THE TROUBLESOME I. W. W.

The Industrial Workers of the World have recently assumed a position of alarming importance in the newspapers throughout the country. Yet very little is known about them by either editor or reader. It is generally recognized that this most insidious of our present labor groups is at the bottom of a large part of the strikes and the willful destruction of property that is taking place throughout the farming and mining country west of the Mississippi. But beyond stories of isolated outrages and the seizure of their leaders and documents by the government, the public knows almost nothing of them.

The I. W. W. are not limited to any one class of workingmen. This summer the great increase in their activities is the result of a desire to take advantage of the country while it is engaged in war, and being supplied with large funds of money if not from German representatives at least from German sympathizers, they have been particularly active in their attempts to destroy our food supply and prevent the production of war minerals. In these attempts they have been singularly successful. Grain elevators are still being burned and copper mining in Butte has been paralyzed since spring.

The I. W. W. is not a labor organization in the ordinary meaning of the term. It is composed of many diverse elements, some of which have mutually antagonistic objects in view. In its worst aspects it unquestionably extends to different forms of treason. But beyond a few leaders, it has no real organization of any kind. These men the government has been arresting. As a result the whole structure has crumbled like a pillar of sand, scattering the individual members over the country where they are still free, however, to do much as they have done in the past.

Violence has always proved ineffective in dealing with labor troubles, and in the present case the use of police or militay power as a means of coercion is impossible because of the widely scattered regions in which mining and farming are carried on. What is needed is some means of exerting a constant and universal pressure on the labor population as a whole. The mere arrest of leaders is not enough. The final solution of the problem must be constructive, rather, than has been the case thus far, destructive. Only in this way can those who deserve the severe treatment of the law be sifted from the large majority of right-thinking working men, and the possibility of serious labor disturbances next spring be prevented. The government has an enormous but imperative task upon its hands. A general appreciation of its difficulties and the support of popular opinion will do much to aid it in its work.