I. W. W. Strike

The only interesting thing about the " nationwide" strike called by the Marine Transport Workers' Union to tie up shipping on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Coast ports, is that it is being run by the I. W. W. From all reports the strike itself is a failure: San Francisco, Seattle, San Pedro, New York, Boston, Baltimore and other big shipping centers assert that their vessels are hardly affected at all.

But it has been a long time since the I. W. W. have engineered any strike of more than local magnitude. Crippled during the war by the Government which jailed so many of its leaders, sucked dry of effective propaganda by the return of business prosperity which vitiated their " industrial misery and slavery " pleas, and split wide open by internal strife, the I. W. W. has suffered a relapse that most experts on labor problems thought to be fatal. The Marine Workers' strike proves that the I. W. W. have relentless vitality of a kind. Like the serpents of mythology you can cut them into little pieces, but all the pieces live.