Bill Haywood

Early life Haywood was born in 1869 in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. His father, a former Pony Express rider, died of pneumonia when Haywood was three years old. His mother, Elizabeth, was an Episcopalian. At age nine, Haywood injured his right eye while whittling a slingshot with a knife, permanently blinding that eye. He never had his damaged eye replaced with a glass eye; when photographed, he would turn his head to show his left profile. After his uncle Richard arranged for Haywood to work as an indentured laborer on a farm, a job Haywood disliked, he changed his name from William Richard to William Dudley after his father. At age 15, with very little formal education, Haywood began working in the mines. After brief stints as a cowboy and a homesteader, he returned to mining in 1896. Western Federation of Miners involvement In 1896, Ed Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), spoke at the Idaho silver mine where Haywood was working. 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 (IWW). stickerette "Thief!" At 10 a.m. on June 27, 1905, Haywood addressed the crowd assembled at Brand's Hall in Chicago. In the audience were two hundred delegates from organizations all over the country representing socialists, anarchists, miners, industrial unionists and rebel workers. Haywood opened the IWW's first convention with the following speech: was arrested for the crime, and evidence was found in his hotel room. Famed Pinkerton detective James McParland, who had infiltrated and helped to destroy the Molly Maguires, was placed in charge of the investigation. Although none of the three had set foot in Idaho while Orchard was stalking Steunenberg and planning his murder, under Idaho law, conspirators were considered to be legally present at the scene of the crime. Using this provision, the local county prosecutor in Idaho drew up extradition papers for Haywood, Moyer, and George Pettibone, which falsely alleged that they had been physically present in Idaho at the time of the murder. Trade union members regarded the incident as a kidnapping ruling that the arrest and extradition were legal, with only Justice Joseph McKenna dissenting. Trial Haywood's trial in Boise began on May 9, 1907, with famed Chicago defense attorney Clarence Darrow defending him. The government had only the testimony of Orchard, After a second jury acquitted Pettibone, the charges against Moyer were dropped. Despite his radical views, Haywood emerged from the trial with a national reputation. Eugene Debs called him "the Lincoln of Labor." Along with his colorful background and appearance, Haywood was known for his blunt statements about capitalism. "The capitalist has no heart," he often said, "but harpoon him in the pocketbook and you will draw blood." Another time, he began a speech by noting, "Tonight I am going to speak on the class struggle and I am going to make it so plain that even a lawyer can understand it." Yet Haywood also had a flair for dangerous hyperbole that, when quoted in newspapers, was used to justify wholesale arrests of IWW strikers. "Confiscate! That's good!" he often said. "I like that word. It suggests stripping the capitalist, taking something away from him. But there has got to be a good deal of force to this thing of taking." When the WFM withdrew from the IWW in 1907, Haywood remained a member of both organizations. His murder trial had made Haywood a celebrity, and he was in demand as a speaker for the WFM. But his increasingly radical speeches became more at odds with the WFM, and in April 1908, the union announced that they had ended Haywood's role as a WFM representative. Haywood left the WFM and devoted all his time to organizing for the IWW. Lawrence Textile Strike in 1911. Haywood had left the WFM by the time the Lawrence Textile Strike garnered national attention. On January 11, 1912, textile mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, left their jobs in protest of lowered wages. Within a week, twenty thousand workers were on 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 murdering Anna LoPizzo, a striker whom nineteen witnesses later said was killed by police gunfire, After hearing from immigrants how European strikers had used this tactic during prolonged strikes, Haywood decided to take the gamble in Lawrence, a first in American labor history. He and the IWW used announcements in socialist newspapers to solicit host families, then screened strikers to see who might be willing to send their children into the care of strangers. On February 10, 1912, the first group of "Lawrence Strike Children" bid tearful goodbyes to their parents and, with chaperones to guide them, boarded a train for New York. The children arrived safely in New York that evening where they were taken to a meeting hall. They were soon lavished with food and clothes and would stay in New York another seven weeks. Despite their excellent treatment, officials in Lawrence and elsewhere were shocked by the move. "I could scarcely believe that the strike leaders would do such a thing as this," Lawrence mayor Michael Scanlon said. "Lawrence could have very easily cared for these children." On February 24, when strikers attempted to send still more children away, police were ready. During a melée, women and children were forcibly separated, police lashed out with clubs, and dozens of strikers and their children were jailed. National outrage resulted. The New York World wrote, "The Lawrence authorities must be blind and the mill owners mad." The New York Tribune called the police response "as chuckle-headed an exhibition of incompetence to deal with a strike situation as it is possible to recall". Socialist Party of America involvement For many years, Haywood was an active member of the Socialist Party of America. Haywood had always been largely Marxist in his political views, and campaigned for Debs during the 1908 presidential election, traveling by train with Debs around the country. Haywood also represented the Socialist Party as a delegate to the 1910 congress of the Second International, an organization working towards international socialism. When Haywood was quoted speaking at public meetings in New York City to the effect that he had never advocated the use of the ballot by the workers but had instead favored the tactics of direct action, an initiative recalling Haywood from the NEC was launched by the State Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of New York. In February 1913 the recall of Haywood was approved by a margin of more than 2-to-1. In January 1915, Haywood replaced Vincent St. John as General Secretary-Treasurer of the IWW, which he held until October 1917. He returned to the position of GST from February 1918 until December of the same year when he was replaced by Peter Stone. 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. Using the newly passed Espionage Act of 1917 as justification, the Department of Justice raided forty-eight IWW meeting halls on September 5, 1917. IWW officials were taken by surprise that Haywood had jumped bail, with his own attorney declaring that, "Haywood has committed hara-kiri so far as the labor movement is concerned if he has really run away. He will be disowned by the IWW and all sympathizers." Various visitors to Haywood's small Moscow apartment in later years recalled that he felt lonely and depressed, and expressed a desire to return to the U.S. In 1926 he took a Russian wife, though the two had to communicate in sign language, as neither spoke the other's language. Death On May 18, 1928, Haywood died at age 59 in a Moscow hospital from a stroke brought on by alcoholism and diabetes. Half of his ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall; an urn containing the other half of his ashes was sent to Chicago and buried near the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument. ==Haywood's labor philosophy==

Industrial unionism Even before Haywood first became an official with the WFM, he was convinced that the system under which working people toiled was unjust. He described the execution of the Haymarket leaders in 1887 as a turning point in his life, predisposing him toward membership in the largest organization of the day, the Knights of Labor. Gompers was an advocate of craft unionism, But Haywood had become convinced by the experiences of striking railroad workers that a different union philosophy, some form of industrial unionism, was necessary for workers to obtain justice. This had become apparent in 1888 when the craft-organized locomotive firemen kept their engines running, helping their employers to break a strike called by the railroad engineers. The strike was eventually crushed by massive government intervention that included 2600 Deputy U.S. Marshals, and 14,000 state and federal troops in Chicago alone. Debs attempted to seek help from the AFL, asking that AFL railroad brotherhood affiliates present the following proposition to the Railway Managers' Association: ...that the strikers return to work at once as a body, upon the condition that they be restored to their former positions, or, in the event of failure, to call a general strike. Observing that the ARU was defenseless, AFL officials viewed the plight of the rival organization as an opportunity to bolster the railway brotherhoods, which the AFL was courting, and instructed all AFL affiliates to withhold help. In spite of what Haywood perceived as "treachery" and "double-cross" Haywood's revolutionary imperative Haywood's industrial unionism was much broader than formulating a more effective method of conducting strikes. Haywood grew up a part of the working class, In the WFM's 1903–1904 struggle in Colorado, with martial law once again in force, two declarations uttered by the National Guard and recorded for posterity further clarified the relationship of the mine operator's enforcement army—provided courtesy of the Colorado governor—to the workers. When union attorneys asked the courts to free illegally imprisoned strikers, Adjutant General Sherman Bell declared, "Habeas corpus be damned, we'll give 'em post mortems." It wasn't any surprise to Haywood that soldiers seemed to be working in the interests of the employers; he had seen that situation before. It appeared to Haywood that the deck was stacked, and no enduring gains could be won for the workers short of changing the rules of the game. Increasingly, his industrial unionism took on a revolutionary flavor. In 1905 Haywood joined the more left-leaning socialists, labor anarchists in the Haymarket tradition, and other militant unionists to formulate the concept of revolutionary industrial unionism that animated the IWW. Haywood called this philosophy "socialism with its working clothes on". While Haywood continued to champion direct action, he advocated the political action favored by the socialists as just one more mechanism for change, and only when it seemed relevant. At an October 1913 meeting of the Socialist Party, Haywood stated: I advocate the industrial ballot alone when I address the workers in the textile industries of the East where a great majority are foreigners without political representation. But when I speak to American workingmen in the West I advocate both the industrial and the political ballot. The "industrial ballot" referred to the direct action methods (strikes, slowdowns, etc.) of the IWW. Haywood seemed most comfortable with a philosophy arrived at through the hard-scrabble experiences of the workers. He had the ability to translate complex economic theories into simple ideas that resonated with working people. He distilled the voluminous work of Karl Marx into a simple observation, "If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get." Haywood demonstrated his Marxist roots when, confronted by the Commission on Industrial Relations with an argument about the sanctity of private property, he responded that a capitalist's property merely represented "unpaid labor, surplus value." But the forum also gave Haywood an opportunity to compare the philosophy of the IWW with that of Marx and the socialist parties. Reminded by the Commission that socialists advocated ownership of the industries by the state, Haywood remembered in his autobiography that he had drawn a clear distinction. All of industry should be owned "by the workers", he observed. Racial unity in the labor movement Much of Haywood's philosophy relating to socialism, preferring industrial unionism, his perception of the evils of the wage system, and his attitude about corporations, militias, and politicians seems to have been held in common with his WFM mentor Ed Boyce. Boyce also called for legislation to forbid employment of aliens. Unlike Boyce and many other labor leaders and organizations of the time, Haywood believed that workers of all ethnicities should organize into the same union. 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." Haywood criticized the U.S. government's attempts to turn whites against blacks during the 1899 Coeur d'Alene labor confrontation. Haywood wrote: "it was a deliberate attempt to add race prejudice ... race prejudice had been unknown among the miners." In 1912, Haywood spoke at a convention for The Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana; at the time, interracial meetings in the state were illegal. Haywood insisted that the white workers invite the African American workers to their convention, declaring: 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. Ignoring the law against interracial meetings, the convention invited the African American workers. The convention would eventually vote to affiliate with the IWW. ==Works==

• Industrial Socialism With Frank Bohn. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1911. • The General Strike. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., n.d. [1911]. Speech of March 16, 1911. • One Big Union or Transformed AF of L? Debate with Morris Hillquit. Serialized in Chicago Daily Socialist, Jan. 18–25, 1912. • Speech of William D. Haywood on the Case of Ettor and Giovannitti, 1912. • Bill Haywood Remembers the 1913 Paterson Strike • With Drops of Blood the History of the Industrial Workers of the World Has Been Written. n.c. (Chicago): Industrial Workers of the World, n.d. (1919). • Raids! Raids!! Raids!!! n.c. (Chicago): Industrial Workers of the World, n.d. (Dec. 1919). • ''Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood. New York: International Publishers, 1929. Reissued as The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood.'' ==See also==