Rebel Voices
Page 14
I heard the boss say “I’ve got
A hell of a bunch of men.”
The fireman can’t keep steam,
The carriage has jumped the track;
I wonder what does it mean,
Machinery acting like that?
Lordy! Hain’t this awful bad,
That shipping clerk is a sight!
He sent the timber to Bagdad,
Which should have gone to Cavite.
The old mill is running in debt,
I think the boss is getting wise;
He came to me and said, “Jet,
What’s the matter with them guys?”
I says, “Old cuss, you know full well,
That through your hellish greed;
You have given these men hell,
And kept them ever in need.
“They are awake at last,
Have donned their wooden shoes,
If you don’t come clean, fast,
You’ll get a case of blues.”
Now slaves these words are true—
This weapon you always own—
If we our duty each will do,
Each will win a home.—Amen.
8
This poem signed by Joe Hill was first printed in Solidarity (June 27, 1914), under the title, “The Rebel’s Toast.” It later appeared, unsigned, in several pre-World War I editions of the I.W.W. songbook.
THE REBEL’S TOAST
By J. HILL
If Freedom’s road seems rough and hard,
And strewn with rocks and thorns,
Then put your wooden shoes on, pard,
And you won’t hurt your corns.
To organize and teach, no doubt,
Is very good—that’s true,
But still we can’t succeed without
The Good Old Wooden Shoe.
Solidarity, November 11, 1916.
9
This song by Ralph Chaplin appeared in Solidarity (February 21, 1914), and in the seventh edition of the I.W.W. songbook.
HEY! POLLY
By RALPH CHAPLIN
(Tune: “Yankee Doodle”)
The politician prowls around,
For worker’s votes entreating;
He claims to know the slickest way
To give the boss a beating.
Chorus
Polly, we can’t use you, dear,
To lead us into clover;
This fight is ours and as for you,
Clean out or get run over.
He claims to be the bosses’ foe,
On worker’s friendship doting.
He says, “Don’t fight while on the job,
But do it all by voting.
Elect ME to the office, boys,
Let all your rage pass o’er you;
Don’t bother with your countless wrongs,
I’ll do your fighting for you.”
He says that sabotage won’t do,
(It isn’t to his liking)
And that without his mighty aid
There is no use in striking.
He says that he can lead us all
To some fair El Dorado,
But he’s of such a yellow hue
He’d cast a golden shadow!
He begs and coaxes, threatens, yells,
For shallow glory thirsting.
In fact he’s just a bag of wind
That’s swollen up to bursting.
The smiling bosses think he’d like
To boodle from their manger;
And as he never mentions Strike,
They know there is no danger.
And all the while he spouts and spiels,
He’s musing undetected,
On what a lovely snap he’ll have
When once he is elected.
10
The words and the music of this song, which is sometimes called “Tie ’em Up,” were written by George G. Allen and appeared in Solidarity (October 14, 1916). Nothing is known about the author. It is one of the few I.W.W. songs for which the author wrote both the words and the music.
THE ONE BIG STRIKE
Words and Tune by G. G. ALLEN
Now we have no fight with members of the old A. F. of L.
But we ask you use your reason with the facts we have to tell.
Your craft is but protection for a form of property,
And your skill that is your property you’re losing, don’t you see.
Improvements on machinery take tool and trade away,
And you’ll be among the common slaves upon some fateful day.
Now the things of which we’re telling you we are mighty sure about;
O, what’s the use to strike the way you can’t win out?
Chorus
Tie ’em up, tie ’em up; that’s the way to win;
Don’t notify the bosses ‘till hostilities begin.
Don’t let them use their gun-men, scabs and all their like,
What you need is One Big Union and the One Big Strike.
Why do you make agreements that divide you when you fight
And let the bosses bluff you with a contract’s “sacred right,”
Why stay at work when other crafts are battling with the foe,
That your interests are identical it’s time that you did know.
The day that you begin to see the classes waging war
You will join the biggest tie-up that was ever known before.
With the General Strike in progress and all workers stand as one
There will be a revolution—not a wheel shall run.
Chorus
Tie ’em up, tie ’em up; that’s the way to win;
Don’t notify the bosses ‘till hostilities begin.
Don’t let them use their gun-men, scabs and all their like,
What you need is One Big Union and the One Big Strike.
11
This song by Ralph Chaplin appeared in the eighth edition of the I.W.W. songbook. In his autobiography, he wrote: “My ‘Sab Cat’ symbolized the ‘slow down as a means of ‘striking on the job.’ The whole matter of sabotage was to be thrashed out thoroughly at our trial…. The prosecution used the historic meaning of the word to prove that we drove spikes into logs, copper tacks into fruit trees, and practiced all manner of arson, dynamiting, and wanton destruction…. We had been guilty of using both the ‘wooden shoe’ and the ‘black cat’ to symbolize our strategy of ‘striking on the job.’ The ‘sabotage’ advocated in my cartoons and stickerettes was summed up in the widely circulated jingle:
‘The hours are long, the pay is small
So take your time and buck ’em all.’”
A series of cartoons by Chaplin appeared in Solidarity and the Industrial Worker in 1915–16, showing a clean-cut, virile young Wobbly led by a black cat into the harvest fields, toward the rising sun of industrial unionism, and into the mines and lumbercamps. Some of Chaplin’s captions on the cartoons read: “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty! Come to Your Minnesota Milk! It’s Your Fight! Get on the Job! Mee-oo-ow!” As labor folklorist Archie Green has written: “The black cat is an old symbol for malignant and sinister purposes, foul deeds, bad luck, and witchcraft with countless superstitious connections. Wobblies extended the black cat figure visually to striking on the job, direct action, and sabotage” (“John Neuhouse: Wobbly Folklorist,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 73, No. 289).
THAT SABO-TABBY KITTEN
By RALPH H. CHAPLIN
(Tune: Dixie Land)
You rotten rats go and hide your faces,
I’m right here, so hunt your places,
Hurry, now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
The tiger wild in his jungle sittin’
Never fights like this here kitten.
Hurry, now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
Chorus:
O, the rats all hate and fear me; meow! M E O W!
The softest paw can be a CLAW!
Th
ey seldom venture near me.
Hurrah! they saw your Sabo-tabby kitten!
The boss has cream for his lordly dinner,
Feed him milk and make him thinner!
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
If you are down and the boss is gloating,
Trust in me instead of voting.
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
On every wheel that turns I’m riding,
No one knows, though, where I’m hiding.
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
The fight is tough and you can’t see through it?
Shut your traps and a cat will do it.
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
Lawyers have no bunk to fill me,
Cops and soldiers cannot kill me.
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
Step on things that the bone-heads bow to,
Come with me and I’ll show you how to.
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
This world should have but free men in it, Let me show you how to win it,
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
Solidarity, April 7, 1917.
Perch will I on the System’s coffin,
On the hearse they take it off in,
Hurry now! wonder how? M E O W—
SABOTAGE!
12
Folklorist Archie Green analyzed these verses in the Journal of American Folklore (Vol. 73, No. 289). He wrote: “Parasites and plutes were known to all the Wobblies as the enemy—the master class. The sab-cat was the symbol of sabotage…. The kitten in the wheat was the black cat’s offspring—the rock in the sheaf to break the threshing machine gears, the match on the phosphorus in the bundle to fire the stack. The kitten was not turned loose often—some Wobblies contend not at all—and the song may have been sung as much to appeal for cream for kitty as to incite action.” Green cites I.W.W. member and song collector John Neuhouse as claiming that the “Kitten in the Wheat” was sung to the tune, “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” These verses appeared in Solidarity (June 23, 1917), and were cited in the Literary Digest (April 19, 1919) as an example of I.W.W. use of sabotage symbols.
I.W.W. songwriter Richard Brazier has pointed out the similarity between the third stanza of “The Kitten in the Wheat” and the lines of the British ballad, “Shall Trelawney Die,” in an interview with Archie Green (New York, December 1960):
“And have you picked the where and when
And shall Trelawney die?
There’s fifty thousand Cornish men
Shall know the reason why.”
THE KITTEN IN THE WHEAT
By SHORTY
A sab-cat and a wobbly band,
A rebel song or two;
And then we’ll show the Parasites
Just what the cat can do.
And have you fixed the where and when
That we must slave and die?
Here’s fifty thousand harvest men
Shall know the reason why!
The sab-cat purred and twitched her tail
As happy as could be;
They’d better not throw “wobs” in jail
And leave the kitten free.
From early spring till late in fall
We toil that men may eat.
And “all for one, and one for all.”
Sing wobblies in the wheat.
The sab-cat purred and twitched her tail
And winked the other way;
Our boys shall never rot in jail,
Or else the Plutes will PAY.
You shall not keep them in the pen
Or send them forth to die,
Or fifty thousand union men
Shall know the reason why!
13
According to Peter Stone (letter to J. L. K., February 3, 1964): “Red Dor an was a West Coast soapboxer who had quite a following in Seattle in 1916–18. By trade he was an electrician, but he would rather soapbox or give ‘chart talks’ than work at the trade. After his release from Leavenworth, he became a spieler for ‘Painless Parker (commercial dentist) in San Francisco during the early 1920’s.” Doran was also the author of the undated I.W.W. leaflets, Big Business and Direct Action (Lumber Workers Industrial Union No. 500) and Law and the I.W.W. (Chicago, I.W.W. Publishing Bureau).
This selection from Doran’s testimony during the Chicago trial was taken from The Case of the U.S.A. vs. William D. Haywood et al. (Chicago, 1918).
TESTIMONY OF
J. T. (RED) DORAN
Q.—Did you ever discuss the question of sabotage at any of your meetings?
A.—Why, I have explained what sabotage was, yes, sir.
Q.—Well, tell us briefly what you have said on that subject.
A.—Well, I explained that sabotage did not mean destruction of property. Sabotage meant the withdrawal of efficiency, industrial efficiency, and told the workers that they practiced sabotage in the interest of their bosses, and illustrated the thing this way:
I said, for instance, down here in California, there is a little colony, what they call Little Landers Colony. It was located at the base of a hill, and at the top of this hill there was an extensive water supply, but in order to conserve that water it was necessary to build a dam. Now the privilege of building the dam was under the competitive system and the dam was known as the Ottay dam. Men went down on that job and it was a slave job right. They kept them on the jump all the time. Naturally, under the competition condition, contractors have to cheat on materials. They have to get the contracts, they have got to live, they cheat on materials, they squeeze and pinch here and there as the circumstances permit, so no one questions the fact but what a concrete dam could be built so solidly that nothing could take it out. I illustrate, by the Chinese wall as it stands today. We could duplicate that; we have the materials, but it is not done, and the reason it is not done is because of this competitive program, and the conditions under which it is operated, but it is the slaves themselves who actually practice the sabotage. Here is a fellow wheeling cement. At the instruction of his foreman he cheats a little on the cement; his gravel is not clean cut and clear. The sand is of a poor or inferior grade and the concrete, when it is poured in there is not what it should be. The consequence is that after a time, as in the case of this Ottay dam, the dam bursts—a storm came along, an unusual storm, that is granted—a storm came along and it burst this dam and the water flowed down off this mountain and drowned out all of these settlers in the low land at the base of the hill, their little one acre farms were ruined; their stock was gone; their homes scattered to the desert in every direction.
Now I explained that the workers had practiced sabotage in the interest of the bosses’ profits, but that the I.W.W. said, “Go on that job and put so much cement in there, put so much clean stone in there, put so much stuff in there that they can have all the storms that it is possible to brew in southern California and that dam will still stand and there will be no loss of life or property.
On the other hand, I spoke of an incident that occurred in Jersey; I was doing some electrical work in a building one day, one of these little bungalows out in the suburbs, and a fellow was spending some time on the door sill, a carpenter, and he was making a pretty close fit of things, as is necessary if you want protection against the weather in that country, and the boss came along, the real estate man came along and he said, “Holy smoke, man, you are putting in an awful lot of time on that doorsill; you have got to get a wiggle on.” This carpenter turned to him, and he said, “Why, man alive, I am only trying to make a good job out of this thing; I am putting in a door sill here as it should be put in; I want to make a house fit to live in.” The real estate man said, “Fit to live in! What are you talking about, I am not building this house to live in, I am building it to sell.”
And so the same way with my work as an electrical worker. I get a job in competition with other workers, and speed, efficiency,—speed-efficiency, profit-efficiency was the gauge.
I went in to do my work. I had to eat; I had to shoot her in just as I was told to shoot her in. Of course, there were rules and regulations supposedly governing the installation, but nevertheless, I had to pinch and squeeze everywhere, and the consequence was, as a result of speed work and conditions, I had to do the best I could to get done. The idea was to get done. Electrical fires are reported all over the United States; millions of dollars worth of property destroyed because some man has practiced sabotage in the interest of the masters. We I.W.W.’s say, we electrical workers can do a good job; you muckers can do a good job. Do it. Practice sabotage in the interest of the safety and security of society. It was along those lines that I spoke of sabotage.
I spoke too of the bosses’ sabotage, or, rather the commission merchants’ sabotage. I told of an instance down here in Ohio, we were building a line across the country one time, and I was boarding with a farmer who put a lot of us up, we were building the line through there and he boarded us, took us as boarders temporarily, and he had a lot of sheep-nose apples, and I noticed—of course, I don’t know much about those kind of things,—I noticed he had them covered over with screening, chicken screening, and I asked what that was for, and he said that was to keep the hogs from killing themselves, and the cattle from killing themselves with these fine apples. I said, “Why, goodness, man, these kind of apples, they are fine; why don’t you ship them into town, it is not very far into Cleveland, why don’t you ship them into town?” “Why,” he said, “ship them into town, I couldn’t get the price of the barrels for the apples.”
I continue then, and explain that I was in New York shortly afterwards and saw children on the street passing these fruit stands wishing and desiring apples apparently from their attitude, and here was an abundance of apples going to waste, because the farmer, after having done all of the hard work necessary to raising them, could not get over the sabotage practiced by the middleman and those who operate this produce game, could not get over that. Impeding production in the interest of profits, simply meant a dead loss to him. I have seen the same thing in California,—fruits of all kinds going to waste; I have seen field after field of spuds, where farmers would not even take the trouble of taking them up. One case down here in Castorville, sitting at the depot one day, and across from the track was a fine patch of spuds, I did not know who this fellow was alongside of me. I said, “That is a fine looking patch of spuds.” He said, “It is a fine patch of spuds, and the spuds are fine too. They are these Salina potatoes, the kind of potatoes that have made the S. P. famous, according to their advertising,” but he says “they will never be picked, they will never be gathered.” I said, “They won’t, what are you talking about?” “Well,” he said, “They won’t.” I didn’t believe him. I questioned him a little further, and found that he owned the potatoes. I said, “Do you mean to tell me, man, that fine field of spuds is not to be gathered?” He said, “That is exactly what I mean.” He said, “If I gather those spuds and pay 7 cents,” I think he said, “for a sack, and put them on the car, they offer me 56 or 58 cents for them.” He says, “I cannot pick them for that and I cannot sack them for that; they are going to waste.” I was waiting for a train. I got into Oakland. The thing kind of shocked me and I said to my wife when I got home, I said, “Have you bought any spuds lately?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Where did you get them?” She said, “I got them down to the market.” I said, “In what quantity?” She said, “I got a sack.” “What did they cost?” “$2.25.” Oakland was 80 miles on a railroad away from this town; that is also on his railroad. I explain along those lines that sabotage was practiced by the workers in the interest of the masters, and sabotage did not mean violence, did not mean destruction of property; that it was silly to talk of destruction of property when we had to recreate it, if it was a social requisite, and so on.