Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family by Jane Little Botkin

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) formed in 1905 to give voice to revolutionary syndicalism and, above all else, to organize the supposedly unorganizable. The IWW maintained a loose organizational hierarchy between the national offices in Chicago and locals spread across the United States. It soon had branches in Canada, Mexico, and many far-flung places around the world. This structure elevated individual local organizers from a remarkable range of ethnic and racial diversity. In the western United States, Frank Little rose to prominence as one of the most important regional organizers. Jane Little Botkin tells Frank Little’s story by digging into IWW collections, local archives, and a collection of family documents and remembrances that are beyond the reach of other historians because she is one of Little’s descendants. The book is both a family history and an important regional study of the IWW divided into three parts covering Little’s...