repression would work to exacerbate the internal tensions responsible for that decline. There were a number of reasons that the IWW faced division in 1924. Wobbly leaders who had been arrested and imprisoned during or after World War I on espionage charges (for opposing the war) had just been released in two groups; some, in mid-1923, agreed to a pardon that stipulated they must refrain from activities related to their former union activism. Their decision was viewed with suspicion by the IWW, and by those who refused the pardon. Those who chose to stay in prison were released in December 1923, but their circumstances were likewise divisive. The IWW reacted to the repression commencing in 1917, in part, by making all former leaders of the IWW ineligible for office. Ralph Darlington observed that this "effectively severed the organization from its past, decapitating the IWW even more ruthlessly than the government had been able to." Some former leaders, including John Reed, James P. Cannon, and William Z. Foster, had joined the Communist Party, and disagreement over bolshevism created additional dissension. One IWW leader, George Williams, had been in Moscow in 1921, and formed a bad opinion of the political situation in the Soviet Union. He warned against possible Communist influence in the IWW, stating that it would endanger both the principles of the IWW, and the organization itself. Acting upon Williams' recommendation, the IWW chose to oppose Bolshevism. But Bolshevism was only a complicating factor. The centralist-decentralist split would play the decisive role in the future of the IWW. Two IWWs, side by side The modern IWW website describes a historical offshoot led by James Rowan of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union (LWIU), who invoked the E-P (Emergency Program). The other faction was sometimes called the "Four Trey" group, taking their name from the address of the IWW headquarters at 3333 W. Belmont in Chicago. Once again, the question of politics played a significant role between union factions. At the 1924 IWW convention, decentralist Rowan scheduled a session in parallel with the official session controlled by the leadership. The result was two competing factions who, as in 1906, fought in the streets and in the courts for control of IWW headquarters. In his book about the IWW, We Shall Be All, Melvyn Dubofsky concluded that the IWW had torn itself apart through internal conflict, and that the result was "total collapse".