One hundred years ago today

On Tuesday, June 27th 1905, 200 labour leaders met in Chicago, with the aim of forming a new kind of union. Bill Haywood, Secretary of the Western Federation of Miners, told them:

This is the continental congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism... What we want to establish is a labor organization that will open wide its doors to every man* that earns his living either by his brain or his muscle. This organization will be formed, based, and founded on the class struggle - having in view no compromise and no surrender, and but one purpose: and that is to bring the workers into the possession of the full value of the product of their toil!

Text taken from Wobblies!, Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman (Verso Books, 2005).

*In fact, the IWW had women members and activists too.