A
few "mistakes" in handling cargoes might easily cost the
employers far more than a small increase in wages would. Some
French syndicalists, visiting London, were greatly impressed with
this new cunning. But as they had no ready translation for the
Scottish ca'canny, they ingeniously abstracted the same idea from
the old French saying "Travailler a coups de sabots"--to work as
if one had on wooden shoes--and sabotage thus became a new and
expressive phrase in the labor war.
Armed with these weapons, Haywood and his henchmen moved forward.
Not long after the first convention in 1905, they made their
presence known at Goldfield, Nevada. Then they struck
simultaneously at Youngstown, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. The
first battle, however, to attract general notice was at McKees
Rocks, Pennsylvania, in 1909. In this warfare between the
recently organized unskilled workers and the efficient state
constabulary, the I.W.W. sent notice "that for every striker
killed or injured by the cossacks, the life of a cossack will be
exacted in return." And they collected their gruesome toll.
In 1912 occurred the historic strike in the mill town of
Lawrence, Massachusetts. This affair was so adroitly managed by
the organizers of the Workers that within a few weeks every
newspaper of importance in America was publishing long
descriptions of the new anarchism. Magazine writers,
self-appointed reformers, delegations representing various
organizations, three committees of the state legislature, the
Governor's personal emissary, the United States Attorney, the
United States Commissioner of Labor, and a congressional
committee devoted their time to numerous investigations, thereby
giving immense satisfaction to those obscure agitators who were
lifted suddenly into the glare of universal notoriety, to the
disgust of the town thus dragged into unenviable publicity, and
to the discomfiture of the employers.
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