The Industrial Workers of the World, aka the Wobblies, were  an international revolutionary labor organization that formed in 1905 in opposition to the more deliberate American Federation of Labor, which organized workers into trade associations or guilds. The socialists and anarchists who formed the IWW believed all workers should unite as a class, irrespective of trade. From 1915-1917, the Wobblies organized migratory farm workers in the field and at hobo jungles and rail yards; most hobos who rode the rails at the time were Wobblies. At least twice in late 1916, scores of armed Wobblies were apprehended locally after hijacking freight trains. They wrecked the Newhall Jail (the one behind today's Old Town Newhall Library), smashing its windows and busting up the interior. Local citizens had to help our few constables contain them until they could be transported downtown. Nationally, the Wobblies faded after World War I when the government charged them with espionage and other crimes (they opposed the war and encouraged desertion); and the post-WWII Taft-Hartley Act, which banned communists from union leadership roles, just about finished them off - but not quite. They still exist in isolated parts of the country.

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