-farm labor group are many potential strikers.
Where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a railroad bridge, many
of the group can sing I.W.W. songs without the book. This was not so
three years ago. The I.W.W. in California is not a closely organized
body, with a steady membership. The rank and file know little of the
technical organization of industrial life which their written
constitution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the
'solidarity' of their class. In the dignifying of vagabondage through
their crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of the
jail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church and
its formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo status
which they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless they
have a strike or free-speech fight to stimulate their spirit. It is in
their methods of warfare, not in their abstract philosophy or even
hatred of law and judges, that danger lies for organized society. Since
every one of the 5000 laborers in California who have been at some time
connected with the I.W.W. considers himself a 'camp delegate' with
walking papers to organize a camp local, this small army is watching, as
Ford did, for an unsanitary camp or low wage-scale, to start the strike
which will not only create a new I.W.W. local, but bring fame to the
organizer. This common acceptance of direct action and sabotage as the
rule of operation, the songs and the common vocabulary are, we feel
convinced, the first stirring of a class expression.

"Class solidarity they have not. That may never come, for the migratory
laborer has neither the force nor the vision nor tenacity to hold long
enough to the ideal to attain it. But the I.W.W. is teaching a method of
action which will give this class in violent flare-ups, such as that at
Wheatland, expression.

"The dying away of the organization after the outburst is, therefore, to
be expected. Their social condition is a miserable one. Their work, even
at the best, must be irregular. They have nothing to lose in a strike,
and, as a leader put it, 'A riot and a chance to blackguard a jailer is
about the only intellectual fun we have.'

"Taking into consideration the misery and physical privation and the
barren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I.W.W. movement,
with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes in
reality a class-protest, and the dignity wh