As a result, 166 indictments were
returned. Of these 99 defendants were found guilty by the trial
jury, 16 were dismissed during the trial, and 51 were dismissed
before the trial. In Cleveland, Buffalo, and other lake ports
similar disclosures were made, and everywhere the organization
fell under popular and official suspicion.
In many other portions of the country members of the I.W.W. were
tried for conspiracy under the Federal espionage act. In January,
1919, a trial jury in Sacramento found 46 defendants guilty. The
offense in the majority of these cases consisted in opposing
military service rather than in overt acts against the
Government. But in May and June, 1919, the country was startled
by a series of bomb outrages aimed at the United States
Attorney-General, certain Federal district judges, and other
leading public personages, which were evidently the result of
centralized planning and were executed by members of the I.W.W.,
aided very considerably by foreign Bolshevists.
In spite of its spectacular warfare and its monopoly of newspaper
headlines, the I.W.W. has never been numerically strong. The
first convention claimed a membership of 60,000. All told, the
organization has issued over 200,000 cards since its inception,
but this total never constituted its membership at any given
time, for no more fluctuating group ever existed. When the I.W.W.
fosters a strike of considerable proportions, the membership
rapidly swells, only to shrink again when the strike is over.
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