by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
At no time did we allow strangers to come among us, although they tried to break in on different occasions.
At the time of disbanding we had 96 at the meeting, which was nothing short of marvelous when it is considered that they were brought together on a day’s notice and many of them had no previous experience in organizations. This was 16 short of our number on leaving Portland, but a number of those who left us went ahead and reached Fresno.
It has often been asked, “Why did you not split up into small parties so you could ride the trains?” We had before us the fact that many small parties previously trying to make Fresno never reached there. Should we have split up we would not have received the support and assistance of the citizens, the police would have continually arrested and driven us out of the towns. The result would have been that but few would have reached Fresno.
True, there was some friction and dissension among us, but at no time was it permitted to obscure the real purpose of the trip, and each of the 96 expressed regret that we should not continue on into Fresno.
It is impossible for me at this time to give a financial statement, as I have not the books, but approximately $250 was collected and disbursed besides food and clothing.
It may be asked, “Would you undertake a similar trip in the future?” I believe this entire 96 would respond to a call of necessity, but we hope that no such call will be made for trivial or insufficient reasons.
Now that the Fresno fight is won let us all get busy on the eight hour day.
E. M. CLYDE
Seattle, Washington.
3
This article on the 1911 Aberdeen free speech fight appeared in the One Big Union Monthly (March 1919). In his ninety years “Stumpy” Payne (1869–1963) had been a carpenter, farm hand, farmer, railroad man, and owner of a small stump ranch, as well as I.W.W. organizer and a former editor of the Industrial Worker. He was the only I.W.W. member who attended both the 1905 founding convention and the I.W.W. convention of 1955. In July 1955 Payne served a six-month term as editor of the Industrial Worker. He was eighty-five.
In a tribute to Payne which appeared in the Industrial Worker (October 23, 1963) editor Carl Keller wrote: “He was a serious rebel with an amount of dignity and urbanity that was rare. He remained a dedicated Wobbly to the end of his days.”
THE MAINSPRING OF ACTION
By C. E. PAYNE
In the fall of 1911 occurred the Aberdeen, Washington, Free Speech fight. Altho shorter than many of the contests of this character that took place thruout the West shortly before and after that time, it was, while it lasted, one of the most bitterly contested struggles in which the organization took part. Also, it was by all odds the most clean-cut victory that was won by the organization in struggles of this character.
One phase of the fight that has not to my knowledge been touched upon was the psychology of the men who took part in it at the time the final and winning attack was made to regain the use of the streets for purposes of agitation. I had an exceptional opportunity to observe this state of mind, which for a better term may perhaps be properly called a religious fervor.
I had been for some time the secretary for the Free Speech Committee, and had been in the town for about six weeks before the evening of January 10, 1912, when the grand rush was made to use the streets for “free speech.” As I had the correspondence of the Committee in hand at the time, I was ordered not to take any part in the demonstration for that night. However, some one had been making it his business to find out my business, and this, together with my interest in the proceedings, made a change in the program, and this change gave me the opportunity to observe this psychological phenomenon.
The demonstration was timed for 6:00 p.m., when it was figured the members of the Citizens’ Club would be at supper, and it was thought this would give some of the men a chance to make a few minutes’ talk before they could be arrested. Fifteen men had been selected to make the first attack. The manner of selecting them was by refusing to permit any one to speak unless he plainly stated that he would speak anyhow, permit or none. The Committee had decided that fifteen should be the number, but seventeen was the number that actually took part in the “speaking.”
Wishing to be able to make a first-hand report of what took place on the streets, I went among the crowd, which in a few minutes after six o’clock had grown to some 3,000 persons, all eager to see the demonstration. These were gathered around the principal street corner, but there was no one in the center of the street. By common consent this was left entirely to the participants in the battle.
The first speaker would have been able to hold a crowd with a speech of half an hour or more had he been allowed the time, but he was arrested and hustled off to jail within less than two minutes after he had shouted “Fellow Workers.” No sooner had he been taken thru the crowd toward the jail by two members of the Citizens’ Club, than another man stepped out from the crowd and began, “Fellow Workers!” This man’s voice had the twang of the Down East Yankee, and his bearing was that of a descendant of the Pilgrims of the Mayflower.
Following him came a short, swarthy German, evidently from the Schwartzwald. “Mein Fellow Vorkers! Schust you listen by me vhile I tells you sometings!” But what that “something” was he could not tell before he was seized and hustled in the wake of the other two. After the German came a large, raw-boned Irishman with the brogue of the ould sod thick on his tongue. “Fellow Worrkers! Oi’m not much of a spaker, but Oi don’t suppose Oi’ll be allowed to talk long, anyhow.” That was all the speech he was allowed to make before he too was led away.
Next in line was an Italian who shouted the regular greeting of “Fellow Workers,” spoke a few rapid fire words and was taken towards the jail. From another part of the crowd a five-foot man with the unmistakable rolling gait of a sailor sprang to center of the cleared street, shouted “Fellow Workers,” and had time enough to make perhaps the longest “speech” of the evening. “I have been run out of this town five times by the Citizens’ Club, and every time I have found my way back. This proves conclusively that the world is round.” But when he had gone thus far with his remarks he was seized and half carried toward the jail. Behind the sailor came a lumber jack, no talker, but a power in the woods where men hold their place by strength and nerve. “Fellow Workers! There is one of the Citizens’ Club fellows over there. He is going to arrest some one.” The man pointed out at once made a run for the lumber worker, and he too was taken to jail.
Thus came one after another, made the common salutation of “Fellow Workers,” started to talk and generally managed to say but a few words, when he too was hustled to the jail. The entire demonstration was over in less than half an hour and the crowd began to disperse. It was while leaving the scene of the demonstration that I was approached from behind by two men who came one on either side of me, and with the remark, “Oh, say! The chief wants to see you,” they led me to the jail.
My arrest was the last one of the night. After being searched and questioned by the police, I was put in the “tank” with the rest of the “free speech fighters.” My reception was the heartiest demonstration of welcome I have ever received. Their joy seemed to be combined with an appreciation of the joke on me, but it was none the less hearty.
After the greetings had been made, and things became comparatively quiet, I was able to look about me and see at close range the manner of men they were. Outwardly, they were of the careless, happy-go-lucky sort to whom dolce far niente appeared to be a more appropriate motto than any other that could be selected. Not one had any ties of kindred, job or financial interest in the town. Most of them had never been in the place before. Perhaps a majority never would have been there had not some member of the I.W.W. flashed the word over the country that he and others were denied the rights they claimed. Many of them would never be there again.
Here they were, eighteen men in the vigor of life, most of whom came long distances thru snow and hostile towns by beating the
ir way, penniless and hungry, into a place where a jail sentence was the gentlest treatment that could be expected, and where many had already been driven into the swamps and beaten nearly to death by members of the Citizens’ Club for the same offense that they had committed so joyously tonight. All had walked the three miles from Hoquiam in a rain to take part in the demonstration that all confidently felt would mean that they would be sent to jail until midnight, and then be driven into the swamps with clubs and guns, and that perhaps some of them would be killed, as had nearly been the case with others before them. Yet here they were, laughing in boyish glee at tragic things that to them were jokes.
One man said, “This is cold after the orange groves of California.” The man he spoke to replied, “It is not as cold as the Canadian railways.” One man remarked, “The snow in the Rockies is a fright,” to which another replied, “It don’t be worse than the Siskyouss.”
A ponderous German recited the Marxian battle cry. Two men compared notes on their arrests, and laughed gleefully at some joke on a policeman. One boy who had taken a “vacation” from college to attend the Free Speech fight had composed a “yell,” and this was frequently shouted with all their power. “Who are we? I.W.W., don’t you see! First in war, first in peace, first in the hands of the Aberdeen police. Rah! Rah!! Rah!!! I.W.W.” As the city council had been called into extra session to consider the situation, and their meeting hall was just above the tank where we were locked in, there was always extra emphasis put on the “I.W.W.” for their benefit.
But what was the motive behind the actions of these men? Clearly, they would take no part in the social, political or economic life of the town, after the fight was over. No place in the country could treat them worse than Aberdeen was trying to treat them. Why were they here? Is the call of Brotherhood in the human race greater than any fear or discomfort, despite the efforts of the masters of life for six thousand years to root out that call of Brotherhood from our minds? Is there a joy in martyrdom that the human race must sense at times to make its life complete? Must humanity ever depend on the most despised of its members for its most spiritual gifts? Is it among the working class that we may see the fulfillment of the prediction that there shall be no Greek or Barbarian, no Scythian or Parthian, no circumcision or uncircumcision, but all one? These things have I often pondered as the result of the twenty-two hours in the Aberdeen jail.
4
These unsigned verses were printed in the Industrial Worker (May 1, 1912).
WE’RE BOUND FOR SAN DIEGO
(Tune: “The Wearing of the Green”)
In that town called San Diego when the workers try to talk
The cops will smash them with a say and tell ’em “take a walk.”
They throw them in a bull pen, and they feed them rotten beans,
And they call that “law and order” in that city, so it seems.
Chorus
We’re bound for San Diego, you better join us now.
If they don’t quit, you bet your life there’ll be an awful row.
We’re coming by the hundreds, will be joined by hundreds more,
So join at once and let them see the workers are all sore.
They’re clubbing fellow working men who dare their thoughts express;
And if old Otis has his way, there’s sure to be a mess.
So swell this army, working men, and show them what we’ll do
When all the sons of toil unite in One Big Union true.
We have put the town of Aberdeen with others on our map;
And the brass bound thugs of all of them were handy with the “sap”;
But the I.W.W.’s are boys who have no fears
And we’ll whip old San Diego if it takes us twenty years.
5
This remarkable speech by I.W.W. member Jack Whyte, immediately after being sentenced to jail during the 1912 San Diego free speech fight, first appeared in Solidarity (August 24, 1912). It was subsequently reprinted several times and quoted by J. G. Brooks in American Syndicalism, The I.W.W. (New York, 1913).
On release from jail, six months later, Whyte went to Akron, Ohio, where he helped organize rubber workers during an I.W.W. strike in 1913. A speaking tour was announced in Solidarity (June 23, 1913). The article said, “He has a pleasing personality; is young, virile, and full of the fire of rebellion. While not lacking in enthusiasm, his speeches are replete with sanity and construction. He makes the workers see the meaning of industrial organization and its necessity.”
“HIS HONOR” GETS HIS
The following is a stenographic report of Jack Whyte’s speech before Judge Sloan, of the superior court of San Diego County, California, on being asked why sentence should not be passed. He was fined six months and is now at San Diego County jail on a bread and water diet. He is a member of Local 13, I.W.W., and was arrested on a conspiracy charge in the recent San Diego Free Speech Fight.
There are only a few words that I care to say and this court will not mistake them for a legal argument, for I am not acquainted with the phraseology of the bar nor the language common to the court room.
There are two points which I want to touch upon—the indictment itself and the misstatement of the prosecuting attorney. The indictment reads, “The People of the State of California against J. W. Wright and Others.” It’s a hideous lie. The people in this court room know that it is a lie; the court itself knows that it is a lie, and I know that it is a lie. If the people of the state are to blame for this persecution, then the people are to blame for the murder of Michael Hoy and the assassination of Joseph Mikolasek. They are to blame and responsible for every bruise, every insult and injury inflicted upon the members of the working class by the vigilantes of this city. The people deny it and have so emphatically denied it that Governor Johnson sent Harris Weinstock down here to make an investigation and clear the reputation of the people of the state of California from the odor that you would attach to it. You cowards throw the blame upon the people, but I know who is to blame and I name them—it is Spreckles and his partners in business and this court is the lackey and lickspittle of that class, defending the property of that class against the advancing horde of starving American workers.
The prosecuting attorney, in his plea to the jury, accused me of saying on a public platform at a public meeting, “To hell with the courts, we know what justice is.” He told a great truth when he lied, for if he had searched the innermost recesses of my mind he could have found that thought, never expressed by me before, but which I express now, “To hell with your courts, I know what justice is,” for I have sat in your court room day after day and have seen members of my class pass before this, the so-called bar of justice. I have seen you, Judge Sloane, and others of your kind, send them to prison because they dared to infringe upon the sacred rights of property. You have become blind and deaf to the rights of man to pursue life and happiness, and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred right of property shall be preserved. Then you tell me to respect the law. I do not. I did violate the law, as I will violate every one of your laws and still come before you and say, “To hell with the courts,” because I believe that my right to life is far more sacred than the sacred right of property that you and your kind so ably defend.
I do not tell you this in the expectation of getting justice, but to show my contempt for the whole machinery of law and justice as represented by this and every other court. The prosecutor lied, but I will accept his lie as a truth and say again so that you, Judge Sloane, may not be mistaken as to my attitude, “To hell with your courts, I know what justice is.”
6
When he wrote this poem which appeared in the International Socialist Review (February 1917), Charles Ashleigh was publicity agent for the I.W.W. Everett Defense Committee. He gave the oration at the memorial service for the men killed on board the “Verona.”
The song, “Hold the Fort,” sung by Wobblies on the “Verona,” has a long history which is traced by Joe Gl
azer and Edith Fowke in Songs of Work and Freedom (Chicago, 1960). The title of the song comes from a Civil War incident when Union troops, trapped in a fort near Atlanta, Georgia, were signaled by flags from mountain to mountain, “General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming.” A popular evangelist, Philip Bliss, used the anecdote as the theme for a gospel hymn he composed in 1870, and another evangelist, Ira Sankey, introduced it to England during a lecture tour a few years later. Late in the nineteenth century, members of the British Transport and General Workers Union wrote a parody of the hymn which they sang during strikes and demonstrations. In this country, members of the Knights of Labor also composed a parody:
Storm the fort, ye Knights of Labor,
Battle for your cause;
Equal rights for every neighbor,
Down with tyrant laws!
Industrial Worker, October 1, 1910.
The Wobblies popularized the parody of the hymn written by the British Transport Workers Union, and “Hold the Fort” has since become a well-known union song in this country, included in many labor union songbooks.
EVERETT, NOVEMBER FIFTH*
By CHARLES ASHLEIGH
(“… And then the Fellow Worker died, singing ‘Hold the Fort.’ …”—From the report of a witness.)
Song on his lips, he came;
Song on his lips, he went;—
This be the token we bear of him,—
Soldier of Discontent!
Out of the dark they came; out of the night
Of poverty and injury and woe,—
With flaming hope, their vision thrilled to light,—
Song on their lips, and every heart aglow;
They came, that none should trample Labor’s right
To speak, and voice her centuries of pain.