Rebel Voices
Page 39
‘Which is its power to hold us here?
‘Brothers, it is the things we love that enslave us.
‘Brothers, it is the things we yearn for that subdue us.
‘Brothers, it is not hatred for the things that are, but love for the things that are to be, that makes us slaves.
‘And what man is more apt to become a thrall, brothers, and to be locked in a green iron cage, than he who yearns the most for the Supreme of the things that are to be—he who most craves for Freedom?
‘And what subtle and malignant power save this love of loves could be in the metal of this cage that it is so mad to imprison us?’
So spoke one of the men to the other two, and then out of the silence of the æons spoke into his tormented soul the metallic soul of the cage.
VI
‘Iron, the twin brother of fire, the first born out of the matrix of the earth, the witness everlasting to the glory of thy labor, am I, O Man!
‘Not for this was I meant, O Man! Not to imprison thee, but to set thee free and sustain thee in thy strife and in thy toil.
‘I was to lift the pillars of thy Temple higher than the mountains;
‘I was to lower the foundations of thy house deeper than the abysmal sea;
‘I was to break down and bore through all the barriers of the world to open the way to thy triumphal chariot.
‘All the treasures and all the bounties of the earth was I to give as an offering into thy hands, and all its forces and powers to bring chained like crouching dogs at thy feet.
‘Hadst thou not sinned against the nobility of my nature and my destiny, hadst thou not humiliated me, an almighty warrior, to become the lackey of gold, I would never have risen against thee and enthralled thee, O Man!
‘While I was hoe and ploughshare and sword and axe and scythe and hammer, I was the first artificer of thy happiness; but the day I was beaten into the first lock and the first key, I became fetters and chains to thy hands and thy feet, O Man!
‘My curse is thy curse, O Man! and even if thou shouldst pass out of the wicket of this cage, never shalt thou be free until thou returnest me to the joy of labor.
‘O Man! bring me back into the old smithy, purify me again with the holy fire of the forge, lay me again on the mother breast of the anvil, beat me again with the old honest hammer—O Man! remould me with thy wonderful hands into an instrument of thy toil,
‘Remake of me the sword of thy justice,
Remake of me the tripod of thy worship,
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain,
Remake of me the oven for thy bread,
And the andirons for thy peaceful hearth, O Man!
And the trestles for the bed of thy love, O Man!
And the frame of thy joyous lyre, O Man!’
VII
Thus spake to one of the three men, out of the silence of centuries, the metallic soul of the cage.
And he listened unto its voice, and while it was still ringing in his soul,—which was tormented with the fiercest fire of hell, which is the yearning after the Supreme Truth (Is it Death? Is it Love?),—there arose one man in the silent assembly of old men that were around the iron cage.
And that man was the most hoary of all, and most bent and worn and crushed was he under the heavy weight of the great burden he bore without pride and without joy.
He arose, and addressing himself—I know not whether to the old man that sat on the black throne, or to the old books that were mouldering behind him, or to the picture that hung above him—he said (and dreary as a wind that moans through the crosses of an old graveyard was his voice):—
‘I will prove to you that these three men in the cage are criminals and murderers and that they ought to be put to death.’
Love, it was then that I heard for the first time the creak of the moth that was eating the old painting and the old books, and the worm that was gnawing the old bench, and it was then that I saw that all the old men around the great greenish room were dead.
They were dead like the old man in the old painting, save that they still read the old books he could read no more, and still spoke and heard the old words he could speak and hear no more, and still passed the judgment of the dead, which he no more could pass, upon the mighty life of the world outside that throbbed and thundered and clamored and roared the wonderful anthem of Labor to the fatherly justice of the Sun.
13
Joseph Ettor (1885–1948) was one of the I.W.W.’s most active and effective organizers. Born in Brooklyn and raised in San Francisco, he worked as a waterboy on a railroad, a saw filer in a lumber mill, a shipbuilder’s assistant, and a stringer in a cigar factory before joining the I.W.W. in 1906. He helped lead strikes of Portland lumber and sawmill workers (1907), McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, steelworkers (1909), Brooklyn shoeworkers (1910–11), New York City Western Union messenger boys (1912), and Minnesota metal miners (1916).
Professor Paul Brissenden quoted a New England wool manufacturer who said of Ettor: “This man … steeped in the literature of revolutionary socialism and anarchism, swayed the undisciplined mob as completely as any general ever controlled the disciplined troops … [and was able] to organize these thousands of heterogeneous, heretofore unsympathetic and jealous nationalities, into a militant body of class-conscious workers. His followers firmly believed … that success meant that they were about to enter a new era of brotherhood, in which there would be no more union of trades and no more departmental distinctions, but all workers would become the real bosses in the mills” (Paul F. Brissenden, The I.W.W.).
In 1915, Ettor was elected assistant secretary and general organizer of the I.W.W. He spent the last years of his life operating a fruit orchard near San Clemente, California.
This selection of his testimony is from Justus Ebert’s Trial of a New Society.
JOSEPH ETTOR’S TESTIMONY TO THE JURY IN THE SALEM TRIAL
Gentlemen, since my views in my organization have been brought into this argument, I want to state this: that my organization has made it a practice to allow men in the past to express their views as they understood them. Now, what are my social views? I have stated some of them. I do believe—I may be wrong, but, gentlemen, only history can pass judgment upon them. All wealth is the product of labor, and all wealth being the product of labor belongs to labor and to no one else.
I know the District Attorney is weary and worried about what is going to happen to the little home or to the little savings of the working man who has saved and scraped around and managed somehow or another to put aside a few dollars. He knows full well that my social ideas have little or no relation to the working man who worked in the shoe shop or to the working man who worked on a building, or to the operative in a mill who was able to put a hundred dollars aside and then fifty dollars aside, and so on, and get a shanty in some place. He knows that my social ideas are bigger than the proposition to take away the home of the operative who has saved fifty cents here and a dollar there and seventy-five cents somewhere else.
He knows that my social views have no relation to the little property owner, but my social views have a relation so far as society is concerned. A railroad is operated by the workers. It is made possible only because there are people living in this country, and according to that argument we insist that the railroad should belong to the people of this country and not to the railroad owners, who are mere coupon clippers.
And that principle applies to the textile industry, to the shoe industry and to every industry. It does not apply to the toothbrush or to the pipe nor to the little shanty the working man is able to erect by scraping and gouging somehow or other.
I want to state further, gentlemen, that whatever my social views are, as I stated before, they are what they are. They cannot be tried in this courtroom. With all respect to you, gentlemen, and with all respect to everyone here, they cannot be tried in this courtroom. It has been tried before. Away back thousands of years the trick was tried that man’s views could b
e brought into a courtroom or brought before the king or brought before somebody in authority and that judgment could be passed. And in those days they said, “The only way we can settle these new ideas is, first, send them to the cross;” then, “Send them to the gallows,” then to the guillotine, and to the rope.
And I want to know, does Mr. Attwill believe for a moment that, beginning with Spartacus, whose men were crucified for miles along the Appian Way, and following with Christ, who was adjudged an enemy of the Roman social order, and put on the cross—does he believe for a moment that the cross or the gallows or the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, ever settled an idea? It never did.
If the idea can live it lives, because history adjudges it right. And what has been considered an idea constituting a social crime in one age, has in the next age become the very religion of humanity. The social criminals of one age have become the saints of the next.
The District Attorney talks to you about Massachusetts. Sixty years ago, gentlemen—seventy years ago—the respectable mob—not the mob in the mills, but the respectable mob, the well-dressed mob—dragged the propagandists and the agents of a new social order and a new idea through the streets of Boston, and the members of that same respectable mob now—now that the ideas of Wendell Phillips have been materialized into something, now that the ideas of Garrison and the rest have been proven of value, the offspring of that social mob rises up and says, “The traditions of Massachusetts.”
Gentlemen, the traditions of Massachusetts have been made by those who made it and not those who speak of it. John Brown was hanged and the cry went up, “A social criminal”—not even that dignity to him—just a criminal. Within two years the youngest and the noblest, the strongest that this nation could offer, were marching through the fields of this country singing:
“John Browns body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on”
My ideas are what they are, gentlemen. They might be indicted and you might believe, as the District Attorney has suggested, that you can pass judgment and that you can choke them; but you can’t. Ideas can’t be choked.
I want to leave this matter to you with a few words. I came to the city of Lawrence feeling that I could be of some aid, that I could offer all the aid that was possible in me to secure more bread for twenty-five or thirty thousand textile workers. I did what I could. I did what I could, that is all.
If I didn’t do any more it was because I couldn’t do any more. I did the best I could. If you believe and you adopt the suggestion of Mr. Attwill I should not have come to Massachusetts, not because, as he intimated with regard to my comrade, Giovannitti, I am a foreigner, but because I came from New York.
If for a moment, gentlemen, you believe that I am responsible for the death of Anna Lo Pizzo, you only can conjure it by the insinuations that have been offered here by Mr. Attwill. But I want to say this: Since I was a boy and I could lift my voice for the cause that I thought right, I did. I not only dared to raise my voice, but I knew full well as I went along that raising my voice for my class meant the baring of my breast against the shafts of the opposition of the monopolists and the capitalists of this country.
And as I have gone along I have raised my voice on behalf of men, women and children who work in the mines, who work in the mills and who work in the factories of this country; who daily offer their labor and their blood and even their lives in order to make possible the prosperity of this country.
I have carried the flag along. I have given cheer and hope and sung the workers on to be brave and go forward as men and women by demanding their rights. It may be possible, gentlemen, that because of the various outside things that have been introduced here, my social views, and so forth, you gentlemen believe that I am guilty of murder. If you do, of course I will pay the penalty. Don’t worry about that.
I say to you, gentlemen, if you believe that I had any interest, that I had any desire, that I had any motive or knowledge in this death, then I offer no apology, I ask for no mercy, I offer no extenuations to you gentlemen. I talk to you as one man talks to twelve others. If you believe that, then I hope that you won’t come back here and say in words that will mean, “Mr. Ettor may be responsible, but Mr. Ettor has done so many things that are of worth and are noble and therefore we won’t let him go, but we will shut him up so that it will be impossible for him to advance his social views any more.”
Gentlemen, I know not what the instructions of this Court will be on that point, but whatever your feelings may be I plead with you—I have told you my views; they are the same as my comrade, Giovannitti, the same in general. We may disagree on a word here and there, but both of us, we state plainly, will give all that there is in us that this present society may be changed, that the present rule of wage labor on one side, producing all things and receiving only a part, and idle capitalists on the other, producing nothing and receiving most, may be abolished.
We say that in the past we have given the best that was in us that the workers may rally to their own standard and that they may organize and through their solidarity, through their united efforts, they may from time to time, step to step, get close together and finally emancipate themselves through their own efforts that the mills and workshops of America may become the property of the workers of America and that the wealth produced in those workshops may be for the benefit of the workers of America.
Those have been our views. If we are set at liberty those will still be our views and those will be our actions. If you believe that we should not go out with those views, then gentlemen, I ask you only one favor, and that is this—that you will place the responsibility full on us and say to the world that Joseph J. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, because of their social ideas, became murderers and murdered one of their own sister strikers, and you will by your verdict say plainly that we should die for it.
As I stated before, I have carried the flag. I carry it here today, gentlemen; the flag of liberty is here. I am willing to carry it just as long as it is necessary. But if you believe and if the District Attorney has been able to insinuate and argue you into the frame of mind that I killed Anna Lo Pizzo or that I wanted anybody to kill Anna Lo Pizzo, or that I turned a finger that Anna Lo Pizzo or any other human being should be killed, then I will stand up with head erect, gentlemen, no apology to offer, no excuse to ask, I will accept your verdict and expect that you will say, “You have done what you did and now we have spoken.”
I expect that if I have carried the flag along, if I have raised my voice, if I have bared my breast against the opposition, that I have done it long enough, and I want to plead with you that if I am guilty I want to pay the full price—full price; no half-way measure; the full price.
If twelve men in Essex County, chosen among the prominent citizens, among the ones who are available and can be enrolled on the list as jurors—if twelve men believe that I am guilty of murder and Comrade Giovannitti is guilty of murder, speaking for myself, I say to you that I would stand erect—and my comrade here just whispered to me, “Say it for both”—we will stand here and accept whatever your verdict may be.
I hope that whatever your views are you will decide clean cut one way or the other. If I am guilty—I tell you I am not a sentimentalist on those points; I believe in the death chair. Very well; if I am guilty I and my comrade Giovannitti will go there, with heads erect and the same song that we have lisped to our fellow workers in the field we will sing with cheer and gladness on our lips, and the flag that we have carried along and are carrying along if we have to drop it in the ditch we will drop it.
Gentlemen, I make no threat, but on the moment that we drop the flag because we have been loyal to our calls, hundreds of thousands of wage workers will pick up the flag of labor and carry it forward and cheer it on and sing its song until the flag of the working class shall wave freely and unfurled to the wind over the workshops of the world where free men and women will work and enjoy fully and without trammel the full products of their
labor.
Gentlemen, those are my views, those are my feelings. If it is the last words I shall ever speak in life, I believe that I have been true. Only history can decide as to whether they are right or wrong. I consider that I could not go out and stand with head erect and have people say to me, “Joe, Mr. Attwill attacked the principle that you hold dear and you did not defend it.”
If these are the last words that I shall ever speak and I shall go—if you say death—with the happy thought that on the eve of it I did willingly announce to the world that my life is dedicated to my ideals and that the ideals that I have expressed to you on the stand do not mean danger to human life or the world’s happiness. I shall go out, whichever way it comes—whether it is a case of death or a case of liberty—I shall go forward with that one thought in my mind and one satisfaction in my heart, that at the last moment I did pronounce to the world my views, and that I did announce that my idea is to work for the principles that I hold dear, and if I am allowed to work for them I will, and you gentlemen will be thankful.
If not—no idea was ever choked, it can’t be choked, and this idea will not be choked. On the day that I go to my death there will be more men and women who will know and ask questions. Millions of men and women will know and they will have a right to argue that my social ideals had as much the effect of determining your verdict as the facts, and more so in this case.
Gendemen, as I stated before, I neither offer apology nor excuse. I ask for no favors. I ask for nothing but justice in this matter. That is all, nothing else. I ask for justice. And I believe that in asking I am not asking anything against what the District Attorney has called the ideals and the traditions of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts refused to give the apostles of abolition to the rule and to the lust of the cotton kings of the South. It refused to allow their blood to act as so much balm to the cuts and to the wounds of the cotton planters of the South. And I ask you now, are twelve men in this county in Massachusetts going to offer blood now in order that the wounds, in order that the cuts and the smarts that the mill owners of Lawrence suffered because of the strike may be assuaged in balm?