Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Kōtoku found his friends in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or Wobblies, a revolutionary coalition of unions open to all laborers, which was founded the same year he arrived, 1905. Like the ultra-left factions in Germany and Russia, their idealized tactics were the general strike and the bomb, but the IWW was more like a militant labor union with big dreams than a revolutionary conspiracy. They scrapped with hired thugs at mines and sawmills throughout the West in particular. Compared to the craft workers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), IWWers were rough-and-tumble, noted for getting in fights, moving around, and changing their names to escape bad reputations.