William D. Haywood (1869–1928)

Big Bill Haywood was raised in Salt Lake City, because that's where his family was forced to deboard the train headed to the California Gold Rush as they realized his younger brother wasn't with them. His father passed not long after getting established in Utah. Bill had to be the man of the house since a young age. He has his first strike when he was 11 years old after her mother lent him out to a distant uncle for farm work, and the uncle wouldn't even give him a water break. By the time he is 15 he's out of school and working as a miner full time. Living in the bunk house with everyone else.

He's introducted to the ideals of socialism by an old member of the Knights of Labor and clings to it for the rest of his life.

What I found most surprising is how firmly Haywood is convienced their is no God while everyone close to him has such faith. His wife is a believer in Christian Science, his mother an Episcopalian, in whose church Haywood is confirmed only because his mom knowns no other way to legally get his name changed so that he can pay honor to his late father without a religious ceremony, and he indicates he had seen Bringham Young in the temple, so he must have spent some time in the LDS Church without actually admitting such.

Joining the Western Federation of Miners not long after he starts in his chosen profession they are able to levy for stronger involvement in many mines. Though his description of a bull pen I learned really what the boss class can do.

Never again! He lost his eye in a mining accident. By the time he was in his 30s his Fellow Workers elected him the Secretary-Treasurer of the WFM. I was surprised that after this he never went back to manual labor again. While there he set off the IWW one Big Union for all industries. The first convention in Chicago sounds like a heck of an adventure.

I was surprised, but probably shouldn't have been, that by the end of that first year of the IWW there were two different groups claiming to be the only legitmate union. In-fighting and sidetrackign since the beginning. Haywood is accused of murder, which he claims is is only because he organized well.

My "favorite" legal troupe here was the little girl who was shot by a police officer and Haywood and two additional organizers are tried as responsible for the murder because the girl wouldn't have been on the picket line to be shot if they hadn't called a Strike.

After reading his autobiography I am only further convinced that there needs to be a movie of which he is the primary subject. I still think the one scene with Haywood was the best of the 80s masterpiece "Reds"… (mehr)

The one-eyed William D. “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1923) was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a member of the Communist Party of the USA, and a revolutionary fighter against capitalism and exploitation.

His autobiography is a riveting working-class history of the USA. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1869, he describes growing up in the “Wild West” with all its evils: racism, poverty, outlaws, mob violence, street shootings, religious fanaticism, and lynches of Mexicans, Native Americans, and African-Americans. At age 9, while carving a slingshot, Bill stabbed himself in the eye with a knife (ouch!), and at age 15, he began work as a miner.

Major labour uprisings such as the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in defense of the 8-hour workday and the Great Pullman Strike of 1894 greatly influenced Bill’s ideological development. By 1900, Bill had become a member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) General Executive Board. As a member of the WFM executive, Bill was actively involved in the Colorado Labour Wars of 1903-1904. According to Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr,
“There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904.” As a founding and leading member of the IWW, Bill was also actively involved in other significant strikes, such as the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912 and the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.

Bill’s labour and IWW activities and his opposition to World War I earned him the wrath of state and federal authorities. Police repression and his many legal troubles feature prominently in his memoirs. In 1905, Bill was kidnapped in Colorado by Pinkerton detectives working for Idaho state officials to face trial for the assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. He was acquitted and became a national labour icon. In 1917, the Justice Department raided IWW offices and arrested more than 100 activists under the Espionage Act for “conspiring to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes.” Bill was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but skipped bail and fled to the USSR, where he lived until his death in 1928.

An excellent memoir by one of America’s most powerful trade unionists.… (mehr)