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Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) poster
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| Title | Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) poster |
| Photographer | Richard Nicol |
| Notes | "The Industrial Workers of the World – better known as the Wobblies – was established in Chicago in 1905. The driving force behind the IWW was William D. Haywood, the leader of the Western Federation of Miners. In the west, the IWW appealed to unskilled workers, footloose men working in the woods, mills and mines. They hoped that collective action would bring pay increases, shorter hours, and safer working conditions. Unlike other unions of the day, the IWW organized on a class basis, welcoming all working people – including immigrants, minorities, women and the unemployed. The IWW advocated the overthrow of the wage system through organization of One Big Union. The IWW believed there was no common ground between owners and labor, and advocated class warfare, employing strikes, boycotts, slowdowns and other forms of direction action, including industrial sabotage. "Big Bill" Haywood often spoke of the union as "socialism with its working clothes on." In 1912, the Wobblies claimed a membership of nearly 100, 000, and were growing in strength. That fact alarmed many owners and managers, and in many stages, simply possessing a red Wobbly card was considered criminal. The IWW condemned World War I as a "rich man's war for poor men to fight, " and encouraged draft evasion, but a wave of wartime patriotism swept the U.S., resulting in widespread disapproval of the Wobblies. In Washington, the Wobblies staged work slowdowns in the woods, impeding the harvest of spruce, the light, tough wood used by the Boeing Company in the construction of warplanes. In 1919, the Wobblies were influential in leading Seattle's general strike, the first in North America. " |
| Digital Collection | King County Museum Collections
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| Note About Ownership | This record describes one of more than three hundred artifacts, photographs and documents, submitted by members of the Association of King County Historical Organizations. The King County Collects project took place during the county's sesquicentennial in 2001, to celebrate the shared collection of AKCHO's 205 members. The information presented here is the responsibility of the AKCHO organization which submitted the item for inclusion in the project. |
| Credit Line | University of Washington Libraries, Inc.; All Rights Reserved |
| Repository | University of Washington Libraries |
| Type | Image |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Scanned from slide as a 3000 pixel TIFF image in 16-bit color, resized to 640 pixels in the longest dimension and compressed into JPEG format using CONTENTdm's image import. |
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