Rebel Voices
Page 67
The 106 class-war prisoners in the Cook County jail are of many different nationalities and from nearly all industries. They are strong, rugged, open-air types, taken right off the job and thrown into prison. They have undergone and are undergoing hardships and suffering, but in spite of all they manage to make the gloomy walls ring with rebel songs. They have been in jail, some of them for eight and nine months, most of them for six months, but their spirits are as dauntless as ever. During the long winter months they have been walking round and round the narrow corridors in the very shadow of the gallows. Always round and round, like angle worms in the bottom of a tin can, go the prisoners in the Cook County jail. But the members of the I.W.W. keep hope and courage alive in spite of all.
Such a group of men one is proud to be associated with—workers, clean hearted, clear eyed; all fighting for the principles so plainly set forth in the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World, which proclaims the only kind of democracy worth going to jail to advocate—and this Preamble, the chief count in the indictment against us—is still nailed to the masthead!
13
“We Shall Eat—Bye and Bye” appeared in the Industrial Worker (April 27, 1918).
WE SHALL EAT-BYE AND BYE
MENU—COOK COOK JAIL
Breakfast
(EVERY DAY)
Limited to—
Coffee Royal—(Shoe soles and H2O—Ratio: 2 to 3,000.)
Bread—Two slices (“War” bread. Reference: Gen. Sherman.)
Dinner
A la carte. (Service from la wagon.)
SUNDAY
Equine pickled in sodium chloride.
Cabbage leaves—Boiled en dishwater.
MONDAY
Piece de Calcarecus Resistance—Jail Stew.
(Prepared from No. 3 stock. Beyond criticism.)
TUESDAY
“Meatless day”—Chef blind in left eye—Never sees that “M.”
(Reward offered anyone finding anything edible on Tuesday.)
WEDNESDAY
The Riddle of the Universe—Hash.
(Spuds fermenta and other things.)
THURSDAY
“Dog days”—Dachhund pups.
FRIDAY
Modern miracle—See holy writ—Jailer emulates Christ!—Feed 1,000 prisoners with five fishes—(the same five.)
SATURDAY
What was left from Monday—Third stage decomposa.
Supper
(Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.)
The same thing as breakfast.
(Monday, Wednesday and Friday.)
“Soup”—Boiled relics of the past with a fragrance of “Bubbly Creek.”
(See “Story of the Stockyards.”)
NOTICE:—The management is not responsible for the “overcoats” left in the spuds.
Any guest that can discover a carrot or a cabbage leaf that has been deprived of its original real estate please report to the manager.
Anyone desiring a second serving of dinner is reminded that the head waiter, Guard Goldberg, is deputy food administrator. His duty is to guard potatoes—not prisoners.
14
At the Sacramento Trial of the I.W.W. defendants which opened on December 13, 1918, forty-three of the forty-six prisoners decided upon a policy of no defense. They refused to be represented by legal council and refused to defend themselves.
The forty-three silent defenders received prison terms of from one to ten years; their appeals were rejected. However, the tactic of the “silent defense’ gave the Wobblies nationwide publicity and the support of many liberals and organizations. The I.W.W. General Defense Committee immediately began a campaign for their release, as well as the release of all the “class-war prisoners.” Finally, in December 1923, President Coo-lidge commuted the sentences to the terms already served by the persons convicted under the wartime Espionage laws at the Chicago, Kansas City, and Sacramento trials.
Anna Louise Strong’s poem “Somebody Must” was printed in the I.W.W. publication New Solidarity (December 28, 1918). It is the only song or poem found thus far which commemorates the Sacramento prisoners’ “silent defense.”
SOMEBODY MUST
By ANISE
Down in Sacramento
Forty-nine wobblies
Are ON TRIAL
And they have REFUSED
LAWYERS
And REFUSED
To TESTIFY
And refused to recognize
The COURT
In ANY WAY.
Only one spokesman,
Elected by the rest,
Will STAND FORTH
And read their statement.
“This is OUR PROTEST,” he says,
“Against the COURTS
Of California.
We have seen what
They did to MOONEY:
We have seen the death
Of five fellow-workers
Confined in this jail;
We have seen how officers
Act towards us:
And so we ANNOUNCE
To the world
That a trial
Of WORKING MEN
In California
Is only a LEGAL
LYNCHING.”
Well, of course we know
What those men will get
For being so NERVY,
And slapping the LAW
In the face.
But I remember
The “passive resisters”
Of England,
And I remember how
Roger Baldwin
REFUSED to give BAIL
And buy a month’s freedom,
Saying: “I do not believe
In the system of BAIL
Which allows a man
With MONEY
To be at large,
While the poor man
ROTS in jail.”
And I thought: “I wouldn’t like
To be in their place,
But SOMEBODY has to do it.
While all the rest of us
Are passing resolutions
And organizing
And voting,
And all of it counts;
There comes at last a time
When SOMEBODY
Has to get up and say,
Looking the judge in the face:
‘This is a crooked game,
And I WON’T PLAY IT
Until the RULES are changed
And the cards UNSTACKED!’”
15
Harrison George (1889–1961), who wrote the song, “Remember,” which was printed in the fourteenth edition of the I.W.W. songbook, was a spokesman for the left-wing at the time of the Russian Revolution. He later joined the Communist Party. An I.W.W. organizer of metal miners during the 1916 Mesabi Range strike, he was one of the I.W.W. defendants at the Chicago trial and served a prison term in Leavenworth. George served as editor of the Peoples’ World, a Communist Party publication, from its founding in 1937 until shortly after World War II. He left the paper and broke with the Communist Party at that time. “Remember” was written while George was in the Cook County Jail awaiting trial.
REMEMBER
By HARRISON GEORGE
Cook County Jail, Oct. 18, 1917.
(Tune: “Hold the Fort”)
We speak to you from jail today
Two hundred union men,
We’re here because the bosses’ laws
Bring slavery again.
Chorus
In Chicago’s darkened dungeons
For the O. B. U.
Remember you’re outside for us
While we’re in here for you.
We’re here from mine and mill and rail
We’re here from off the sea,
From coast to coast we make the boast
Of Solidarity.
We laugh and sing, we have no fear
Our hearts are always light,
We know that every Wobblie true
Will carry on the fight.
We make a pledge—no tyrant might
Can make us bend a knee,
Come on you worker, organize
And fight for Liberty.
16
Manuel Rey, who wrote “Thoughts of a Dead-Living Soul,” was one of the Chicago defendants sentenced to Leavenworth. His poem appeared in the One Big Union Monthly (August 1919).
THOUGHTS OF A DEAD-LIVING SOUL
By MANUEL REY
20-year Class-war Prisoner No. 13,111,
Leavenworth, Kansas.
I am spending the numberless days
Of my sweet and youthful life
In a felon’s lonesome cell
For so many and lonely years.
Who knows how long it will be?
Twenty long years of prison life
Is indeed a cruel and bitter fate,
When one is all around encased
By stony walls and iron bars
Far away from the outside world.
I am spending the sweetest days of my life
Far, far away from Mother and Friends
All alone, without having the right
To the beautiful things of life
That bountiful Mother Earth
Gave to each one and all of us
When born to this mysterious world.
And so I am to spend the best of my life
In a prison cell so dark and cold.
And I know how cruel is its sting
On the mind and the tortured heart
To pass away these countless days
As a dead and yet a living soul,
Missing the scent of beautiful flowers
And the songs of the birds of fields and woods.
And yet I am one of those
Who have produced so many
Of the most precious things of life!
I am spending the numberless days
Of my sweet and youthful life
For the cause and the noblest thoughts
Of the future human race.
Oh! I ask who has the right
To make our life a living grave?
And to deprive us of freedom’s might
And our birth-share of equal right
To all the broad heart of life?
Nobody, that I know.
For are we not a part
Of the human race!
So why should any of us be closed
In prison dungeons for his noblest thoughts?
Nobody that I know would put us here
Except the plutes and exploiters of humankind.
I am spending the numberless days
In a determined, yet cheerless way.
For I think that everyone
Is happy and enjoys the flow of blood
Of which his heart is full,
That all enjoy the beautiful thoughts
That human mind can possibly possess
In this mysterious life.
With these beautiful thoughts in an iron cage
I am spending the numberless days
To tell you that here suffers a man
In body, but not in mind.
For his powerful will
And high and noble thoughts
Conquer all the evils
Of even prison life.
I am spending the numberless days
In this stony and lonesome cell
With my mind and thoughts
Flying all over the endless world
To find the beautiful things of life.
And that is why I don’t care
What the world may think of me,
A felon in a stony cell.
Neither what they might want
To make of my body and my life.
For my beautiful thoughts
My great ideas and unconquered will
Shall in the future
Conquer them all.
17
Ralph Chaplin sent Miss Agnes Inglis the manuscripts of his prison poems. Most of them were written, in pencil, in a small black covered autograph book which is now in the Ralph Chaplin file in the Labadie Collection. In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote: “One sleepless night I lay looking at the dirty whitewashed wall back of my bunk. On it had been scribbled the names, initials, and monikers of previous occupants of the cell. I had been thinking of Edith and Vonnie [Chaplin’s wife and son], of the Haymarket martyrs, of Joe Hill and Frank Little, and of Lind-strom, a convicted murderer who was shortly to be hanged. While listening to the sounds of the indifferent world that came in through the bars from the darkness outside, the rhythm of a poem started to beat inside my skull. I found room on the wall to write down the stanzas as they came to me. It was my first prison poem, ‘Mourn Not the Dead.’”
“Mourn Not the Dead” was written in Cook County Jail. “To My Little Son” and “Prison Nocturne” were written at Leavenworth and first published in the prison paper, the New Era, while Chaplin was a prisoner in the penitentiary. All three poems made their rounds of the radical press and were used by the I.W.W. in defense publicity.
PRISON NOCTURNE
By RALPH CHAPLIN
Outside the storm is swishing to and fro;
The wet wind hums its colorless refrain;
Against the walls and dripping bars, the rain
Beats with a rhythm like a song of woe;
Dimmed by the lightning’s ever-fitful glow
The purple arc-lamps blur each streaming pane;
The thunder rumbles at the distant plain,
The cells are hushed and silent, row on row.
Fall, fruitful drops, upon the parching earth,
Fall, and revive the living sap of spring;
Blossom the fields with wonder once again!
And, in all hearts, awaken to new birth
Those visions and endeavors that will bring
A fresh, sweet morning to the world of men!
18
MOURN NOT THE DEAD
By RALPH CHAPLIN
Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie—
Dust unto dust—
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;
Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell—
Too strong to strive—
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;
But rather mourn the apathetic throng—
The cowed and the meek—
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!
19
TO MY LITTLE SON
By RALPH CHAPLIN
I cannot lose the thought of you
It haunts me like a little song,
It blends with all I see or do
Each day, the whole day long.
The train, the lights, the engine’s throb,
And that one stinging memory:
Your brave smile broken with a sob,
Your face pressed close to me.
California Defense Bulletin, January 13, 1919.
Lips trembling far too much to speak;
The arms that would not come undone;
The kiss so salty on your cheek;
The long, long trip begun.
I could not miss you more it seemed,
But now I don’t know what to say.
It’s harder than I ever dreamed
With you so far away.
20
Signed “Card No. 41894, Los Angeles County Jail,” this poem was printed in One Big Union Monthly (July 1920).
WHAT I READ IN THE PAPER
By CARD NO. 41894
Los Angeles County Jail (San Quentin-bound), April 30, 1920
I read in the paper today
All about Bluebeard Watson
And his twenty-five wives
And how he killed four of them
And that the Los Angeles teachers
Are all “for” Hoover,
The price of sugar
So “they” say—
The mysterious “they”—
And then I read
How a bank robber
Attempted suicide
In the county jail
And that agents of
The Department of “Justice”
Were going to catch
All the “Reds”
That they had not caught
In previous raids
On May first.
And I saw
(By the same paper)
That Jack Dempsey
Is in trim
For his picture was there
Four times,
And I wondered how
He is coming out with
That charge about evading
The draft
And why he was not in
Leavenworth or in
The County Jail with me.
And there was a whole
Lot more in the paper
About bankers, and workers,
And work, and economizing,
For the latter.
And all about Baseball
And Golf and other sports
And sugar hoarding and
Potatoes. And
A good many divorces
And all about the
Conference at
San Remo, where
All the world’s troubles were
Settled. And all about
Mexico. And more
Divorces. And pictures
of wives, and society “belles’
And Hoover’s platform
And a great deal more
Sugar thirty-one cents
A pound.
Switchmen on strike
Trying to keep up
With prices set
By profiteers
And miners put in jail
For striking,
And switchmen, too.
For interfering with
Production and Distribution
Of the Necessities of Life.