This speech has made a hero of the jailed Syndicalist. When his confinement ends, as a vendor of "hot stuff," his place upon the I. W. W. platforms will be secure.
To see the I. W. W. as it is; to see it with the eye that understands, whether forgivingly or in condemnation, is to see it as the child of strife. It is born out of conflict. The terrible struggle of the American Railway Union in and about Chicago which made Mr. Debs so famous, has the initial characteristic of Syndicalism becoming conscious of itself. The fight was so desperate that all the unions in the industry were thrown together. This gave that elated sense of collective force, out of which this revolutionary impulse springs. In saying that the I. W. W. began in the Colorado strike, means only that a more concentrated contest added enough intensity to the feeling of labor solidarity to make it more conscious of a new power. Mr. Debs' education in his own strike prepared him for the first I. W. W. Convention a few months later as effectively as if he had been among the miners. The most influential men in that Chicago gathering (1905) had had stormy and bitter experience.
It is this war-origin of the I. W. W. which is its weakness on the constructive side. That it is a child of strife, brings back upon itself the very qualities which are admirable for battle, but which make stability and organization impossible. They lead to the quarrels which disrupt the attempts at steady team work from the very start. The practical danger to the I. W. W. is absence of trouble. If industry were
