Guide to the Industrial Workers of the World Collected Documents,
1905-1971 [bulk 1919-1927].

Consist chiefly of printed administrative materials from the IWW central office, and documents of various regional, strike and prison defense committees.

The IWW administrative documents include proceedings, reports, minutes and memoranda of the General Executive Board, general conventions and membership meetings (1906-1925); leaflets; membership lists; a union organizational chart; financial statements (1922-1953); balloting materials for general referenda, and constitutional amendments (1920-1950); legal documents pertaining to criminal cases, and the imprisonment of union members; correspondence of union members with the American Civil Liberties Union concerning alleged political prisoners; and memoranda, bulletins, and published materials regarding union politics, the IWW union structure and social action (1925-1971).

Additionally, bulletins, memoranda, leaflets and pamphlets, routine correspondence between IWW staff and prisoners, and financial records. Also, statements of various local, regional, prisoner, strike, and defense committees, including the Emergency Joint Branch of Portland, Oregon; committees in Everett, Wash.; California; the Mesaba Iron Range; New York; and the Northwest District; Workers Prison Relief Defense Committees; and the Centralia Publicity and Joint Amnesty Committees. Documents generally pertain to police and vigilante attacks against IWW members and organizers; IWW strikes, organizing campaigns and defense tactics; and analyses of the IWW's program of action (1916-1933).

Consist of bulletins, leaflets, minutes, election materials, letters, financial statements, legal documents, and bylaws of various locals of the Industrial Workers of the World.

IWW locals were located in Philadelphia (Local 8), New York City (Locals 100, 103), Paterson, N.J. (Local 1000), Spokane, Wash. (Local 120), Montana (Locals 210-220, 800), California (Local 230), Chicago (Locals 300, 400, 440, 450, 520, 600), Detroit (Local 573), and the American Middle West (Local 110). The locals included workers in construction (Local 330), textiles, agriculture, lumber, petroleum, machinery, marine transportation (Local 510), and metals and mining industries. These documents generally pertain to strikes by IWW members, civil rights, union politics, defense tactics, organizing campaigns, imprisoned IWW strikers, wages, hours of work, working conditions, and union conventions.

Include pamphlets, official union bulletins, and miscellaneous publications.

The publication files include materials pertaining to union structure, politics, organizing activities, history, strikes, legal cases relating to the union, the imprisonment of union members, and the general subjects of socialism, economics, freedom of speech, and industrial revolution. Pamphlets were prepared by various union members and committees, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William D. Haywood, William Trautmann, and Vincent St. John, There are, in addition, pamphlets written by prominent socialists, academicians, public figures, and social action agencies, including Daniel De Leon, Paul F. Brissenden, Max Eastman, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Also, bulletins and union newspapers (1922-1953).

Consist primarily of clippings (1911-1922); leaflets and bulletins pertaining to union organizing, unemployment, strikes, prisoners, attacks on union members by the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations, court cases, criminal syndicalist laws, prison conditions, strikes in Lawrence, Paterson, Butte, the Mesaba Iron Range, Wheatland, and Hopfields, in various mines, mills and factories, the Centralia Massacre, interorganizational conflict, freedom of speech, civil rights, and labor violence; letters of union staff and members, including those in prison; and reports and articles by Robert Bruère, Paul F. Brissenden, Arno Dosch, and the American Civil Liberties Union regarding prisoners, socialism, and the union. Also, sheet music, legal documents, and a file of memorabilia.