by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES THE BIG POTATO
Let me point out once more, in my gentle way, the depression in this country is not political and a billion politicians one or all working ain’t gonna cure it; the running of a bunch of patriots ain’t gonna cure it; the running of a bunch of christians ain’t gonna cure it; the running of a bunch of convicts, combines or cleopatras ain’t gonna cure it. These have little more effect on a trouble that is economic than has a row of brass monkeys.
To cure depression, you must join a good labor union, preferably the I.W.W.—whatever union you choose, it must be its composition—or no cure. If you do not join a labor union you thereby go on record as of being well pleased with the depression. And I hope you will continue to like it.
Life in a political arena is a precise reflex of the gigantic economic struggle as between banks and plants, going on, at this moment, in this country. Plants take a wallop at the banks and Brookhart goes spinning like a headless rooster in a cornfield. Banks haul off with an upper cut and Massachusetts goes wet. Plants land a long swing to the snout and Mooney stays in the can. Banks put in a low punch and Kresel shows signs of being an angel of high emprise. Plants rock banks’ head with a terrific left to the jaw and Britt Smith, Centralia Boys, stay in Walla Walla, and so on.
Interference in this struggle by an outsider shall cause Banks and Plants to turn on the intruder.
Coolidge said we’ve got lots of prosperity, have some soup.
Harding before him said take the teapot, we got lots of it.
Hoover said, we’ve got lots of it and declared in favor of a moratorium just as Europe was about to pay its debts. We’ve got lots of it—last week in New York City I didn’t get one single meal. What I got was as follows:
Forty-two cups of coffee (frail stuff). Sixty-two rolls of all description and some of no description at all.
Eighty-three slices of bread and sixty cubes of grease.
About one bathtubful of soup.
One mushmelon, eight bananas—all of ’em rotten.
Industrial Worker, January 30, 1937.
Note: I didn’t try to influence the city either one way or another—this diet is her voluntary contribution to science. It never occurs to N.Y.C. that Germans and Finns have thrived since time immemorial on full meals and that an occasional bellyful couldn’t hurt a guy even if he is unemployed. Nay brother, political action is no action-it is a result.
For me to say, farmers or store keepers can remedy this depression by organizing farmer or storekeeper union is to say a falsehood—they can not. They are not numerous enough and they are not on the ground floor.
They are merely the flora in the potato patch-labor is the big baked potato. Labor is the only power in this world that can cure this depression—and cure it to stay cured. This it can do only by organizing a one big union of the workers and by declining all help from parasites or their representatives.
Industrial Worker, April 1, 1939.
The minute it gets any help from bosses of any shade or description the bets are all off—and the depression shall have a relapse. Labor or Oblivion!
P. S.—The fight between Banks and Plants is for to determine which shall be permitted to skin labor—a senseless, insane struggle.—Soup versus Worms: Do not think me unduly prejudiced against soup. Soup is all right in its place. I can conceive of nothing more suitable for fish to swim in—a combination of sport and nourishment, barb-less breakfast you might say. And in re N.Y.C/s soupability, let me say, I could have changed that at any time by lying a little, tell Mr. Knickerbocker that the soup-shower occurred the week before. He would have risen to the occasion prompdy—but a test is a test. As in buying a pair of sox I fell one penny short of the price: Knickerbocker howled loud and long that he must not be driven to the wailing wall, he must get his full ten cents.
“Now lookit here, Knick,” says I dropping the pennies into my pocket, Tm a poor man whose family passed off by starvation.—Why not make it a gift of a pair of sox so I can cover my nakedness?” “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” says Knick, “111 give you that pair of sox for nine cents.”
You see, Knick stood to lose sox or gain nine cents—he chose the nine—business is business.
Soup we will have even in the workers’ commonwealth, and the parasites shall eat it.
9
This song “by a Briggs striker” appeared in the Industrial Worker (March 14, 1933) during the I.W.W. organizing campaign among auto workers in Detroit and an early sit-down strike of metal finishers at the Briggs Highland Park Plant.
BALLAD OF BIG BOSS BRIGGS
By A BRIGGS STRIKER
(Tune: “King of Borneo”)
O, Walter Briggs came home one night
As rich as he could be;
He saw a letter on his plate
Where his meal ought to be.
“My dear wife, my darling wife,
My loving wife,” said he,
“What is that upon my plate
Where my meal ought to be?”
“You big boob, you silly ass,
You lazy bum,” said she,
“That is a telegram
As any fool can see.”
So W. O. opened it
And this is what he read:
“Six thousand men have left the pen,
And now Productions dead.”
“My dear wife, my darling wife,
My loving wife,” said he,
“What can this wire really mean
That Henry’s sent to me?”
“You big boob, you silly ass,
You lazy bum,” said she,
“It simply means your men’s on strike.
As sore as they can be.”
So Big Boss Briggs, he took a plane
Up from the sunny South,
And when he saw that picket line,
He opened wide his mouth:
“Oh my, oh me, what shall I say?
These slaves want higher pay:
But I shall see Judge Conolly
And General Henry.”
He cut “dead time”; with reason and rime,
He gave the big boys hell,
For Henry Ford, the Auto Lord,
His dollars and cents do tell.
Now Big Boss Briggs, O how he jigs,
He and his henchmen three:
“Heinie,” Hund and Connoly
And Jacob Spolansky.
They called their dicks with riot sticks,
Police with tear guns, too;
But the men were onto their dirty tricks,
For they were nothing new.
Each paper tries to spread its lies;
But the strikers hold their line.
They organize, for they are wise—
Their union will be fine.
Then they’ll grab each lousy scab,
They’ll kick ’em in the pants;
And Big Boss Briggs and his stooling pigs,
O—O, how they will dance!
Now Walter Briggs comes home at night
As sore as he can be….
“Those workers fight with all their might,
They’ll wreck my factory.”
“My dear wife, my darling wife,
I’ve got an awful pain—
My head aches, my belly aches—
They’re driving me insane.”
Etc. Etc.—……
10
The very popular “Boom Went the Boom” was first published in the Industrial Worker (April 18, 1933). It was signed “W. O. Blee.” It is the most recent song to be added to the corpus of I.W.W. songs in the little red songbook and was first included in the twenty-fifth edition.
BOOM WENT THE BOOM*
By W. O. BLEE
(Tune: “Ta-ra-ra-Boom—dee—Ay”)
I had a job in twenty-nine
When everything was going fine.
I knew the pace was pretty fast
But thought that it would always last.
>
When organizers came to town
I’d always sneer and turn them down:
I thought the boss was my best friend
And he’d stick by me to the end.
Chorus
Ta-ra-ra—BOOM—dee—ay
Ain’t got a word to say,
He chisled down my pay,
Then took my job away.
Boom, went the boom one day,
It made a noise that way.
I wish I had been wise,
Next time I’ll organize.
I had a little bank account,
Not very much, a small amount
Which to the savings bank I took
And all they gave me was a book.
I pinched on food, I scraped on rent,
I hardly ever spent a cent,
My little savings grew and grew,
I thought I’d be a big shot, too.
Chorus
Ta-ra—ra—BOOM—dee—ay,
It made a noise that way,
There went my hard-earned pay,
Saved for a rainy day.
I must have been a wick,
This soup-line makes me sick.
Where can that banker be?
He tore his pants with me.
Then finally it came to pass
That all I had to eat was grass.
The wolf don’t bother anymore.—
He starved to death right by my door.
With soup and gas and club and gun
They tried to make the system run.
They said, “Dear friends, now don’t get sore,
We’ll make it like it was before.”
Chorus
Ta—ra—ra—BOOM—dee—ay,
It busted up one day
These guys that stole my pay
Went flying every way.
All that I’ve got to say,
I hope they’ve gone to stay;
Each dog must have its day,—
Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-dee-ay!
11
Louis Burcar was the pseudonym of an I.W.W. member in Detroit who was active in the early sit-down strikes in the auto industry. “Auto Slaves” was printed in the Industrial Worker (July 18, 1933) during the period of intense I.W.W. organizing activity in the automobile plants in Detroit.
AUTO SLAVES
(Graveyard Shift—Stamping Plant)
By Louis BURCAR
With automatic movements timed to great
Machines, these metal-workers seem to reel
In some weird dance. Like marionettes they wheel
With insane music at a maddening rate.
Automatons … What if they learn to hate
Machines whose hungry maws demand a meal
Of metal—piece upon piece of sweat-stained steel?
They work. Monotony and madness wait …
For these are human beings racked with pain,
Grotesquely hued by blue-green mercury lights . .
Monotony within this noisy hell
Will breed maggots of madness in the brain—
Stop the tongue so it can never tell
Of torturing toil through these unending nights.
12
Covington Hall’s poem “The Politician Is Not My Shepherd,” which was frequently reprinted in the I.W.W. press after it first appeared in the Industrial Worker (December 26, 1933), reflected the skepticism of members of the organization toward the nation’s growing dependency on President Franklin Roosevelt to solve the country’s economic problems.
THE POLITICIAN IS NOT MY SHEPHERD
By COVINGTON HALL
The Politician is not my shepherd,
He turneth me over to the wolves,
Taking it on the chin,
Keeping my mouth shut,
Waiting for prosperity to come “around the corner.”
Too much bull is weariness of the flesh,
Yea, I am fed up on it.
On the “New Freedom” and on “Normalcy,”
On the “Glorious Period” of the “Good Calvin,”
On “Rugged Individualism,” and on “Misery Relief”;
“Saving the Socialist Fatherland” put no
Fried chicken under my belt.
The “New Deals” or “Fair Deals” from the old deck gets us no good.
Turning pigs into fertilizer puts no pork-chops on our tables.
Plowing under cotton, no glad rags on our backs.
Paying landlords to keep workers from producing wheat and corn, sugar and coffee, fruit and everything.
And,
Taking all this undestroyed;
And,
Flooding the world with imaginary money,
May “Save the price structure”
But,
It is Hell on thee and thine, on me and mine.
And, me and mine, us and ours.
That’s what’s troubling me, oh, Fellow Workers!
And that’s more than enough.
Yea, verily, I am burned out and turned sour with weary waiting for the Millennium—
2000 years this Christmas!
It is too long between drinks!
Besides,
Hooching oneself into freedom, peace and plenty ain’t so hot.
The night before is all right, but …
The morning after!
Well! Fellow Workers, you ought to know how that was, is and ever will be.
There is nothing to it
As the Bible says,
“All politicians are liars.”
Therefore, if ye would be “saved,”
Save yourselves.
And lastly hear this:
The only hope of “The Damned” is,
“The Damned I.W.W.”
It is the One Big Union or
One wholesale starvation for us and ours,
O, Fellow Workers!
13
“Our Lines Been Changed Again” an anticommu-nist satire ridiculing the “United Front” or “Popular Front” of 1935–40, was published in the Industrial Worker (November 16, 1935). Whether or not it was written by an I.W.W. member is not known. It was later credited to writer Alton Levy.
OUR LINE’S BEEN CHANGED AGAIN
A COMMY WAR SONG
(Tune: “Them Bones Shall Rise Again”)
United fronts are what we love, Our line’s been changed again.
From below and from above, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
I knows it, Browder, I knows it, Browder,
I knows it, Browder,
Our line’s been changed again.
We once had unions by the score, Our line’s been changed again.
But now these unions ain’t no more, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
Bourgeois tricks we’ll have to use, Our line’s been changed again.
Our women must not wear flat shoes, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
Imperialist wars we once attacked, Our line’s been changed again.
But since the Franco-Russian pact, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
While France is fighting you will see, Our line’s been changed again.
The revolution must not be, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
We’re now a party with finesse, Our line’s been changed again.
With bourgeois groups we’ll coalesce, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
Religion was an opiate, Our line’s been changed again.
Since church groups with us demonstrate, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
We’re simply Stalinists devout, Our line’s been changed again.
We don’t know what it’s all about, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
Kaleidoscopic, what I mean, Our line’s been changed again.
Now we’re red and now we’re green, Our l
ine’s been changed again.
Chorus:
The “New Deal” was a Fascist plan, Our line’s been changed again.
Now Roosevelt is the people’s man, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
The League of Nations we used to hate, Our line’s been changed again.
Now with it we’ve linked our fate, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
Class against class, our slogan true, Our line’s been changed again.
The people’s front, red, white, and blue, Our line’s been changed again.
Chorus:
14
The skit, “Nuthouse News,” printed in the One Big Union Monthly (June 1938), is typical of the skits written and presented by students at the Work Peoples’ College in Duluth, Minnesota. Formerly a Lutheran theological seminary, the Work Peoples’ College became first a school run by Finnish Socialists, and then, about 1916, a residential college run by a board of directors which included a majority of Finnish I.W.W. members. During the winter, courses in Finnish and English were offered in economics, labor history, public speaking, mathematics, and English composition. There was also a summer session for young people. Frequently, groups of students from the Work Peoples’ College went on tour to raise money by presenting programs of skits such as “Nuthouse News” at organizational meetings around the country.
NUTHOUSE NEWS
A Skit Prepared by Work Peoples’ College Drama Department
Scene: Fence with gate in it. Fence extends across stage; gateway near middle. Arch over gateway reads “NUT HOUSE”; sign suspended from center of it: “No Nuts Allowed Except by Special Permission.” The audience gets an eyeful of this before Hobo comes sauntering in, singing “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.”
Hobo sees butt of cigarette on walk. Picks it up and starts re-rolling it for a smoke as Nut comes along inside fence, slowly wheeling a wheel-barrow upside down. He watches Nut and laughs. NUT: What are you laughing at? HOBO: You.
NUT: What’s so funny about me?
HOBO: You’ve got your wheelbarrow upside down.
NUT: What’s wrong with that?
HOBO: You can’t put anything in it when it’s upside down.
NUT: That’s why I keep it that way. If I turn it the other way up, people may put something in it.