Industrial Workers of the World

From E. M. McLoughlin - Boulder City, W. A. -

"Doubtless you will be interested to receive this epistle from a proletarian who has been long since decoyed and led astray by the aspirations and platitudes of the political fakirs -- when you find that the propaganda is spreading like wildfire among the horny handed sons of the west who are hungering for a start to be made with a movement that will rescue them from their present perilous position as abject slaves to a master class with nothing for their protection but the old obsolete worn-out machinery of craft unionism, that might have been relegated to the scrap heap ages ago.

I have been fighting like a Trojan for fourteen years in this state for craft unionism and political fakirs, in the backblocks and the metropolitan areas, getting the blacklist and afterwards the horse laugh for my class from the opportunists, whom I stumped the country on behalf of, and from whom I expected a great deal of reform measures to be placed on the Statute Book for the benefit of the working class - but they say live and learn and you will profit by experiene - well fellow workers that is me today.

I have been up to three months ago a member of the Metropolitan Council of the A.L.F. for two years, for one year a delegate from that council to the State Executive (the political side of the movement), and at the same time I was on the executive council of the Building Trades Executive Council and helped to draw up the constitution of that body. So you will see that I understand every phase of craft unionism and political action, consequently my knowledge and experience in the movement has been educational and today I am in a position to pass judgement on it when comparing its tactics, its structure and its methods with the Industrial Workers of the World.

My judgement will be easy to interpret when I say that I am trying to forget the past, and I look back with much regret to the weary hours, weeks and years of effort and energy wasted, not only by me but by thousands of my class, as a result of pinning down out faith to political mediocrities and not having learned to trust ourselves. I say right now that I have learned more from three copies of Direct Action on the class struggle than I have from all the gawping talkers and political fakirs that I have come in contact with during the last fourteen years.

I have never contested a selection ballot or a position as a craft union secretary therefore I am not writing as a disappointed man.

Now fellow worker I appeal to you in all sincerity to endeavour to send out an organiser at your earliest opportunity, and I will be only too pleased to give him all the assistance I can - especially on the soap box. There is the greatest field for operation for I.W.W.ism here than anywhere else I know in Australia, because the conditions under which the wage slaves are working are damnable in the extreme and discontent is rife among them; They realise that craft-unionism and political action is futile but they don't know the way out of it. Those that we have been explaining I.W.W.ism to are delighted and exceedingly anxious to know when we are going to make a start.

There are 4300 in the Miners' Union and over 2000 in the Surface Workers' Union besides there are several other sections of craft unions in the mines here representing a considerable number. I can assure you that several hundred of them will fall over each other after you.
Just fancy H. Glance, general secretary Miners' Union receiving £5 a week, is Mayor of Boulder, and consequently puts in a lot of his time attending to municipal matters, absorbing the 3 per cents by way of champagne and chicken guzzling entertainments to junketing globe-trotters, besides every day sitting as Chief Magistrate, and dealing out stoush in drunks, street walkers, etc. He has also a favourable reputation at the Chamber of Mines. We have the best of information for an organiser to work upon and make a great success.
Daly and I are every day spreading the gospel and getting converts, while McMillan is at Gwalia, Leonora.

The West is ready for the dope. Bog in !

F. M. McLaughlin

Direct Action 1 December 1914