by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
If you’d be free, you’ve got to stand,
With working men from every land;
Race prejudice you’ve got to banish
From out your minds and not be clannish.
Our interests are just the same
From County Cork to State of Maine,
The master rules with iron hand,
From Australia to Baffin’s Land.
So Workers of the World unite
Beneath one banner for the right,
In Labor’s ranks there is a place
For every man of every race.
Now, Erin’s sons, again I say,
Don’t be a slacker in the fray;
The world for workers be your cry,
Resound aloud from earth to sky.
Frank Little.
Labadie Collection photo files.
11
Like Bill Haywood, Frank Little had only one good eye. He boasted of being half Indian. He was one of the most courageous and dynamic of the I.W.W. organizers. Chairman of the I.W.W. General Executive Board, Little had been active in the I.W.W. since 1go6. He had helped lead the Missoula, Spokane, and Fresno free speech fights, and had organized lumberjacks, metal miners, oil workers, and harvest stiffs into the One Big Union. With one leg in a plaster cast from an accident he had while organizing in Oklahoma, Frank Little arrived in Butte, Montana, shortly after the Speculator Mine fire, when infuriated Butte miners refused to go back to work until their demands were met for improved safety conditions and an end to long-standing grievances. Following a speech at the ball park in Butte on July 31, 1917, Little went to his room at the Finn Hotel. That night, six masked and armed men broke into his room, beat him, and dragged him by a rope behind their automobile to a Milwaukee Railroad trestle on the outskirts of Butte. There he was hung. On his coat was pinned a card: “First and last warning! 3-7-77. D-D-C-S-S-W.” It was said that the numbers referred to the measurements of a grave and that the initials corresponded to the first letters of the names of other strike leaders in Butte, thereby warning them of similar treatment if their strike activities were not stopped. No attempt was made to find Little’s assailants.
The poem, “To Frank Little,” by Viola Gilbert Snell appeared in Solidarity (August 25, 1917). “When the Cock Crows” by Arturo Giovannitti appeared in Solidarity (September 22, 1917).
TO FRANK LITTLE
By VIOLA GILBERT SNELL
The plains you loved lie parching in the sun,
The streets you tramped are sweltering in the heat,
The fertile fields are arid with the drouth,
The forests thick with smoldering fires and smoke.
Traitor and demagogue,
Wanton breeder of discontent-
That is what they call you—
Those cowards, who condemn sabotage
But hide themselves
Not only behind masks and cloaks
But behind all the armored positions
Of property and prejudice and the law.
Staunch friend and comrade,
Soldier of solidarity—
Like some bitter magic
The tale of your tragic death
Has spread throughout the land,
And from a thousand minds
Has torn the last shreds of doubt
Concerning Might and Right.
Young and virile and strong-
Like grim sentinels they stand
Awaiting each opportunity
To break another
Of slavery’s chains.
For WHATEVER stroke is needed.
They are preparing.
So shall you be avenged.
Within our hearts is smoldering a heat
Fiercer than that which parches fields and plains;
Your memory, like a torch, shall light the flames
Of Revolution. We shall not forget.
12
WHEN THE COCK CROWS
To the Memory of Frank Little Hanged at Midnight
By ARTURO GIOVANNITTI
I
Six MEN drove up to his house at midnight, and woke the poor woman who kept it,
And asked her: “Where is the man who spoke against war and insulted the army?”
And the old woman took fear of the men and the hour, and showed them the room where he slept,
And when they made sure it was he whom they wanted, they dragged him out of his bed with blows, tho’ he was willing to walk,
And they fastened his hands on his back, and they drove him across the black night,
And there was no moon and no star and not any visible thing, and even the faces of the men were eaten with the leprosy of the dark, for they were masked with black shame,
And nothing showed in the gloom save the glow of his eyes and the flame of his soul that scorched the face of Death.
II
NO ONE gave witness of what they did to him, after they took him away, until a dog barked at his corpse.
But I know, for I have seen masked men with the rope, and the eyeless things that howl against the sun, and I have ridden beside the hangman at midnight.
They kicked him, they cursed him, they pushed him, they spat on his cheeks and his brow,
They stabbed his ears with foul oaths, they smeared his clean face with the pus of their ulcerous words,
And nobody saw or heard them. But I call you to witness, John Brown, I call you to witness, you Molly Maguires,
And you, Albert Parsons, George Engle, Adolph Fischer, August Spies,
And you, Leo Frank, kinsman of Jesus, and you, Joe Hill, twice my germane in the rage of the song and the fray,
And all of you, sun-dark brothers, and all of you harriers of torpid faiths, hasteners of the great day, propitiators of the holy deed,
I call you all to the bar of the dawn to give witness if this is not what they do in America when they wake up men at midnight to hang them until they’re dead.
III
UNDER a railroad trestle, under the heart-rib of progress, they circled his neck with the noose, but never a word he spoke.
Never a word he uttered, and they grew weak from his silence,
For the terror of death is strongest upon the men with the rope,
When he who must hang breathes neither a prayer nor a curse,
Nor speaks any word, nor looks around, nor does anything save to chew his bit of tobacco and yawn with unsated sleep.
They grew afraid of the hidden moon and the stars, they grew afraid of the wind that held its breath, and of the living things that never stirred in their sleep,
And they gurgled a bargain to him from under their masks.
I know what they promised to him, for I have heard thrice the bargains that hounds yelp to the trapped lion:
They asked him to promise that he would turn back from his road, that he would eat carrion as they, that he would lap the leash for the sake of the offals, as they—and thus he would save his life.
But not one lone word he answered—he only chewed his bit of tobacco in silent contempt.
IV
NOW BLACK as their faces became whatever had been white inside of the six men, even to their mothers’ milk,
And they inflicted on him the final shame, and ordered that he should kiss the flag.
They always make bounden men kiss the flag in America where men never kiss men, not even when they march forth to die.
But tho’ to him all flags are holy that men fight for and death hallows,
He did not kiss it—I swear it by the one that shall wrap my body.
He did not kiss it, and they trampled upon him in their frenzy that had no retreat save the rope,
And to him who was ready to die for a light he would never see shine, they said, “You are a coward.”
To him who would not barter a meaningless word for his life, they said, “You are a traitor.”
And they drew the noose round his neck, and they pulled him up to the trestle, and they watched him
until he was dead,
Six masked men whose faces were eaten with the cancer of the dark, One for each steeple of thy temple, O Labor.
V
NOW HE is dead, but now that he is dead is the door of your dungeon faster, O money changers and scribes, and priests and masters of slaves?
Are men now readier to die for you without asking the wherefore of the slaughter?
Shall now the pent-up spirit no longer connive with the sun against your midnight?
And are we now all reconciled to your rule, and are you safer and we humbler, and is the night eternal and the day forever blotted out of the skies,
And all blind yesterdays risen, and all tomorrows entombed,
Because of six faceless men and ten feet of rope and one corpse dangling unseen in the blackness under a railroad trestle?
No, I say, No. It swings like a terrible pendulum that shall soon ring out a mad tocsin and call the red cock to the crowing.
No, I say, No, for someone will bear witness of this to the dawn,
Someone will stand straight and fearless tomorrow between the armed hosts of your slaves, and shout to them the challenge of that silence you could not break.
VI
“BROTHERS—he will shout to them—”are you, then, the God-born reduced to a mute of dogs
That you will rush to the hunt of your kin at the blowing of a horn?
Brothers, have then the centuries that created new suns in the heavens, gouged out the eyes of your soul,
That you should wallow in your blood like swine,
That you should squirm like rats in a carrion,
That you, who astonished the eagles, should beat blindly about the night of murder like bats?
Are you, Brothers, who were meant to scale the stars, to crouch forever before a footstool,
And listen forever to one word of shame and subjection,
And leave the plough in the furrow, the trowel on the wall, the hammer on the anvil and the heart of the race on the knees of screaming women, and the future of the race in the hands of babbling children,
And yoke on your shoulders the halter of hatred and fury,
And dash head-down against the bastions of folly,
Because a colored cloth waves in the air, because a drum beats in the street,
Because six men have promised you a piece of ribbon on your coat, a carved tablet on a wall and your name in a list bordered with black?
Shall you, then, be forever the stewards of death, when life waits for you like a bride?
Ah no, Brothers, not for this did our mothers shriek with pain and delight when we tore their flanks with our first cry;
Not for this were we given command of the beasts,
Not with blood but with sweat were we bidden to achieve our salvation.
Behold: I announce now to you a great tidings of
For if your hands that are gathered in sheaves for the sickle of war unite as a bouquet of flowers between the warm breasts of peace,
Freedom will come without any blows save the hammers on the chains of your wrists, and the picks on the walls of your jails!
Arise, and against every hand jeweled with the rubies of murder,
Against every mouth that sneers at the tears of mercy,
Against every foul smell of the earth,
Against every hand that a footstool raised over your head,
Against every word that was written before this was said,
Against every happiness that never knew sorrow,
And every glory that never knew love and sweat,
Against silence and death, and fear,
Arise with a mighty roar!
Arise and declare your war:
For the wind of the dawn is blowing,
For the eyes of the East are glowing,
For the lark is up and the cock is crowing,
And the day of judgment is here!”
VII
THUS shall he speak to the great parliament of the dawn, the witness of this murderous midnight,
And even if none listens to him, I shall be there and acclaim,
And even if they tear him to shreds, I shall be there to confess him before your guns and your gallows, O Monsters!
And even tho’ you smite me with your bludgeon upon my head,
And curse me and call me foul names, and spit on my face and on my bare hands,
I swear that when the cock crows I shall not deny him.
And even if the power of your lie be so strong that my own mother curse me as a traitor with her hands clutched over her old breasts,
And my daughters with the almighty names, turn their faces from me and call me coward,
And the One whose love for me is a battleflag in the storm, scream for the shame of me and adjure my name,
I swear that when the cock crows I shall not deny him.
And if you chain me and drag me before the Beast that guards the seals of your power, and the caitiff that conspires against the daylight demand my death,
And your hangman throw a black cowl over my head and tie a noose around my neck,
And the black ghoul that pastures on the graves of the saints dig its snout into my soul and howl the terrors of the everlasting beyond in my ears,
Even then, when the cock crows, I swear I shall not deny him.
And if you spring the trap under my feet and hurl me into the gloom, and in the revelation of that instant eternal a voice shriek madly to me
That the rope is forever unbreakable,
That the dawn is never to blaze,
That the night is forever invincible,
Even then, even then, O Monsters, I shall not deny him.
13
This unsigned poem appeared in the One Big Union Monthly (August 1919).It is the only piece of writing found thus far to commemorate the events of July 12, 1917, in Bisbee, Arizona, when an armed vigilante committee raided the homes of striking miners, loaded over 1160 of them into cattle cars, and deported them to the town in the desert where they were retained until September, following the end of their strike.
BISBEE
FOR THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY
By Card No. 512210
We are waiting, brother, waiting
Tho the night be dark and long
And we know ‘tis in the making
Wondrous day of vanished wrongs.
They have herded us like cattle
Torn us from our homes and wives.
Yes, we’ve heard their rifles rattle
And have feared for our lives.
We have seen the workers, thousands,
Marched like bandits, down the street
Corporation gunmen round them
Yes, we’ve heard their tramping feet.
It was in the morning early
Of that fatal July 12th
And the year nineteen seventeen
This took place of which I tell.
Servants of the damned bourgeois
With white bands upon their arms
Drove and dragged us out with curses
Threats, to kill on every hand.
Question, protest all were useless
To those hounds of hell let loose.
Nothing but an armed resistance
Would avail with these brutes.
There they held us, long lines weary waiting
‘Neath the blazing desert sun.
Some with eyes bloodshot and bleary
Wished for water, but had none.
Yes, some brave wives brought us water
Loving hearts and hands were theirs.
But the gunmen, cursing often,
Poured it out upon the sands.
Down the streets in squads of fifty
We were marched, and some were chained,
Down to where the shining rails
Stretched across the sandy plains.
Then in haste with kicks and curses
We were herded into cars
And it seemed our lungs
were bursting
With the odor of the Yards.
Floors were inches deep in refuse
Left there from the Western herds.
Good enough for miners. Damn them.
May they soon be food for birds.
No farewells were then allowed us
Wives and babes were left behind,
Tho I saw their arms around us
As I closed my eyes and wept.
After what seemed weeks of torture
We were at our journey’s end.
Left to starve upon the border
Almost on Carranza’s land.
Then they rant of law and order,
Love of God, and fellow man,
Rave of freedom o’er the border
Being sent from promised lands.
Comes the day, ah! we’ll remember
Sure as death relentless, too,
Grim-lipped toilers, their accusers,
Let them call on God, not on you.
14
This “Tightline Johnson” story by Ralph Winstead finds the Wobbly Johnson in a coal mining camp. It appeared in the Industrial Pioneer (January 1922).
LIGHT EXERCISE AND CHANGE
By RALPH WINSTEAD
Education accordin’ to my idea is a matter of grabbin’ onto and arrangin in the mind all sorts of new ideas and experiences. When a fellow just grabs onto ideas and never has any experiences, why, about all he is good for is to spread ideas. When it comes to action the idea guy is handin’ out the absent treatment.
Coal minin’ is not generally listed as one of the essentials to a finished education, but it is sure a form of experience that is liable to change one’s ideas. My first mingling with the black diamonds happened after I had put in about seven months on the shelf with a busted leg. The Doc, in his last once over, had told me that all I needed was light exercise and change, and so I started out to find the change, intendin’, of course, to take my exercise as lightly as possible.
After ramblin’ around for a few crispy fall days and nights I landed without malice or forethought in a coal camp out of Tacoma some considerable ways. The two strings of whitewashed miners’ shacks strung along a narrow canyon with the railroad, wagon road, promenade and kids’ playground occupyin’ the fifty feet of space between the rows of workingmen’s places completed the residence section.
The mine buildings mostly lay up on the side hill and looked like the dingiest collection of hangman’s scaffolds that ever happened. There is some things that all the doctorin’ and fussin’ in the world ain’t goin’ to make restful to sore eyes, and a coal mine is one of ’em. Everything, from the bunker chutes up to the hoist house, is usually covered with the dust of dirty years and the buildings are, as the British remittance man says of his squaw wife, “Built for use and not for display.”