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William D. Haywood
William Dudley “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1928) was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America...view moreWilliam Dudley “Big Bill” Haywood (1869-1928) was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, he was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Born on February 4, 1869 in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, the son of a South African woman and a Kentucky miner, he began working down a mine in Nevada at age 9, and also briefly worked as a cowboy and a homesteader. A speech in 1896 by Ed Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners, inspired Haywood to sign up as a WFM member, thus formally beginning his involvement in America’s labor movement. By 1900 he had become a member of the national union’s General Executive Board, and in 1902 he became secretary-treasurer of the WFM, the number two position after President Charles Moyer.
At the founding convention of the IWW in 1905, Haywood chaired the proceedings and subsequently led the initial IWW organizing efforts. His arrest and acquittal on a labour-related murder charge in 1906-1907 propelled him into the national limelight, and he spent much of the next five years on a national speaking tour for the Socialist Party. Haywood and other IWW organizers lent their support to a number of strikes in the period from 1909-1913.
In 1917, shortly after the United States entered WWI, Haywood was arrested in Chicago, along with scores of other IWW members, and he was convicted the following year on charges amounting to treason and sabotage. Released on bail during appeal procedures, in 1921 Haywood decided to jump bail and go to Russia. There he was given an administrative post by the Russian revolutionary government, but his health steadily declined and he died on May 18, 1928 in Moscow, aged 59.view less