The American Federation of Labor was founded with the intention of building the class conscioussness and economic power of workers by organizing them on occupational lines. It pursued policies to win short term, concrete, economic gains (Cashman,206.) The AFL was first established as the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada from several independent national trade unions in 1881 and it took its definitiv

Better known as the "Wobblies," the IWW were singularly free of prejudice in an intolerant age. In the IWW's drive to organize all workers as a class against the capitalists, they employed foreign language organizers and published multilingual materials (Cashman,216.) The creation of dual unions, in direct competition to the AFL, reflected the enormous gap that existed between the outlook of business unionists such as Gompers, and the radical industrial unionists of the IWW. Their radical beliefs included ideas such as, " the working class and the employing class have nothing in common." The IWW saw the employing class as a tyrant that was set out to keep the working class poor and powerless. Bill Haywood said, " There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life." (Cashman, 214)

The AFL's weak central body was also a major disadvantage to it being a strong organization. Because it was powerless to settle disputes between unions it was left open to internal down falls such as jurisdictional disputes over whether workers at a given task should be members of one union or another, and to discipline organizations whose policies were damaging to labor in general. This policy of being decentralized clearly hurt the organization's ability to be an influence on its union members and to govern it properly. Its more conservative outlooks and the racial boundaries it built may have also persuaded possible members to join other organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World or the Socialist Party of America.

Socialism flourished in the early 1900's and came to have an important impact on the lives of significant numbers of Americans, only to fall away sharply in the various domestic conflicts that accompanied World War 1. Unlike the AFL and the IWW the Socialist Party attempted to a political agenda to gain support and recognition from the people. The party's principal strength was limited to a few groups, the tenant farmers of the southern plains, the German trade unionists of Milwaukee, the eastern European Jews in New York's rag trade, lumbermen in the West, and metal miners and migrant laborers in the IWW. The socialist strength was strongest in small cities and towns but by 1917 it had increased its hold in larger cities of the industrialized East and Midwest (Cashman,219.) The Socialist Party, under the leadership of Debs wished to reform the system, and not to overthrow it. Despite their recognition of this fact, the party still quarreled over the means by which a new society could be achieved. The IWW shunned conventional party politics bringing about disputes within the Party. The IWW and the socialist group were appealing to different types of workers. The socialist party wanted voters where as the IWW was directing its efforts toward women and new immigrants. Socialists in office were cautious, fearing they would alienate business and the public by introducing reforms that would necessitate higher taxation, sometimes finding themselves limited by charters or at odds with hostile state legislatures. Thus the Socialist Party seemed to be most successful in winning power when it was most progressive, which left the ultimate revolutionary goals of socialism unsatisfied (Leuchtenberg, 178.) Eventually because of the large demand for goods brought on by the onset of World War 1 and Wilson's policy of intervention the Socialist Party would become extremely weak.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2510
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)