In 1911 it joined the American Federation of Labor and after
several hard-fought strikes, notably in Michigan in 1913, it practically
became assimilated to the other unions in the American Federation of
Labor.
The remnant of the I.W.W. split in 1908 into two rival Industrial
Workers of the World, with headquarters in Detroit and Chicago,
respectively, on the issue of revolutionary political versus
non-political or "direct" action. As a rival to the Federation of Labor
the I.W.W. never materialized, but on the one hand, as an instrument of
resistance by the migratory laborers of the West and, on the other hand,
as a prod to the Federation to do its duty to the unorganized and
unskilled foreign-speaking workers of the East, the I.W.W. will for long
have a part to play.
In fact, about 1912, it seemed as though the I.W.W. were about to repeat
the performance of the Knights of Labor in the Great Upheaval of
1885-1887. Its clamorous appearance in the industrial East, showing in
the strikes by the non-English-speaking workers in the textile mills of
Lawrence, Massachusetts, Paterson, New Jersey, and Little Falls, New
York, on the one hand, and on the other, the less tangible but no less
desperate strikes of casual laborers which occurred from time to time in
the West, bore for the observer a marked resemblance to the Great
Upheaval.
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