History Textbook Exercise

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – the Wobblies

Muzzey, David S. The American Adventure. 2 vols. New York, 1927. pp. 193-194, 261.

The next year the social revolution and anarchists of Chicago formed the International Working People’s Association, the precursor of the present Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW). Their membership was largely recruited from the nations of continental Europe, and but one of the eight anarchist newspapers in Chicago was published in the English language.

The inevitable labor shortage of war days was for a time a serious problem. Women too the place of many men called from the assembly line for war service, a far more spectacular development in 1918 than it would be a quarter of a century later, and they crowded into the munitions plants. For a time strikes threatened to interfere with the production program, especially those by members of the IWW. Governmental action helped to smooth out labor relations, however, and this situation improved rapidly with establishment in April 1918 of a National War Labor Board, and somewhat later of a War Labor Policies Board, providing new means for the settlement of industrial disputes and the standardizing of wages and hours. In return for assurances that labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively would be respected, responsible union leadership agreed on a no-strike pledge for the duration of hostilities.