lation
for the Scottish ca'canny, they ingeniously abstracted the same idea
from the old French saying "Travailler a coups de sabots"--to work as if
one had on wooden shoes--and sabotage thus became a new and expressive
phrase in the labor war.

Armed with these weapons, Haywood and his henchmen moved forward. Not
long after the first convention in 1905, they made their presence known
at Goldfield, Nevada. Then they struck simultaneously at Youngstown,
Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. The first battle, however, to attract
general notice was at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, in 1909. In this
warfare between the recently organized unskilled workers and the
efficient state constabulary, the I.W.W. sent notice "that for every
striker killed or injured by the cossacks, the life of a cossack will be
exacted in return." And they collected their gruesome toll.

In 1912 occurred the historic strike in the mill town of Lawrence,
Massachusetts. This affair was so adroitly managed by the organizers
of the Workers that within a few weeks every newspaper of importance in
America was publishing long descriptions of the new anarchism. Magazine
writers, self-appointed reformers, delegations representing various
organizations, three committees of the state legislature, the Governor's
personal emissary, the United States Attorney, the United States
Commissioner of Labor, and a congressional committee devoted their time
to numerous investigations, thereby giving immense satisfaction to those
obscure agitators who were lifted suddenly into the glare of universal
notoriety, to the disgust of the town thus dragged into unenviable
publicity, and to the discomfiture of the employers.

The legislature of Massachusetts had reduced the hours of work of women
and children from fifty-six to fifty-four hours a week. Without making
adequate announcement, the employers withheld two hours' pay from
the weekly stipend. A large portion of the workers were foreigners,
representing eighteen different nationalities, most of them with a
wholly inadequate knowledge of English, and all of an inflammable
temperament. When they found their pay short, a group marched through
the mills, inciting others to join them, and the strike was on. The
American Federation of Labor had paid little attention to these workers.
There were some trade unions in the mills, but most of the workers were
unorganized except for the fact that the I.W.W. had, about eight months
before, gather