William Dudley Haywood, nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Haywood was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Bill Haywood
Industrial Workers of the World stickerette "Thief!"
1907 photo of defendants Charles Moyer, Bill Haywood, and George Pettibone
Haywood was the co-author of a popular exposition of the principles of industrial unionism published by Charles H. Kerr & Co. in 1911.
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
Big Bill Haywood and office workers in the IWW General Office, Chicago, summer 1917
The first IWW charter in Canada, Vancouver Industrial Mixed Union no.322, May 5, 1906
A Wobbly membership card, or "red card"
1914 IWW demonstration in New York City