delay, which gave the unions further advantage. At the height of its power in Goldfield, he IWW did not even negotiate, but simply posted wage rates and required that employers comply. Local IWW leader Vincent St. John fondly recalled: "The highest point of efficiency for any labor organization was reached by the I.W.W. and W.F.M. in Goldfield, Nevada. No committees were ever sent to any employers. The unions adopted wage scales and regulated hours. The secretary posted the same on a bulletin board outside of the union hall, and it was the LAW."p.201 The mine owners were upset with the radicalism of the IWW, as well as with the high wages, and suggested that the WFM chapter (the mine workers) merge with the IWW chapter (the town workers), expecting that the more conservative miners would dampen the radicalism of the IWW. However, exactly the opposite happened, and the IWW radicals came to dominate the mine workers. The union declared strikes in December 1906 and January 1907 for higher wages. The mine owners capitulated both times. IWW influence was at its peak on January 20, 1907, when all mines, restaurants, and saloons in Goldfield shut down on orders from the IWW, to increase attendance at the union's parade commemorating slain Russian revolutionaries, and to support Big Bill Haywood and two other WFM leasers, then under arrest in Idaho for conspiracy to murder ex-governor Steunenberg. That night, veteran WFM organizer Vincent St. John spoke to a packed audience in the union hall, promised revolution, and proclaimed: "We have no enemy but the capitalist class!"p.33-35,223-224 Mine owner George Wingfield's spies in the IWW reported that Vincent St. John saw Nevada as an isolated state with a small population where he could achieve his dream of a syndicalist-socialist utopia. Starting with Goldfield as a nucleus, he thought that the IWW could organize the whole state, then shut down the state in a general strike, after which the IWW would simply step in and run things, in place of state and local governments.p.223 A Chicago Record-Herald reporter wrote from Goldfield: "Socialism never had such a taste of the sweets of autocracy as it had in this southern Nevada mining camp, and it grew drunk with its power." "The one big union" splits Nationally, many WFM members were wary of the radicalism of the IWW, and did not want to give financial control to the IWW.