While the Industrial Workers of the World still is a going enterprise, the Marxists Internet Archive wanted to celebrate this organizations coming 100th Aniversary with a History Archive of documents related to it. We do not want to subsititute for the IWW’s own web site at iww.org. We want to compliment it with a mirror of it’s historical documents contained on it and our own additions from the current contents of the Marxists Internet Archive writers archive.
The Founding Convention of the IWW—Proceedings This is the original transcription of the proceedings. This is the Merit Publications reprint of the transcription of the convention. First online publication of the transcript.
The Founding Convention of the IWW—Proceedings This is a new transcription of the original proceedings completed by Robert Bills from the Socialist Labor Party of the United States presented in PDF format.
The 2nd Convention of the IWW—proceedings held in 1906. Transcribed for the first time by Robert Bills from the Socialist Labor Party of the United States presented in PDF format.
The 3nd Convention of the IWW—proceedings held in 1907. Transcribed for the first time by Robert Bills from the Socialist Labor Party of the United States presented in PDF format.
The IWW by James P. Cannon
Works by Eugene V. Debs on the IWW:
The Coming Union (1905)
Revolutionary Unionism (1905)
Class Unionism (1905)
Industrial Unionism (1905)
Speech to the IWW Founding Convention (1905)
One Big Union W. E. Trautmann. (1911)
Historic Pamphlets by the Wobblies of the past:
Industrial Unionism: THE ROAD TO FREEDOM by Joseph J. Ettor(1913)
The Onward Sweep of the Machine Process By Nils H. Hanson (1913)
Jersey Justice at Work 1913
The Revolutionary I.W.W. by Grover Perty—1913
Contract Work 1917
Cut Down The Hours Of Work! (1919)
The Most Important Question by Justus Ebert (1919)
One Big Union! (1919)
The American Labor Year Book, 1919-20 by Alexander Trachtenberg, ed (1920)
The I. W. W.: What It Is and What It Is Not (1920)
With Drops of Blood Big Bill Haywood (1920)
Shop Organization the Base of the I. W. W. By George Hardy (1920)
How the I. W. W. is Organized By James Kennedy (1921)
An Economic Interpretation of the Job (1922)
Historical Catechism of American Unionism (1923)
The History of the I. W. W. A Discussion of its Main Features By a Group of Workmen (1923)
Building Construction
A Handbook of the Industry Issued By Building Construction Workers’ Industrial Union No. 330 Of The I. W. W. (1924)
One Big Union of the I.W.W. 1924
Education And System: The Basis Of Organization (1924)
Giant Industry and the I. W. W. Against the Concentrated Power Of Modern Big Business Put the Concentrated Power of Workers (1925)
“William D. Haywood—Soldier to the Last,” by James P. Cannon [May 22, 1928] A lengthy and heartfelt obituary of the IWW leader William “Big Bill” Haywood” by a friend and comrade, James P. Cannon, a Communist Party leader who was also a former member of the IWW.
25 Years of the Industrial Unionism by: Covington Hall, James P. Thompson, Roger N. Baldwin, Ralph Chaplin, C. E. Payne, Tom Connors, F. W. Thompson, Ed Delaney, Clifford B. Ellis, Joseph Wagner, John A. Gahan (1930)
Technocracy or Industrial Unionism (1933)
The I. W. W. In Theory And Practice (1938)
I. W. W. Manual Of Instruction For Job Delegates (Published by the General Recruiting Union, ca. 1943)
A Union For All Railroad Workers (1949)
Coal-Mine Workers and Their Industry (undated)
Delegates’ Work and Organization Bookkeeping (undated)
Why Building Workers Must Organize Into One Big Union! by Peo Monoldi (undated)
IWW and its relations with the Communist Party:
Open Letter from the Communist International to the IWW (1920)
Correspondence:
Speech on Behalf of the IWW: Boston — February 3, 1918, by John J. Ballam This speech by prominent Boston radical John Ballam touting the merits of the Industrial Workers of the World was transcribed and thus preserved by Federal authorities interested in making a political case against him. Ballam calls the IWW “a battering ram that shall shake from the foundations of society the entire superficial structure, its political and juridical forms, and sweep them away like deadwood of the past as we abolished kings and their courts for potent purposes, and raise upon the foundations of society the structure of industrial democracy.” Ballam is met with applause when he declares “the IWW is comparatively small but it holds within its grasp the means of the destruction of the capitalist system, for it is the only organization that would lay the axe at the root and chop the whole damned fabric down.” Ballam pulls no punches: “I am not a pacifist. I do not deplore this war. I don’t care one snap of my finger for the millions of lives that have been lost; I am not a sentimentalist. The working class can give its life and blood if it chooses to, to protect the master class in its ownership of the things with which they crush out the labor and the life of the working class in factory, mill, and mine, but I have no sympathy for them, absolutely none.... I have no sympathy whatever for the slave working man who sheds his blood for the master class... The IWW has declared war upon the capitalist class! And they are bitter enemies. War to the knife, war to the hilt, war to the last owner of private property until he shall have gone into the factory, donned overalls with us, to earn his daily bread.”
Resolution of Micrometer Lodge 460, IAM, to Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson and His Reply. [Feb. 18, 1919] On February 14, 1919, a Brooklyn local of the International Association of Machinists passed a resolution protesting the Labor Department's decision to deport more than 50 non-citizen members of the IWW from the United States "without due process of law." The group had been the subject of ongoing news coverage as part of a guarded train crossing the country from the Western states where the alien Wobblies had been arrested. Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of Labor, William B. Wilson, defends the administration's decision to deport the radical unionists. The New York Times quotes his reply in full: "When our own citizens desire to change the form of government they can do so peaceably in the manner provided by the Constitution. If we cannot make progress by the peaceable process by discussing and voting, we are not liable to make any progress by the riotous process of 'cussing and shouting.' The man who cannot be depended upon to vote right cannot be depended upon to shoot right. Those you refer to as radicals are being sent out of this country because they have been found advocating the overthrow of our Government by force."