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It is remarkable that the I.W.W. accomplished anything, so great were its built-in weaknesses. It was torn by factional fights and filled with company spies and agents provocateurs. Basically, they could never decide whether they were a revolutionary movement or a trade union. Their contemptuous distrust of the employer made it impossible for them to handle the bread-andbutter details of rates, hours or factory disputes. Faced with any industrial problem, the Wobblies solved it by going out on strike or sabotaging machinery.
Bad English. The great Red scare after World War I hastened their end. In 1918, after a series of mass deportations and jailings, 101 Wobbly chieftains were tried in Chicago on a five-count indictment charging them with various conspiracies. The presiding judge was Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who, according to Wobbly John Reed, had "the face of Andrew Jackson three years dead." The accused were found guilty and their sentences ran up to 35 years' imprisonment. Wobbly wit flickered a last time when Ben Fletcher, the only Negro defendant, cracked: "Judge Landis has been using bad English today—his sentences are too long."
What repression could not fully accomplish, inner dissension did. Some Wobblies—including Helen Gurley Flynn and John Reed—drifted toward Communism. Others slowly eased their way back into society. Ralph Chaplin, as great a labor poet as Joe Hill, turned both conservative and Catholic. English-born Charles Ashleigh became a gold prospector in Mexico.
By 1955, the I.W.W. did not have job control in a single U.S. factory, and its position as a mass union had been taken over by the C.I.O. Even so, the C.I.O. long depended on many techniques originated by the Wobblies, ranging from the sitdown strike to integrated locals to a lively interest in civil rights. In the era of the twelve-hour day and child labor in mines and mills, the I.W.W. was one of labor's more effective weapons. The Wobblies engendered real fear and antagonism in many quarters, and perhaps intensified antilabor prejudice. But over the long run, the Wobblies undoubtedly helped to open the nation's eyes to the imperfections of the age.