William Dudley Haywood, better known as "Big Bill" Haywood, was a 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. Haywood was an advocate of industrial unionism: a labor philosophy that favors organizing all workers in an industry under one union, regardless of the specific trade or skill level.
Background
William Haywood was born in 1869 in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. His father, a Pony Express rider, died of pneumonia when Haywood was three years old.
At age nine, he injured his right eye while whittling a slingshot with a knife, permanently blinding his right eye. He then quit his school and went to work in a mine.
Education
Bill Haywood was visiting middle school as a boy. He left it some time after his eye injury, moving away to start working.
Career
In 1896, Ed Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners, spoke at the Idaho silver mine where Haywood was working. Inspired by his speech, Haywood signed up as a WFM member, thus formally beginning his involvement in America's labor movement.
After 1896 he became active in the Western Federation of Miners.
In 1900 he became the union's secretarytreasurer.
In early 1906 he was arrested for complicity in the assassination of ex-Governor Frank R. Steunenberg of Idaho. Haywood won acquittal in July 1907.
In 1908 the Western Federation of Miners repudiated him, and he turned his attentions to the I.W.W., which he soon controlled.
Haywood was arrested in September 1917 under the wartime Espionage Act and along with 94 other I.W.W. members was convicted in August 1918. Sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment and a $10,000 fine, Haywood was released on bail pending decision upon application for a new trial.
He left the United States on Mar. 31, 1921, and went to the Soviet Union.
In Russia, Haywood became a labor advisor to Lenin's Bolshevik government, but Lenin's illness and death and Stalin's rise to power ended his role as an advisor to the Soviet labor movement in 1923. Haywood participated in the founding of the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony.