IWW.Industrial Workers
of the World

Delegates meet at Brand’s Hall to found an organization that seeks worker power across trades, industries and national backgrounds. Bill Haywood calls the convention to order.

The IWW and Western Federation of Miners organize miners alongside service and construction workers. Economic crisis, employer resistance and federal troops help unravel their gains.

The Pressed Steel Car Company dispute becomes a major test of organizing across languages. IWW involvement helps bring national attention to workers’ demands and violent repression.

IWW speakers challenge restrictions on public organizing. Arrests turn the right to speak into a collective campaign, with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn among its prominent organizers.

Wobblies defy restrictions on street speaking in a campaign tied to their fight against exploitative employment agencies. Imprisonment and conditions inside the jails become organizing issues.

Organizers travel to Fresno to challenge restrictions on public meetings. The campaign confronts imprisonment and attacks on the union’s ability to organize agricultural workers.

A pay cut brings immigrant textile workers into a mass walkout. Organizing across languages, strike relief and public pressure help win wage gains in the struggle remembered as Bread and Roses.

A downtown speaking ban leads to a prolonged confrontation. IWW members and allies face arrests and violence while defending their ability to meet and organize in public.

Joseph Ettor, Arturo Giovannitti and striker Joseph Caruso are imprisoned on murder charges during the Lawrence conflict. Their case makes legal defense part of the wider labor struggle.

Workers across Paterson’s silk industry pursue shorter hours and better conditions. The strike loses, but its mass meetings and public campaign leave an enduring record of worker organization.

Black and white longshore workers organize together in Local 8. Ben Fletcher helps lead a union that challenges employers’ use of racial and ethnic division.

A clash at the Durst Ranch leaves four people dead and exposes harsh agricultural labor conditions. The aftermath brings imprisonment and a wider debate over labor camps.

The IWW songwriter is executed after a disputed murder conviction. His case becomes a lasting focus of labor memory, protest and prisoner solidarity.

At least five Wobblies and two deputies die when boats carrying IWW supporters reach Everett. Seventy-four Wobblies face murder-conspiracy charges; Thomas Tracy’s acquittal is followed by the release of the other defendants.

A regional strike pushes for shorter hours and better camp conditions across the Pacific Northwest. Spokane is shown as a regional organizing reference, not the site of every strike.

An armed roundup seizes striking miners and others. More than a thousand people are transported out of Arizona and left in New Mexico, without normal legal proceedings.

Masked attackers seize the IWW organizer in Butte and hang him from a railroad trestle. Little had been supporting striking miners and opposing the war.

Federal raids seize union records and publications across the country. Chicago’s national headquarters becomes a focal point of the campaign that leads to mass prosecution.

The Chicago prosecution ends in convictions and long sentences for IWW organizers. Government surveillance, seized correspondence and union publications feature in the campaign against the defendants.

An Armistice Day confrontation at the IWW hall leaves four Legionnaires dead. Wesley Everest is later taken from jail and lynched; surviving Wobblies face murder prosecutions.

Disputes over leadership and organization culminate in a split at the Chicago convention. The IWW survives, but the rupture weakens a movement already battered by prosecution and employer opposition.