparable, so rich in future and poor in past, that we simply give up the heuristic power of historical knowledge.” (From his interview “No Past? No!”) ].
*
[Also the non-U.S. sections of the IWW, and their relationships between each other.]
*
There are two other fruitful angles to pursue. One would be to closely read the proceedings of the founding convention. The proceedings contain many references to international correspondence and the international labor movement. For example here, here, here, here, and here.
A second would be to do a comparative study of the organizations in dialog with the IWW, either as peers or as inspiration. The labor unions mentioned outside the U.S. in the founding convention Proceedings would be a good immediate starting place, along with unions and organizations which migrant IWW members either belonged to before or after their IWW involvement, like the Swedish SAC. See Pannekoek for mention of German industrial unions. Also, the IWA was founded in 1922 (I believe in December), look up references to this in the IWW press around that time. I’m not aware of any studies of this nature. Gerald Friedman’s State-Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 mentions the IWW exactly twice both times only in passing, and both times in the context of failure. (150, 278.) Sima Lieberman’s Labor Movements and Labor Thought: Spain, France, Germany, and the United States consigns the IWW to a similarly minor role. (246-248.)
*
IUB v2 no31, March 6 1909, ran a translation of article by Ernst Rieger about German unions, criticizing the dominant unions and praising an organization called “The Free Union of German Syndicalists” and a report from an IWW sympathizer attempting to build industrial unionism in Britain.
[ IWW cultural and intellectual history — Salerno on the two being partly the same, founding convention correspondences etc ; the history of individual members who led globe-crossing lives and both how they influenced the IWW and spread the IWW’s influence elsewhere; international organizational ties and activities; the transnational economic and political elements which formed part of the context in which the IWW acted; assessment of IWW treatment as proto-transnational or not.]
[The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History, David Thelen, intro to JAH v86#3 dec 1999, intro online at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/86.3/thelen.html]
Thelen quotes Randolph Bourne, that “that the United States “is coming to be, not a nationality, but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors.” More than eighty years later, scholars have shared Bourne’s vision of Americans as people whose individual lives and identities involve multiple, rich “threads” and his suspicion of those who invoke the nation-state”
“ the prefix trans suggests three angles for observing the encounter of phenomena we are interested in—popular culture, politics, migration—with the nation-state. We might imagine from afar how the phenomenon passed over the nation, observing the nation as a whole; or how it passed across the nation, seeing how it bumped over natural and manmade features; or how it passed through the nation, transforming and being transformed. And, we hoped, transnational history would convey the open-endedness both of the past and of our desire to explore border crossings and to look critically at the nation-state itself.”
*
[See the symposium on Dubofsky’s “We Shall Be All” in Labor History, August, 1999]
tangentially related:
http://www.google.com/custom?q=IWW&sa=Google+Search&cof=GALT%3A%23444444%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.jacklondons.net%3BGL%3A0%3BVLC%3A%23551A8B%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3Awhite%3BLH%3A77%3BLC%3A%230000CC%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.jacklondons.net%2Fimages5%2Frhandheadbanner60077.jpg%3BALC%3A%23CC0000%3BLW%3A600%3BT%3A%237B7A42%3BAWFID%3Abaf1a2c826558b96%3B&domains=www.jacklondons.net&sitesearch=www.jacklondons.net
Comment by Nate — April 25, 2007 @ 4:17 am
Not related:
http://www.globalproject.info/art-11638.html
Comment by Nate — April 25, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Another go:
I. Immigrants and languages in the union
An ad on page 3 of the October 19th, 1907 issue of the IWW magazine The Industrial Union Bulletin offers readers access to “Two dozen pieces of IWW literature in one dozen languages!” Dione Miles notes that most pamphlets the IWW published in foreign languages were “simply translations of the most popular pamphlets” published in English. This is why Miles’ extensive IWW bibliography does not list any foreign-language IWW pamphlets. However, given the volume of material published by the IWW - Miles lists 816 pamphlets alone published by the IWW - even a small portion of this material would still form a fairly sizable body. Miles’ bibliography does list 23 foreign language IWW newspapers in 16 different languages under the heading “current locations unknown, dates often unknown” and 17 IWW newspapers in nine languages that are known to be held in U.S. archives. (Miles 378, 493-4.) These publications corresponded to different sections of varying sizes within the union which carried out their business in their respective languages.
Despite this linguistic diversity, the vast majority of scholarship studying the IWW has been dedicated to the English language sections of the union and drawn from English language sources. Thus, in important respects the history of the IWW has yet be written. Alongside multi-lingual research, a transnational point of view is particularly appropriate for historical inquiry into the IWW. The various foreign language sections of the IWW and the readers of foreign language IWW publications were either migrants to the U.S. or were raised in immigrant communities where English was not the primary language.
There has been relatively little scholarship on the immigrant and non-English speaking sections of the IWW. [Expand]
II. Scholarship from elsewhere
David Thelen writes that “the history we write emerges from the way we engage audiences.” For Thelen, part of moving toward a transnational understanding of U.S. history means reading work by and writing for scholars from outside the U.S.7 This is one sense in which a transnational approach is useful to the study of the IWW. Thelen makes a stronger claim about the importance of reading work by non-U.S. based scholars. “Foreign scholars, who by definition introduce texts and events from one culture to audiences from another, develop two approaches that can widen our approahces to the American past. First, foreign audiences expect comparison (….) Second, the foreign audiences of Americanist abroad occupy borderlands in which scholars must translate.” As a result, non-U.S. scholars can help U.S. based historians “jump start some stalled and overspecialized conversations.”8
Locating this scholarship isn’t easy, however. I have found it tremendously difficult to find secondary sources on the IWW in languages other than English. I read Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, but reading ability alone is insufficient. I just don’t know where to look, other than google, for material in other languages on the IWW. I’ve found some material on the Italian reception of the IWW in pursuit of one of my other interests, marxist theoretical work that emerged from the Italian far left in the 1960s and 1970s. Beyond that I’ve had little success finding non-English language IWW related material, particularly scholarly material.9
Dione Miles’ bibliography lists 235 books that are “significant works dealing with the IWW.” (41.) Of these, eleven are not in English. These works are in seven different languages (German, Finnish, Yiddish, Japanese, Russian, Italian, and Swedish.) Seven of these works were published in the 1920s and only two were published after the 1950s. Miles lists nine scholarly articles appearing in three different journals in Italian and one scholarly article in Russian, out of a total of 3114 articles on the IWW. Of course, not all of these are scholarly articles, many are newspaper and magazine articles. There may be other non-English language articles in Miles’ list, but these are not scholarly articles. I’m not sure as I did not review all 261 pages of Miles’ list of articles. Miles includes a separate list of scholarly journals from which I derived my list of foreign language scholarly articles. To be clear, I do not mean to imply any criticism of Miles’ bibliography. The inclusion of the foreign language material that is present is useful. This inclusion is also quite laudable given that Miles’ bibliography was compiled prior to both the widespread use of the Internet and email and the transnational turn in U.S. history. It’s plausible that other scholarly work on the IWW exists that is not included in Miles’ bibliography, but it’s hard to know. A productive way to proceed would be to locate scholarship produced after Miles’ bibliography was published in 1986 and see if this work cites works that Miles does not include. I’m aware of only a few other works published in non-English languages after 1986. [Cite.]
Put simply, the work of scholars in other countries and other languages is just as relevant as work done in the U.S. in English. Insofar as one can expect insight in any work of historical scholarship, the neglect of foreign language scholarship on the IWW negelects potential insights. In addition there are three particular areas where foreign language scholarship is likely to be relevant:
1. IWW related events and campaigns around them as activities which people in other countries were aware of and participated in, such as attempts to stop the execution of Joe Hill or reverse the imprisonment of IWW members and officers on numerous occasions. [Expand]
2. The sections of the IWW that operated outside the U.S. and their relationships with sections and members in the U.S. [Expand]
3. The experiences of IWW members who were active in the U.S. outside the U.S. whether before, during, or after their involvement in the IWW in the U.S. [Expand]
4. The influence of the IWW elsewhere in the world both by emulation and by IWW members who left the U.S. by emigration, return voyages, or deportation. Strictly speaking, this last pushes upon the boundaries of what can be considered the history of the IWW and becomes more a matter of the memory of the IWW.
III. Influence of the IWW globally
Melvyn Dubofsky is correct in a sense which he likely didn’t anticipate when he wrote that “IWW influence and effectiveness can not be measured in terms of organization membership” alone. (Dubofsky, 473.) The study of the influence of the IWW elsewhere in the world is a relatively uncharted field. The memory of the IWW, its vision, tactics, and experiences have been put to use in other contexts after the union’s heyday. The uses of the history, memory and culture left behind by the IWW internationally offer another area where a transnational approach is relevant, though strictly speaking this would be a comparative and intellectual or cultural history rather than solely IWW history. Dubofsky cites the tumult of the 1960s for a renewal of IWW scholarship in the U.S. during that decade. The IWW was an occasional reference point for people in the New Left in the U.S. and, which Dubofsky does not mention, around the world. In the introduction to Dancin’ in the Streets!, an edited collection from a 1960s IWW newspaper, Franklin Rosemont’s details his and his collaborators’ involvement in the IWW and the New Left, as well as their own transnational connections and travels. Aside from attention paid to events and thinkers from around the world, the group corresponded with and met members of the far left groups Solidarity in London and the Situationist International in Paris. (See also the references to the SDS - of which Rosemont was also a member - being inspired by or drawing upon the memory and history of the IWW in Bob Black’s essay and in Carl Davidson’s The New Radicals In The Multiversity And Other SDS Writings On Student Syndicalism.)
The IWW has been invoked by some on the Italian left for some time. In the early 21st century the labor activist group Chainworkers cited the IWW as an inspiration for a Europe-wide network of retail workers and welfare/labor rights advocates and in the 1990s a group of Italian radicals around the journal Luogo Commune proposed starting an organization based on the IWW [Cite.] In the 1970s in Italy the IWW also served as a source of inspiration, and a way to intervene in political debates at the time. The historian and leftist Bruno Cartosio states that
“When we approached the IWW in Primo Maggio, the journal that [Sergio] Bologna, Franco Mogni, Primo Moroni and myself started in 1972 (and appeared in 1973), we studied the wobblies as an example of a non-leninist organization of the working class. And we were interested both in reviving the debate on workers’ organization and in reintroducing it into the Italian - and the international, or at least European - left.”10
“[T]he first issue” of Primo Maggio, “appearing in September 1973 (…) was largely devoted to the Wobblies. Soon to become something of a myth among Italian New Leftists interested in American problems, actually the IWW - with its complex dialectic of spontaneity and organization, independence from parties’ politics, and deep, although temporary, participation in early twentieth-century mass struggles - seemed to sum up the main points of the project for a militant, bottom-up history indicated by the magazine.” (Fasce, 603. Primo Maggio aspired to be at one and the same time both a history journal and a living leftwing project in the present. See Steve Wright, Storming Heaven, 191-193 for the discussion of the IWW in Primo Maggio in particular. There is much on Primo Maggio over all throughout the book. See also material by Sergio Bologna [below], and the articles by Fasce and Bonazzi respectively.)
Attention to work by non-U.S. based scholarship will help expand our understanding of how - and the extent to which - the IWW produced an important part of a transnational radical working class culture. Aspects of this culture - particularly IWW songs - have been taken up after the heyday of the IWW, up through the present. David Roediger lists a number of examples IWW songs living on outside the IWW, including the use of “Solidarity Forever” by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, references to Joe Hill by John Lennon and Jimmy Cliff, and the use of “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” by the 1960s London radical group Solidarity. (26, 27.)
There was transnational character to the intellectual and cultural circulation within and through the IWW as well as in the IWW’s anti-nationalist perspective. Workers “have no country,” declared the Industrial Worker.4 The Red Flag” held that “the workers’ flag is deepest red,” against any particular national flags, irrespective of whether the workers were French or German, living in Moscow or Chicago. This sentiment would have been particularly striking in the eve of the First World War. Within the IWW, the song was first published in the Industrial Union Bulletin in 1908, in an article by James Wilson that asked “What is a “patriotic air” of which we hear so much and which is so much reverenced? Generally a song of praise to the virtues, such as hatred, cruelty, and avarice. The masters would persuade us that robbery is just, that cruelty is kind; and that hatred is pure love, when done under the particular flag of a national band of robbers. (…) They would teach our children at home to worship a piece of cloth consecrated by the stripes of negro slaves, and therefore a fit emblem to wave over the “bull-pen” of our own times.”5
The IWW didn’t exist in a vacuum, of course. Many IWW members were aware of current and prior events and organizations elsewhere in the world, often because they had traveled or migrated. The recently published Big Red Songbook, a compendium of IWW songs and poems, notes repeatedly that IWW members were well acquainted with a number of songs with origins or inspirations outside the U.S. which were widely know by IWW members in the U.S. These and other songs were circulated informally by individual workers teaching each other songs on and off the job and during strikes and demonstrations. The songs also circulated more formally as the organization published songs in its various publications.
Several of the songs listed in the Big Red Songbooks reference current events which were current at the time, such as the Bolshevik Revolution (193) and 1912 strike in British Columbia (104). A number of other songs were taken from an earlier international radical tradition which the IWW was part of, including the Internationale and the Marsellaise (3), songs known throughout the anticapitalist left. These and other songs form an important part of how IWW members understood themselves and their organization as part of a working class movement which was larger than themselves in space and time.
“The Red Flag” is transnational as well, in its origins as well as its political perspective. The song was written in 1889 in England by James Connell. Connell claimed he was inspired by a dockworkers strike in London, land reform movements in Ireland, radicals in Russia, and the execution of anarchists in Chicago in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing. The song was originally sung to the tune of a Scottish Jacobite song, “The White Cockade” and later sung to the tune of a German song, “Tannenbaum.” (BRS 367-8.)
IV. Transnational Lives of IWW Members
Many of the IWW members who created IWW cultural products themselves led transnational lives as immigrants to the U.S. and often as either voluntary or deported return migrants. The most famous IWW cultural producer is Joe Hill, whose real name was Joel Hagglund. (Rosemont, 44. I’ve only recently encountered Rosemont’s book and must admit I haven’t had time to do anything with it than hunt for references to things I already know I’m looking for and then to skim the surrounding pages. The book appears to have a wealth of additional information relevant to my topic. It’s a shame I didn’t find it sooner.) Hill was born in Sweden in 1879 and came to the U.S. in 1902. In 1911 Hill fought in the Mexican Revolution (Rosemont, 82-84), and participated in the Frasier River strike in British Columbia in 1912 (90). Franklin Rosemont provocatively refers to Hill as Swedish-Canadian in reference to Hill’s time in Canada and as Swedish-Mexican during his time in Mexico. (89.)
While exemplary, Hill’s transnational life was not unique within the IWW. Many other IWW members had connections to Mexico. The IWW member in John Dos Passos’ _42nd Parallel_, Mac is the son of immigrants and goes to Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. The protagonist to B Traven’s autobiographical novel _The Cotton Pickers_, the original German title of which is _Der Wobbly_, likewise crosses in to Mexico. These fictional characters were based on real IWW members. [On IWW members in relation to the Mexican revolution in particular see Salerno 7, 35, 83; Raat 56-62.] The list of other prominent IWW members who led similar lives is long. Some of them include Charles Ashleigh, Arturo Giovanitti, Joseph Ettor, Justus Ebert, John Sandgren, William Trautman, Fred Thompson, and the controversial Daniel De Leon. Every member of this list led a life which didn’t fit into national boundaries and which fit into only imperfectly into national categories.
Many “ordinary” rank file members of the IWW also led similar lives, crossing borders physically as migrants and crossing borders intellectually as they followed world events and engaged in conflicts with transnational corporations and governments motivated by transnational concerns such as anti-radical and anti-German hysteria and propaganda. [For one particularly poisonous example, see Zane Grey’s novel _The Desert of Wheat_. Grey portrays the IWW in racialized terms as biologically inferior immigrants motivated by their blood and their fatherland’s gold to carry out what Grey considers a pro-German agenda of organizing workers. Among other things, Grey approvingly offers a thinly fictionalized narrative of the lynching of Frank Little published only two years after Little’s murder. Compare Grey 294 with Dubofsky 392. On Little’s murder see also Renshaw 208. Philip Foner, quoting Perlman and Taft, refers to anti-IWW vigilantes as analogs to Fascist gangs in Italy and Germany. Grey’s novel is written about and for such fascistic interests. Foner, 212.]
*
There are two other fruitful angles to pursue. One would be to closely read the published materials of the union, including convention proceedings, paying attention to the many references to international correspondence and the international labor movement. [For example]. This would give some sense of the IWW world-view as something which did fit neatly within the lines of national boundaries.
A second angle, possibly following on from the first, would be to study the IWW and the organizations in dialog with the IWW, either as peers or as inspiration. This could take the form a comparative study along the lines of Laslett’s study of coal miners in the U.S. and Scotland, or it could take the form of a study of a transnational network of publications, migrants, and economic actions. In all likelihood, one couldn’t really know which of the two forms would be most appropriate until late in the study. The labor unions mentioned outside the U.S. in the founding convention Proceedings would be a good immediate starting place for either type of study. [Examples.] Another fruitful avenue would be to compare the IWW with unions and organizations which migrant IWW members belonged to either before or after their IWW involvement, like the Swedish SAC. [See Pannekoek for mention of German industrial unions. Also, the IWA was founded in 1922 (I believe in December), look up references to this in the IWW press around that time.] I’m not aware of any studies of this nature. Gerald Friedman’s State-Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876-1914 mentions the IWW exactly twice both times only in passing, and both times in the context of failure. (150, 278.) Sima Lieberman’s Labor Movements and Labor Thought: Spain, France, Germany, and the United States consigns the IWW to a similarly minor role. (246-248.) Friedman and Lieberman’s studies are useful, but their scope - addressing the entirety of labor movements in their respective countries - limits their usefulness in regard to the study of any particular organizations. [Van der Linden’s book on revolutionary syndicalism — Van der Linden’s book is a positive step, comparing what he calls syndicalist currents all around the world, of which the IWW is the prominent U.S. example. The book is an edited collection of essays, however, with individual cases set side by side rather than really compared, let alone linked within a transnational framework.]
Comment by Nate — April 29, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
see also:
http://www.iww.org/culture/chronology/international.shtml
and
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE I.W.W. By JOSEPH WAGNER
in this document
http://www.workerseducation.org/crutch/pamphlets/25years/25years.html
Comment by Nate — May 1, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
About political influences on history writing: Foner’s history, for instance, while very useful, definitely reflects his adherence to the Communist Party’s outlook. For example Foner quotes Lenin, “The workers cannot wage the struggle for their emancipation without striving to influence the affairs of state, to influence the administration of the state, the passing of laws” then adds “[h]ad the IWW recognized the truth of this statement, many of its most serious mistakes could have been avoided.” 167. This may well be true, but Foner provides no argument. This shapes his conclusions about the IWW. First Foner defines the IWW’s disinterest in political action and opposition to the American Federation of Labor as flaws. He then Foner concludes that “[i]t is difficult to see how with these serious flaws in its ideology, the IWW, despite its heroic militancy, could ever have fulfilled its mission” even had the union not met fierce private and governmental repression. Foner 558.
Dubofsky makes similar remarks, claiming that “given the internal deficiencies of the IWW, the aspirations of most of its members during its heyday, and the dynamics of American capitalism (…) the Wobblies attempt to transform American workers into a revolutionary vanguard was doomed to failure.” (480.) Leaving aside Dubofsky’s characterization of the IWW’s revolutionary project as one involving the creation of a vanguard, it should be noted that Dubofsky, like Foner, offers no argument about this, only assertion. He then adds “[t]here is no reason to believe that before the 1930s any of America’s basic mass-production industries could have been organized. Not until World War II was the CIO, an organization with immense financial resources, millions of members, and federal encouragement, able to solidify its hold on the nation’s mass-production industries. And even then the CIO made no headway among migratory workers or Southern mill hands. What reason, when, is there to think that the IWW could have succeed in the 1920s or earlier, when it lacked funds, counted its members by the thousands, not the millions, and could scarcely expect government assistance? To ask the question is to answer.” (483.)
Dubofsky’s conclusion to this paragraph is ironically appropriate, as he never seriously asks whether the IWW had a chance at success. He frames the IWW as merely a mini-CIO, a precursor to the larger genuine article. Interestingly enough, Dubofsky also frames the CIO as bound to fail as well:
“As a result of their commitment to ultimate revolution as well as to immediate improvements in the existence of the working class, radicals the world over quickened the emergence of strong labor unions and acted as midwives at the birth of the “welfare state.” But success, instead of breeding more success, only produced a new working class enthralled with a consumer society and only too willing, even eager, to trade working-class consciousness for a middle-class style of life. The ultimate tragedy, then, for all radicals, the American Wobblies included, has been that the brighter they have helped make life for the masses, the dimmer has grown the prospect for revolution in the advanced societies.” (484.)
Dubofsky claims these are grounds for holding to Gramsci’s dictum of pessimism of the intellect, but this pessimism is not proven by Dubofsky’s remarks but rather is founding premise of his teleological narrative of IWW history.
Comment by Nate — May 3, 2007 @ 4:33 am
- uses of the memory of the IWW as a source of inspiration and vision in a grand sense and in a tactical sense, within radical movements around the world particularly within the various New Lefts and within the worlds’ labor movements
- the transnational content of IWW cultural production, of the culture of radical working class internationalism that the IWW drew upon, and the transnational lives of IWW cultural producers.
- the transnational lives of many IWW members.
Transnationalism in debates around dual unionism/boring from within, sabotage, war, the Russian Revolution and the Red Trade Union International.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/86.3/thelen.html
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/AIH19th/Bourne.html
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/86.3/thelen.html
The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History, David Thelen, intro to JAH v86#3 dec 1999
also the symposium on Dubofsky’s “We Shall Be All” in Labor History, August, 1999
Comment by Nate — May 5, 2007 @ 9:10 pm
http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/BIT/8872853516/Big_Bill__L_autobiografia_di_un_rivoluzionario_americano_degli_IWW.htm
preface to that online here: http://www.collegamentiwobbly.it/cartosio.htm
http://www.365bookmark.it/scheda_libro.lasso?codice_prodotto=20070413123513712091
http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/BIT/8876950710/Lavoratori_negli_Stati_Uniti__Storia_e_culture_politiche_dalla_schiavitu_all_IWW.htm
http://www.isc-studyofcapitalism.org/db/storio_search.php?codice_tema=048
http://www.storieinmovimento.org/index.php?sezione=4&sottosez=articolicarta&carta_crit=art&idart=9
http://www.deriveapprodi.org/estesa.php?id=45
*
http://www.collegamentiwobbly.it
http://www.globalproject.info/art-9606.html
http://acrataz.oziosi.org/article.php3?id_article=1410
http://radiohacktive.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75&Itemid=47
Comment by Nate — May 8, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
Here’s how this ended up. No culture discussion here, that’s its own topic.
In what follows I discuss the four monographs published after 1955 that deal with the Industrial Workers of the World as a whole. Three of these works have been recently republished due to lack of recent works on the IWW as a whole. I began by asking what these works do or could contribute to a transnational perspective on the IWW. That meant looking for areas where these works approach a transnational perspective. The books have other strengths and weaknesses outside their relevance for transnational history which I do not deal with here. The works I looked at approximate to a transnational perspective when dealing with a few particular aspects of IWW history. These aspects are the history of ideas or debate within the IWW, the effect of the First World War, and the IWW and transnational companies or industries/markets. These are some key places where transnationally oriented work on the IWW could draw upon existing scholarship in a positive way. I have also suggested some gaps in these same areas that a transnational approach might help fill.
1. Context and Ideas
The works I studied shared the same limit to their transnationalism in terms of IWW intellectual history. Each treated the the IWW and its founders as solely receptive of ideas from outside, rather than as being involved in two-way exchanges of ideas. In January 1905, William Trautmann and several others met in Chicago and wrote a document called the Industrial Union Manifesto, which was sent out along with invitations to the June convention at which the IWW was founded. Foner quotes William Trautmann that the manifesto was “based on the same principles as organized labor in Continental Europe (…) revolutionary syndicalism.” Foner describes at some detail the history of syndicalist doctrine in France in relation to books published by writes such as Georges Sorel and in relation to organizations like the CGT (General Confederation of Labor, a radical French trade union), and its spread to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Foner cites articles by Trautmann and another IWW founder Thomas Hagerty about this material.
At the same time, Foner emphasizes the American-ness of the IWW, saying the union’s vision of “industrial unionism (…) had no real intellectual basis in European syndicalism.” Instead the IWW was an organic response to the class situation in the United States with no theoretical or intellectual component. This downplays the transnational components of Foner’s account and makes his discussion of European syndicalism seem a bit of non sequitur - after all, why discuss it if it doesn’t matter? At the same time, it doesn’t actually dampen the utility of Foner’s work for transnational perspectives because Foner asserts rather than argues for the lack of influence of European syndicalist thought.
Thompson’s account of the IWW’s founding doesn’t discuss French syndicalism but rather socialist ideas carried by “[i]mmigrants, especially Germans.” Thompson focuses less on Trautmann than Foner and more on the German-American Daniel DeLeon and his Socialist Labor Party, which played a role in the founding of the IWW and in its first two major splits between 1905 and 1908. Dubofsky discusses the founding the IWW in some detail but spends no time at all on the ideas involved. Rather, he emphasizes the IWW as a response to “the economic and social changes which between 1877 and 1917 transformed the United States into the world’s leading industrial nation” and more specifically as an outgrowth of the Western Federation of Miners’ earlier response to these changes. This response, however, appears almost mechanical in Dubofsky’s treatment, with no intervening mental steps: the economy changes and workers respond. Dubofsky does dedicate a chapter to IWW ideas, one which is similar to Foner’s treatment, but not in relation to the IWW’s founding. For Dubofsky, IWW members’ ideas appear as a reflex of their economic lives. IWW members “did read books - IWW libraries included works by Engels, Kautsky, Sorel, Jaures, Bellamy, George, and others (…) but they read to understand better what they already knew from life.” It is noteworthy that four of the six writers Dubofsky mentions are European. Unfortunately, Dubofsky limits his attention to IWW members as thinkers, thereby neglecting both their ideas and the transnational character of these ideas.
Renshaw’s account of IWW ideas is by far the most transnational. Like Thompson, Renshaw emphasizes De Leon’s role in founding the IWW. Renshaw calls him “the Venezuela-born, European-educated son of Dutch-Jewish stock” and quotes John Reed’s remark that Lenin was a great admirer of De Leon. Like Foner, Renshaw emphasizes that “[w]hen the IWW’s founders met in Chicago, the nation they looked to above all else (…) was France.” Renshaw makes a passing mention of Sorel and the familiarity of “[m]any IWW founders, like Haywood, Hagerty, and Trautmann” with the French CGT.
2. The First World War
All of the works I looked at deal with the First World War in ways which imply but do not follow up on transnational themes. Frequently, the works I read mention effects of the war without explaining them. For instance, Thompson discusses the prewar depression in 1913 without saying what brought it on. Thompson mentions that the copper industry was important for the war effort - which in turn was highly profitable for the copper industry - but provides little detail. Thompson notes that eleven days after the pro-IWW miners’ union in Butte, Montana closed the Anaconda mine on August 25th, 1917 the federal government “raided IWW offices and halls across the country all at 2 p.m. central standard time and seized all records.” While this is an important event, Thompson unpacks neither its links to the global political and economic situation nor its impact on U.S. policy.
Foner cites the war in the greater power that miners in Minnesota’s Mesabi range had in their 1916 strike than prior miners’ strikes, saying that the war “had put a halt to the steady of flow of unskilled hands to the United States” thereby limiting mine owners’ ability “to recruit large numbers of strikebreakers to take the place of the strikers.” Foner does not elaborate on how the war limited the flow of strikebreakers or how foreign labor was recruited prior to the war, nor does he spend any more time on the effects of the war as his work ends with the eve of the U.S. entry to the war in 1917. Foner does mention a 1914 issue of the IWW publication Solidarity dedicated to the outbreak of war in Europe, indicating a level of transnational concern on the part of IWW members. Reconstructing this transnational concern in regard to the war, particularly for immigrant members of the IWW who had family in countries involved in the conflict, would be another interesting project of transnational history.
Dubofsky attributes the war with making the IWW’s Agricultural Workers’ Organization possible, saying “the AWO’s accomplishments” in organizing several thousand farm workers in 1916
“might have been impossible had not the First World War erupted and provided the American farmer with prosperity. The AWO’s membership surge came in 1916, or only after European war orders had showered upon America’s agrarians. With production rising, profits increasing, and labor scarce, wheat raisers, anxious to turn a quick buck, did not relish a fight with their workers.”
Dubofsky does not cite any sources nor does he provide any evidence for these claims, so it is hard to tell how the economic effects of the war really affected farmers, but this is none the less a place where Dubofsky suggests a connection between domestic IWW organizing an global political and economic forces. In a rare moment of considering IWW ideas, Dubofsky quotes IWW member Ben Williams writing in Solidarity in 1914 that the war would bring a revolution to Russia and that this would act back upon the war. He also quotes a 1916 proclamation by the IWW’s national convention condemning the First World War and all other wars. He does not discuss the motives or debates around either document, but both are places where additional inquiry could begin.
Renshaw cites the same 1916 IWW proclamation against the war, calling it “typical of left wing socialism in both America and Europe” but does not compare the IWW with other cases or discuss any conversations about the war between IWW members in the U.S. and people abroad. Like the other authors, Renshaw cites the war as creating excuses for greater repression of the IWW, and adds that this sentiment was mixed anti-German sentiment, including accusations that the IWW was financed by German gold. Renshaw quotes Senator Henry Ashurst from Arizona, who said “IWW” stood for “Imperial Wilhelm’s Warrior.”
Given that the First World War was a transnational event, mention of it can not but contain some transnational components. The effects of the war on the IWW and responses by employers and government that were influenced by the war of used the war as an excuse are other areas for further study. Additional work also might be done the role of anti-radicalism in shaping immigration policy and one impact of immigration policy on leftist and labor movements. Part of this work might include depictions of the IWW as an organization of disloyal foreigners and their effect on both immigration and criminal syndicalism/sedition laws.
3. Companies
The IWW came up against a number of large companies which sometimes acted in concert with levels of government hostile to the IWW, and which sometimes were able to over-ride levels of government sympathetic to the IWW. These companies operated in a larger economic and political context which both enabled and limited their range of options. Given that many of the companies involved are still important within the economy today, more attention to the companies involved would make IWW history more relevant to the present. Interesting work might be done on the role of the IWW and anti-IWW measures in shaping the history of companies. From the works I read, I’ve been able to identify six IWW strikes that definitely involved transnational corporations. The strikes are listed by name, followed by their date, the company involved, and references to the works which cite them.
*Schenectady, 1906, General Electric
*McKees Rocks, 1909, US Steel via their subsidiary Pressed Steel Car Company
*Hammond, 1909, US Steel via their subsidiary Standard Steel Car Company
*Lawrence, 1912, American Woolen
*Detroit/Studebaker, 1913, Ford
*Mesabi Range, 1916, US Steel via their subsidiary Oliver Iron
Foner and Thompson treat all six of these strikes, and reference US Steel. Foner also notes that American Woolen was controlled by J.P. Morgan. Dubofsky discusses the McKees Rocks, Lawrence, and Mesabi Range strikes, but only mentions the names of the subsidiary companies, thus obscuring the transnational nature of the parent company. Renshaw deals with McKees Rocks and Lawrence. While the accounts of walk outs and workplace gains are often vivid, none of the works I looked at dealt with the Schenectady, Hammond, Mesabi Range or Detroit/Studebaker strikes in a transnational way.
All of the works I looked at talk about the great number of immigrants involved in the McKees Rocks and Lawrence strikes. Foner describes the Pressed Steel Car Company plants at McKees Rocks as “employing mainly foreign-born workers. A deliberate policy of splitting up the workforce into various nationality and language groups was followed with the expectation that this would prevent the working force from acting in a unified manner. In 1909, there 16 different nationalities among the 5000 workers employed at the plants.” Foner goes into some detail about the terrible conditions in the plants and in the living conditions of these immigrant workers, but the voices of the workers themselves do not appear and the transnational connections are muted as a result. Thompson and Dubofsky both note in passing that many of the McKees Rocks strikers had had a great deal of strike experience abroad.
Dubofsky gives a thorough accounts of the Lawrence strike but has little transnational content beyond referencing a French language IWW paper, L’Emancipation. Renshaw briefly discusses political and religious view of the different groups involved in the strike, stating that French speaking Belgian immigrants had prior experiences with syndicalist ideas. Foner’s discussion of the Lawrence strike is the most interesting of the accounts that I looked at and is Foner’s most transnational moment. He writes that
“[w]ithin a one-mile radius of the mill district, there lived 25 different nationalities, speaking a half hundred different languages. (…) To induce the new immigrants to work in Lawrence, the American Woolen Co. had posted placards in the towns throughout Southern Europe which pictured the textile workers holding bags of gold, displaying bankbooks with substantial bank accounts, and standing outside handsome homes which they were said to own.”
After the successful conclusion of the strike, IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovanitti stood trial for murder related to police killing a striker. Their
“case was an international issue. On June 17, 1912, a huge protest meeting was held in Berlin and resolutions of protest in the name of the Free Union of German Syndicalists were address to President Taft and Governor Foss. The Socialists of Sweden not only sent protests but urged the International Trade Union Secretariat to order a world-wide boycott of American goods (….) The Bologna (Italy) trade unions sent fraternal greetings to the imprisoned (…) and the Social Union made Giovanitti a candidate for the national legislature from a constituency in Modena.”
There may have been other strikes involving the IWW and transnational companies. The works I looked at often do not usually indicate the size of the companies involved. This makes it difficult to tell when the companies were primarily producing for local, national, or international markets. Domestic companies were often still bound up with markets outside the U.S. The works I reviewed did not address this except in relation to the First World War. The works also did not address how the strikes affected company decisions beyond local changes in wages and conditions. All of these might prove fruitful avenues for future research. Literature review on this could begin by building a list of industries and companies with which the IWW was involved then looking over histories dealing with these industries and companies mentioned to see if they mention the IWW.
It is unfair and unproductive to judge past scholarship by a present standard to which it can not live up. That has not been my intent in this paper, even if I may on occasion sound as it that is what I am doing. Still, by approaching past works on the IWW I have identified a few places that I wasn’t previously aware of where these works offer information that could be used to support or to start research on the IWW from a transnational perspective. I have also identified possible approaches or topics for transnational study of the IWW. Transnational work on the IWW could begin from the places where past scholarship approximated toward a transnational perspective, as well as attempt to fill in the gaps where a transnational perspective is completely lacking. This research project strikes me as eminently appropriate to the study of the IWW, as the organization had U.S. sections consisting of immigrant workers, sections based in other countries, and a vision of the working class as an already transnational entity.
Appendix - Language and Location of Sources
An early from the IWW magazine The Industrial Union Bulletin encourages readers to order “Two dozen pieces of IWW literature in one dozen languages!” Dione Miles’ extensive IWW bibliography lists 23 foreign language IWW newspapers in 16 different languages under the heading “current locations unknown, dates often unknown” and 17 IWW newspapers in nine languages that are known to be held in U.S. archives. These publications corresponded to different sections of varying sizes within the union which carried out their business in their respective languages.
Despite this linguistic diversity, the works I looked at deal almost exclusively with sources in English. Dubofsky cites no primary sources in languages other than English. Thompson and Bekken cite one primary source in Spanish. Foner cites one primary source in French. Renshaw cites one primary source in German. As a result the foreign-language immigrant sections of the IWW in the U.S. appear in the background of these studies and appear only as large groups of strikers listening to IWW leaders.
Sections of the IWW headquartered outside the U.S. are almost entirely absent as well, a consequence of the language of the sources used and of the use of only U.S. -based archives. Dubofsky and Foner do not mention the IWW outside of the U.S.. Where the other works deal with the IWW abroad, they do so through secondary sources on the history of different national leftist and labor movements. One of Jon Bekken’s additions to the 2006 republishing of Thompson includes a two page section entitled “The International IWW,” which mentions IWW sections in Argentina, Australia, Chile, Germany, Guam, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Sweden, and Uruguay. Renshaw includes an 18 page section on the IWW outside the U.S., noting IWW sections in Australia, Canada, Chile, England, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Peru, and Scotland.
The works I looked at also pay little attention to secondary sources in other languages. Dubofsky, Foner, and Thompson cite no secondary works in languages other than English. Renshaw cites one secondary work in Swedish. The work of scholars in other countries and other languages may provide a different perspective or comparison with the history of that country. This scholarship might also include more attention to IWW sections who used that scholar’s language. More simply, insofar as one can expect insight in any work of historical scholarship, the neglect of foreign language scholarship on the IWW neglects potential insights.
The language and location of sources used is a major gap in existing scholarship on the IWW. Filling this gap could involve studying one or more U.S. based non-English speaking sections of the IWW. Study of one or more sections based outside the U.S. could be fruitful as well, as might study of any of the very many individual IWW members and leaders who led transnational lives.
Works Cited
Davis, Mike. “The Stop Watch and the Wooden Shoe: Scientific Management and the Industrial Workers of the World,” 83-98 in James Green (ed), Workers’ Struggles, Past and Present, Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1983.
Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. New York: Quadrangle. 1969.
Foner, Philip. History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume IV: The Industrial Workers of the World, 1906-1917. New York: International Publishers. 1965.
Grey, Zane. The Desert of Wheat. New York: Harper. 1919.
Gutman, Herbert. Power and Culture. New York: The New Press. 1987.
Kimeldorf, Howard. Battling for American Labor. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999.
Miles, Dione. Something In Common - An IWW Bibliography, Detroit: Wayne State University. 1986.
Renshaw, Patrick. The Wobblies: The Story of Syndicalism in the United States. New York: Doubleday. 1967.
Salerno, Salvatore. Red November Black November. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1989.
Salyer, Lucy. Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1995.
Sellars, Nigel Anthony. Oil, Wheat, and Wobblies. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1998.
Thompson, Fred and Jon Bekken. The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years. Cincinnati: Industrial Workers of the World. 2006.
Comment by Nate — May 10, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
Conference you may want to consider attending - give me a shout, I didn’t know how to get hold of you directly:
http://web.wits.ac.za/Academic/Humanities/SocialSciences/HistoryWorkshop/Conferences.htm
Comment by Lucien van der Walt — September 28, 2007 @ 2:46 am
I know of a comrade who has been doing research about swedish IWW-organized dockworkers in the 20’s.. and there seems to have existed an organisation in the 70’s even! If you want I could track him down and see what material he managed to get, i know he has some documents and did one (more?) interviews with old dock workers.. contact me
Comment by Mikael Altemark — August 3, 2008 @ 7:07 am