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Mr. Palmer was harking back to 1914, when the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. properties were the scene of bloodshed. Mr. Rockefeller has no interest in the Columbine property (Rocky Mountain Fuel Co.). Nevertheless, Wobbly Palmer's cry echoed in far Manhattan, where Communists appeared with accusing placards* to picket the Standard Oil Building at No. 26 Broadway. Clerks, steel workers from a new skyscraper, pugnacious office boys fell upon and manhandled the demonstrators.
*The I. W. W. was founded at Chicago in 1905 by 203 delegates representing western miners, Socialists and remnants of the defunct American Labor Union. The purpose was to create a new, homogeneous labor body embracing not only the trade union memberships but unorganized agricultural and other unskilled laborers as well, especially the migratory ("foot-loose") class. "One big union" was the central idea of the autonomous crafts in operative idea of the autonomous crafts in the A. F. of L. The I. W. W. was for political action as well as economic. It was to prepare workers for a "Cooperative Commonwealth." Its constitution said: "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common." It would make only one bargain with employers—complete surrender of industrial control to the workers. A split soon reft the I. W. W. ranks. William D. ("Big Bill") Haywood of Chicago headed the "direct action" party. The so-called "Detroit Wing" was doctrinaire, not determined about political action. After Mr. Haywood's flight from the U. S. in 1921 to escape jail, the political action clauses of the I. W. W. constitution were erased. The "one big union" motif is all that remains. Wobblies now express their political ideas mostly through the Workers' or Communist Parties. But few Wobblies have coherent political or economic notions. Their allegiance to the I. W. W., which is still said to enroll over 100,000, is largely emotional. It results from the I. W. W.'s opportunist tactics in just such areas as Colorado, where more stable, conservative and therefore more powerful but less idealistic labor organizations, are not active or have been replaced by company unions.
*Scene of bloodshed and destruction during the martial law days of 1914, when President Wilson sent six troops of cavalry to quell the warfare between miners and mine guards.
*Typical inscriptions: "Colorado Government Saturated With Workers' Blood," "We Want No Charity, Mr. Rockefeller, and No Machine Guns," "Mr. Rockefeller, Call Off Your Thugs."