HISTORY AND AIMS OF I. W. W.

John Graham Brooks S.T.B. '75 delivered a lecture on "The Industrial Workers of the World" under the auspices of the Socialist Club in the Union last evening.

The I. W. W. movement or syndicalism as it is known abroad sprang up in France in 1895, and in France it has reached its greatest degree of efficiency. The movement grew out of the general disappointment with legislative methods and the revolt against parliamentary government, in which Bourget, Zola and others took prominent parts. The failure of the Socialists in France to fulfill what was expected of them, once they had been elected to the legislative bodies was the immediate cause of the appearance of syndicalism.

In the United States the movement originated in the Colorado miners' strike of 1903, when several of the other unallied crafts were induced to strike with the miners.

The Utopian dream of the I. W. W. movement is a universal strike, in which race lines and nations cease to be factors of importance. The realization of this ideal entails two assumptions: first, that the world's labor can be made to act together with sufficient concentration to obtain control of the centers of economic power; and second, that with the overthrow of capitalism syndicalism would be capable of stepping in and taking charge of affairs. The tendency of syndicalism to overemphasize the lateral interests of labor: that is, the interests of the crafts as a whole, and to slight the interests of the individual crafts, if allowed to grow, would mean the ultimate downfall of the movement.