Editing Industrial Workers of the World (section)

====IWW versus the Western Federation of Miners====
The Western Federation of Miners left the IWW in 1907, but the IWW wanted the WFM back. The WFM had made up about a third of the IWW membership, and the western miners were tough union men, and good allies in a labor dispute. In 1908, Vincent St. John tried to organize a stealth takeover of the WFM. He wrote to WFM organizer Albert Ryan, encouraging him to find reliable IWW sympathizers at each WFM local, and have them appointed delegates to the annual convention by pretending to share whatever opinions of that local needed to become a delegate. Once at the convention, they could vote in a pro-IWW slate. St. Vincent promised: "once we can control the officers of the WFM for the IWW, the big bulk of the membership will go with them." But the takeover did not succeed.<ref>{{cite report|title=Official Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Convention|publisher=Western Federation of Miners|date=July 1912|pages=283–284}}</ref>

According to several historians, the [[1913 El Paso smelters' strike]] marked one of the first instances of direct competition between the IWW and the WFM, as the two unions competed to organize workers on strike against the [[American Smelting and Refining Company]]'s local [[smelter]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Acuña |first=Rodolfo F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OMcfEAAAQBAJ |title=Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600–1933 |publisher=[[University of Arizona Press]] |year=2007 |page=176 |isbn=978-0-8165-4329-8 |location=Tucson, Arizona |author-link=Rodolfo Acuña |access-date=March 1, 2023 |archive-date=October 1, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241001125503/https://books.google.com/books?id=OMcfEAAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Benton-Cohen |first=Katherine |url=https://archive.org/details/borderlineameric0000bent/ |title=Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=2009 |page=203 |isbn=978-0-674-05355-7 |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Mellinger |first=Philip J. |url=https://archive.org/details/racelaborinweste0000mell/ |title=Race and Labor in Western Copper: The Fight for Equality, 1896–1918 |publisher=[[University of Arizona Press]] |year=1995 |page=137 |isbn=978-0-8165-4772-2 |location=Tucson, Arizona}}</ref> In 1914, Butte, Montana, erupted into [[Butte, Montana labor riots of 1914|a series of riots]] as miners dissatisfied with the [[Western Federation of Miners]] local at Butte formed a new union, and demanded that all miners join the new union, or be subject to beatings or worse. Although the new rival union had no affiliation with the IWW, it was widely seen as IWW-inspired. The leadership of the new union contained many who were members of the IWW or agreed with the IWW's methods and objectives. The new union failed to supplant the WFM, and the ongoing fight between the two resulted in the copper mines of Butte, longtime union strongholds for the WFM, becoming open shops, and the mine owners recognized no union from 1914 until 1934.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c7FXL6R5MM0C |first=Nancy |last=Capace |title=Encyclopedia of Montana |isbn=9780403096046 |page=156 |access-date=October 14, 2018 |date=January 1, 2000 |publisher=Somerset Publishers |archive-date=August 10, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220810014220/https://books.google.com/books?id=c7FXL6R5MM0C |url-status=live }}</ref>