Bill Haywood
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Image:Bill haywood headshot.jpg William Dudley Haywood (February 4, 1869–May 18, 1928), better known as Big Bill Haywood, was a prominent figure in the American labor movement. Haywood was a leader of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, he was involved in several important labor battles, including the Lawrence textile strike, the Colorado Labor Wars (which culminated in the Ludlow massacre), and textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Never one to shy from violent conflicts, Haywood was frequently the target of prosecutors. His trial for the murder of Frank Steunenberg in 1907 (of which he was acquitted) drew national attention; in 1918, he was one of 101 IWW members convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. While out of prison during an appeal of his conviction, Haywood fled to Russia, where he would spend the remaining years of his life.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Haywood was born in 1869 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father, a Pony Express rider, died of pneumonia when Haywood was three years old.<ref name=linder>Linder.</ref> At age nine, he injured his right eye while whittling, permanently blinding it. Haywood never had his damaged eye replaced with a glass eye; when photographed, he would turn his head to show his left profile. Also at age nine, he began working in the mines; he never received much formal education. After brief stints as a cowboy and a homesteader, he returned to mining in 1896.<ref name=pbs>PBS Interactive.</ref> High-profile events such as the Haymarket Riot in 1886 and the Pullman Strike in 1894 fostered Haywood's interest in the labor movement.<ref name=linder />
[edit] Western Federation of Miners involvement
In 1896, Ed Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners, spoke at the Idaho silver mine where Haywood was working.<ref name=linder /> Inspired by his speech, Haywood signed up as a WFM member, thus formally beginning his involvement in America's labor movement.
Haywood immediately became active in the WFM, and by 1900 he had become a member of the national union's General Executive Board. In 1902, he assumed co-leadership of the WFM with Charles Moyer. That year, the WFM became involved in the Colorado Labor Wars, a struggle that lasted for several years and took the lives of 33 union and non-union workers.<ref name=linder /> The WFM initiated a series of strikes to combat the brutal working conditions and starvation wages. The defeat of these strikes led to Haywood's belief in "One Big Union" organized along industrial lines to bring broader working class support for labour struggles.<ref name=pbs />
[edit] Foundation of the Industrial Workers of the World
Late in 1904, Haywood along with over 30 other prominent labor radicals, met in Chicago to lay down plans for a new revolutionary union.[citation needed] A manifesto was written and sent around the country. Unionists who agreed with the manifesto were invited to attend a convention to found the new union which was to become the Industrial Workers of the World.
At 10 A.M. on June 27, 1905, Haywood addressed the crowd assembled at Brand's Hall in Chicago who had gathered to the Industrial Workers of the World founding convention.<ref name=zinn-329-330>Zinn, 329-330.</ref> In the audience were two hundred delegates from organizations all over the country representing socialists, anarchists, miners, industrial unionists and rebel workers. Haywood began the convention with the following speech:<ref name=zinn-329-330 />
Fellow Workers, this is the Continental Congress of the working-class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working-class from the slave bondage of capitalism. The aims and objects of this organization shall be to put the working-class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.
Other speakers at the convention included Eugene Debs, leader of the Socialist Party of America, and Mother Mary Jones, an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America.<ref name=zinn-329-330 /> After its foundation, the IWW would become aggressively involved in the labor movement.
[edit] Murder trial
On December 30, 1905, Frank Steunenberg was killed by an explosion in his Caldwell, Idaho home. A former governor of Idaho, Steunenberg had clashed with the WFM in previous strikes, and after the 64-page confession of suspected bomber Harry Orchard, famed Pinkerton detective James McParland was sent to arrest WFM leaders Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone.<ref name=linder /> On February 17, 1906, McParland secretly arrested Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone in Denver, Colorado. In the morning, they were extradited to Idaho for trial.
Haywood's trial began on May 9, 1907, with famed Chicago defense attorney Clarence Darrow defending him. The government had only the testimony of Orchard, the confessed bomber, to implicate Haywood and the other defendants, and Orchard's checkered past and admitted violent history was skillfully exploited by Darrow. After Darrow's final summation (which moved some jurors to tears), the jury acquitted him, along with Pettibone, and the charges against Moyer were dropped.
[edit] Lawrence textile strike
- For more details on this topic, see Lawrence textile strike.
In 1912, the Lawrence textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts garnered national attention. On January 11, textile mill workers left their jobs in protest of lowered wages. Within a week, twenty thousand workers in Lawrence were on strike. The IWW already had a presence in Lawrence and assumed leadership of the strike.
Authorities responded by calling out police, and the strike quickly escalated into violence. Local IWW leaders (Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti) were jailed on charges of murder, and martial law was declared. In response, the IWW send Haywood and other organizers to take charge of the strike. A national outrage was sparked when authorities forcibly detained a group of women and children who were being evacuated from the town. A congressional hearing and the attention of President Howard Taft pressured the mill owners into cooperating with the strikers; on March 12, the owners to agree to all the demands of the strikers, officially ending the strike.
However, Haywood and the IWW were not yet finished in Lawrence; despite the end of the strike, Ettor and Giovannitti remained in prison. Haywood threatened the authorities with another strike, saying "Open the jail gates or we will close the mill gates." Legal efforts and a one-day strike on September 30 did not prompt the authorities to drop the charges. However, on November 26, Ettor and Giovannitti were acquitted.
[edit] Socialist Party of America involvement
For many years, Haywood was an active member of the Socialist Party of America. Though Haywood had always been largely Marxist in his political views, he nevertheless campaigned for Eugene Debs during the 1908 presidential election, traveling by train with Debs around the country.<ref name=dolgoff>Dolgoff.</ref> Haywood also represented the Socialist Party as a delegate to the 1910 congress of the Second International, an organization working towards international socialism.<ref name=dolgoff /> In 1912, he was elected to the Socialist Party National Executive Committee.
However, the aggressive tactics of Haywood and the IWW, along with their call for the overthrow of capitalism and existing governmental institutions created tension with more moderate members of the Socialist Party. Haywood and the IWW focused on direct action and strikes, which often led to violence, and were less concerned with political tactics.<ref name=siitonen>Siitonen.</ref> In a party opposed to violence and dedicated to respectability, Haywood baldly advised socialists and workers to practice sabotage and risk imprisonment to foster revolution. This conflict eventually led to Haywood's recall from the National Executive Committee in January of 1913;<ref>Zinn, 341.</ref> thousands of IWW members left the Socialist Party with him.<ref name=siitonen />
[edit] Other labor involvement
In 1913, Haywood was involved in the Paterson silk strike. Haywood and approximately 1,850 strikers were arrested during the course of the strike.<ref>The Samuel Gompers Papers.</ref> Despite the long holdout and fundraising efforts, the strike ended in failure on July 28, 1913.
[edit] Espionage trial
Haywood and the IWW frequently clashed with the government during their labor actions. The onset of World War I gave the federal government the opportunity to take action against Haywood and the IWW.<ref name=zinn-372-373>Zinn, 372-373.</ref> Using the newly passed Espionage Act of 1917 as justification, the Department of Justice raided forty-eight IWW meeting halls in September 1917.<ref name=siitonen /> The Department of Justice, with the approval of President Woodrow Wilson, then proceeded to arrest 165 IWW members for "conspiring to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes."<ref name=zinn-372-373 />
In April 1918, Haywood and 100 of the arrested IWW members began their trial, presided over by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial up to that time; Haywood himself testified for three days.<ref name=zinn-372-373 /> All 101 defendants were found guilty, and Haywood (along with fourteen others) was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Despite the efforts of his supporters, Haywood was unable to overturn the conviction. In 1921, Haywood skipped bail while out on appeal and fled to Russia, causing friends who had posted his bond to lose their security. In Russia, Haywood became an advisor to Lenin's Bolshevik government. Unfortunately, Lenin's illness and death and Stalin's rise to power ended his role as an advisor to the Soviet labor movement, and he spent the last years of his life an alcoholic, alone and isolated. Haywood died in Moscow in 1928. His early death may have been providential in a sense, as Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, later began rounding up and executing foreign nationals on suspicion of espionage. Half of his ashes were buried in the Kremlin and an urn containing the other half of his ashes was sent to Chicago and buried near a monument to the Haymarket anarchists.<ref name=linder />
[edit] Labor philosophies
[edit] Racial unity
Unlike many labor leaders and organizations of the time, Haywood believed that workers of all ethnicities should work together. According to Haywood, the IWW was "big enough to take in the black man, the white man; big enough to take in all nationalities - an organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries; to obliterate national boundaries."<ref name=orth>Orth.</ref>
In 1912, Haywood spoke at a convention for the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana; at the time, interracial meetings were illegal in Louisiana.<ref name=zinn-337-339>Zinn, 337-339.</ref> Haywood encouraged the organizers to invite the African American workers to their convention, saying:
You work in the same mills together. Sometimes a black man and a white man chop down the same tree together. You are meeting in a convention now to discuss the conditions under which you labor. Why not be sensible about this and call the Negroes into the Convention? If it is against the law, this is one time when the law should be broken.<ref name=zinn-337-339/>
Ignoring the law against interracial meetings, the convention invited the African American workers. The convention would eventually vote to affiliate with the IWW.<ref name=zinn-337-339/>
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
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[edit] References
- Dolgoff, Sam (1980). Revolutionary Tendencies in American Labor - Part 2. The American Labor Movement: A New Beginning. Resurgence. Retrieved on 2006-04-11.
- Labor History Time Line (1900-1924). The Samuel Gompers Papers. Retrieved on 2006-04-11.
- Linder, Douglas (1998). The Trial of Bill Haywood. Famous Trials. Retrieved on 2006-02-09.
- Orth, Samuel (1919). The Armies of Labor - A Chronicle of the Organized Wage-Earners. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Retrieved on 2006-05-11.
- PBS Interactive (2001). William "Big Bill" Haywood. New Perspectives on the West. PBS Interactive. Retrieved on 2006-03-20.
- Siitonen, Harry (March, 2005). The IWW - Its First 100 Years. Industrial Workers of the World. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
- Zinn, Howard (September 2001). A People's History of the United States, Revised and Updated, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-093731-9.de:William Dudley Haywood
