ABSTRACT
In 1905, what Bill Haywood called “the Continental Congress of the Working Class” gathered in Chicago. Labor leaders from across the nation attended—Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, and every socialist and radical trade unionist with a reputation, an idea, or an answer to the Labor Question was there. So was anyone who had the means to get to the meeting, the self-esteem to enter the debate, and enough popular backing to make themselves credible. The problem, writ large, was “Capitalism.” The symptoms were widespread poverty, malnutrition, poor health and education, mass discontent, and a sense of powerlessness before the gears of the economic and political machine. Prescriptions to the diseases of the economic system varied—cooperative enterprises, communal living, popular education, social housekeeping, socialist political campaigns, mass strikes and worker resistance, everything from machine breaking and “soldiering” to mass picketing and grassroots rebellion.
