In Italy, Spain, Norway, and
Belgium, the syndicalists were also active. Their partiality to
violent methods attracted general attention in Europe and
appealed to that small group of American labor leaders whose
experience in the Western Federation of Miners had taught them
the value of dynamite as a press agent.
In the meantime material was being gathered for a new outbreak in
the United States. The casual laborers had greatly increased in
numbers, especially in the West. These migratory workingmen--the
"hobo miners," the "hobo lumberjacks," the "blanket stiffs," of
colloquial speech--wander about the country in search of work.
They rarely have ties of family and seldom ties of locality.
About one-half of these wanderers are American born. They are to
be described with precision as "floaters." Their range of
operations includes the wheat regions west of the Mississippi,
the iron mines of Michigan and Minnesota, the mines and forests
of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and the
fields of California and Arizona. They prefer to winter in the
cities, but, as their only refuge is the bunk lodging house, they
increase the social problem in New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
and other centers of the unemployed. Many of these migrants never
were skilled workers; but a considerable portion of them have
been forced down into the ranks of the unskilled by the
inevitable tragedies of prolonged unemployment. Such men lend a
willing ear to the labor agitator.
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