The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-05-01

day Of his death, in Moscow, 1928.
He led the W. F. M. through the
period of their greatest growth and
activity through the struggles at
Telluride, Cripple Greek, Colorado
City, Denver, Leadville, Victor, and
at Lawrence, Paterson, Akron,
Mesaba Range, and many other
places he led strikes for the 1. W. w.
In this short space it is impossible
to give any idea Of the way Hay
wood tells of these events. His
whole book is a running series OF
short, pointed, immensely vital stor-
les of the biggest labor struggles,
all done with an appearance of de-
tail, in light easy anecdote style,
so that the whole reads like a
novel, and not until you stop to
think back over the pages you have
turned do you see that here is com
pressed without any appearance of
merely summarizing, summary of
the great events of a dramatic
period.
Haywood met under strenuous cir
cumstances most of those outstand-
ing in political and economic and
labor union life during his period.
Gompers, Debs, DeLeon, Borah,
Rockefeller, Mother Jones, Darrow,
the various presidents and COVER
nors, Tom Mann, the French syndi-
calists, Larkin, Connolley, Hyndman,
and other European socialists, and
Lenin, he met, not as one interviews
celebrities, but in the course of his
daily work, and all of them he
passes judgment on with frankness
and brevity. The book is worth
while for its character analysis if
for nothing else.
He did not come off unscathed.
First and last he spent considerable
time in jail. Many attempts were
made to kill him. Once he shot q
deputy sheriff in Denver, and ran
the union from the Jail until re-
leased. All the world knows about
the Moyer-Haywood and Pettibone
trial, and the great Chicago trial of
the |. W. W.-but in this book we
have Haywood telling in his own
words, with the same cascade of
little, revealing Incidents and OBJ
servations, the story of those great
scenes.
He kept his courage in prison,
when 20 years of it stared him in
the face, he kept his cheerfulnesa
when patriotic mobs wanted to
lynch him, he slept while the Boise
jury debated whether they should
hang him or acquit him. He was
social creature, and admits GER
tain amount of gambling and drink
ing, but he never let anything inter
fere with his duties to the working
class. All this appears in his auto
biography, which gives you curl
Gus feeling that it is a book not
about the writer but about events
he has seen, until you realize that
most of the history is history built
around Haywood himself, and to a
considerable extent his own product
the man was such fit instrument
of the social forces and economic
trends of his time, so well represent
ed the proletariat he led through
thick and thin, that his life was ex-
pressed in all that happened.
Haywood led two organizations
the |. w. W., and the w. F. NJ.
served on the national executive
committee of the socialist party
and was finally driven from all
three of them. Or it might better
be said, he advanced beyond them
all. His vision of great industrial
union organization for all indus
tries, revolutionary in its aims, made
the conservatives in the w. +. M
break with him. His insistence on
militant action caused the S. p. to
GUST him. When the Communist In
ternational wrote a letter to the /
W. w., Haywood comments: "After
had finished reading it, / called
Ralph Chaplin editor of Industrial
Solidarity them and said to him:
Here is what we have been dream.