Goldfield, Nevada, now a ghost town, but in 1907 a booming mining metropolis of nearly 20,000 residents and the largest city in the state, was ground zero for the IWW in 1907. A joint organizing campaign with the Western Federation of Miners had begun in 1906 and by early 1907 the results were impressive. Hundreds of cooks, waiters, bartenders, teamsters, clerks, and construction laborers had joined the IWW alongside the 1,500 unionized miners. Picket lines and strikes had won the 8 hour day and substantial pay raises for both miners and town workers. Indeed the IWW-WFM combine all but controlled the little city through the spring and summer of 1907. The financial panic of October 1907 and ensuing depression undermined the workers' position. When mine owners and other employers cracked down, the unions struck and the violence provided the excuse to call for federal troops. President Roosevelt sent three Army companies and later dispatched an investigating committee. By early 1908, the unions were crumbling.

1907 wtinessed the reorganization of IWW media. The Industrial Worker had been the first official voice of the IWW, but after the faction fight that split the organization at the 1906 convention, the IW ceased publication. Two years later it would reappear and remains today the official newspaper of the IWW, but in 1907 and 1908 the Industrial Union Bulletin served as the IWW's English-language publication (See full list of IWW newspapers). The Bulletin appeared weekly in four-page issues, edited by Wm. E. Trautmann, General Secretary of the IWW, from the union's headquarters in Chicago.