The Industrial Workers of the World was a revolutionary syndicalist trade union which planned to combine the American working classes, and eventually workers all over the world, into one big union with an industrial basis, a syndicalist philosophy and a revolutionary aim. It was to be both the embryo of the new society and the revolutionary instrument for achieving it.
Patrick Renshaw presents the IWW story story with clear-sighted sympathy and his book, the first full study of the IWW by an independent observer, is a real contribution to the history of this period.