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Article: Industrial Workers of the World
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD
(IWW) had a major impact on the American labor movement, despite its rotating membership and controversial methods. The activities of its members, called "Wobblies" for the "W" in its acronym, entered the folklore of an underclass of hoboes and migratory labor.
The unprecedented American economic development in the late nineteenth century expanded the factory system and mechanization. The new kinds of industries subsumed the labor previously performed by skilled craftspeople and required an increase in the hired workforce. To meet the need for workers, industries relied heavily on migration from rural America and massive ...