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STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW
EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
PAUL FREDERICK BRISSENDEN, Ph.D. _Sometime Assistant in Economics at the University of California and University Fellow at Columbia Special Agent of the United States Department of Labor_
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS LONDON: P. S. KING & SON, LTD. 1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920 BY PAUL FREDERICK BRISSENDEN
No very extensive changes are made in the new edition. The chart of early radical labor organizations, which appeared in the first edition as Appendix I, has been omitted in this edition. There is reproduced in its place a copy of the original industrial organization chart prepared by "Father" T. J. Hagerty at the time of the launching of the I. W. W. in 1905 and sometimes referred to as "Father Hagerty's Wheel of Fortune". This chart is believed to be of some importance as illustrating the earlier ideas of the revolutionary industrial unionists on industrial organization in relation to union structure. It has been considerably amplified by W. E. Trautmann and published in his pamphlet _One Great Union_, and still further developed by James Robertson who has very recently built extensions upon it in furtherance of the shop-steward propaganda in the Pacific Northwest. His version is published in a pamphlet entitled _Labor unionism and the American shop steward system_ (Portland, Oreg., 1919).
The organization held its eleventh national convention in Chicago in May, 1919. This was the first convention held since December, 1916. It was attended by fifty-four delegates and it has been reported that forty-eight of them had never before attended a general convention of the organization. The General Executive Board reported that the organization in 1919 comprised fourteen Industrial Unions, each with its locals in various parts of the country, and a General Recruiting Union, with a total membership of 35,000. Since the convention it is reported that three new Industrial Unions have been formed: an Oil Workers' Industrial Union, a Coal Miners' Union and a Fishery Workers' Union. Nearly fifty amendments to the constitution were adopted by the delegates at the May convention. Most if not all of these have been since approved in a referendum to the membership. The proceedings of the convention have not yet been published. Since the first edition of this book appeared the I. W. W. has launched a monthly magazine called _The One Big Union Monthly_ and several new weekly newspapers.