Rebel Voices
Page 75
Industrial Worker, January 7, 1939.
We step off the car and walk down to the quays. French and British gun-boats are tied up to the docks. We start talking to a few British sailors who want to know more about the war, and we invite them to come down to the beach with us for a swim.
The sand sparkles like Xmas-card snow, and the blue waves lap the shores as gently as a cat strokits fur with its tongue. Night-time workers in trunks, and children naked, are swimming in the water and playing on the beach. We slip behind a crag and undress, and wade into the water with our shorts. The sailors best us in the swimming. They josh us a bit for our splashing like sidepaddlers, and offer to teach us the crawl and the side-stroke. But we’re hopeless amphibians, the Canuck and I. They think we’re okeh, for being revolutionists, though.
The Canuck starts indoctrinating the British navy with the C.N.T. philosophy, and they don’t find it so bad, this class war “business.” One gob confesses he joined the navy to escape the slums. Says he was willing to die for British imperialist capitalism; do anything, just so he didn’t have to live out his span of life in London’s Lower East End. He sees the sense of the class struggle plainly enough. The workers have got to organize and lose their chains and their slums, too. Says when he’s through with his hitch in the navy he’d like to climb into the trenches and help these Loyalists. But he’ll be scrubbing decks for six more years, and the Canuck says he hopes the workers own the world by then …
16
Pat Read, the editor of the Industrial Worker for several years in the 1940’s, was a master at inventing new words. He coined the term “Gumpets,” perhaps meaning government pets, and one of his most frequently used contractions was “Paccio” for P.A.C.-C.I.O., the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, frequently the subject of Read’s barbs. This unsigned satire on the New Deal may very well have been written by him, for he was the editor of the Industrial Worker at the time this poem was published (March 31, 1945).
Read, who died in November 1947, was an Irish-born radical who had been a member of the C.N.T. while in the Spanish Civil War. At his death the obituary in the Industrial Worker said: “Gifted with a warm heart, a keen mind, and a caustic tongue, he lashed at the humbug and hokum of the labor fakir and politician, at the futile reformer, and the labor shackling ‘do-gooder.’ … He contributed much to the analysis of the labor movement. His approach was predominantly the psychology of what makes it tick—and what stops it from ticking.”
PACCIO HYMN TO THE NUDE EEL
(Tune: “Whack Fol the Diddle Doll”)
We’ll sing a song of peace and love
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day,
To the Man who from Washington reigns above,
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day,
May wars in plenty be His share
Who kept our homes from Want and Care
“Mein Gut und Roosevelt” is our prayer
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day.
Chorus
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
So we say “Hip hooray!”
O come and listen while we pray
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day.
When we were savage, fierce and wild
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
He came like a poppa to His child
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
He gently raised us from the slime
And kept our hands from stay-in crime
And—gave us conscription in his own good time
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day.
Our fathers oft were naughty boys
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
Slowdowns and strikes are dangerous toys
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
From Detroit’s Briggs to Bishop’s Hill
They dug their mitts in their masters’ till
But—Meester Roosevelt loves us still
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day.
O Workingmen, forget the past
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
And think of the day that’s coming fast
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day
When we’ll all be civilized,
Neat and clean, No—strike advised
Oh—Won’t Meester Roosevelt be surprised?
Whack fol the diddle doll the dido day.
17
Matilda Robbins (Rabinowitz), who died in 1963, had been an organizer for the I.W.W. in the Little Falls, Massachusetts, textile strike and the Akron, Ohio, rubber workers’ strike of 1913. Later, a social worker in Los Angeles, she was active in the Socialist Party in California. Over the years, she contributed many poems and articles to the Industrial Worker and wrote a regular column, “From My Notebook.” She satirized union “pie cards” (paid staff officials and officers) and business unionism in the poem “It Happened One Night,” which was printed in the Industrial Worker (June 10, 1949).
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
By MATILDA ROBBINS
The beer was cold, the liverwurst
Was tasty as could be;
And there were cheese and sausages
And pickles sweet and tea—
The last was odd—but there was one
Who drank tea-totally.
Now weeks of strike had ended
And gathered for a spree
Were poor but happy workers
Who struggled mightily
And won two cents an hour more—
Or maybe it was three.
All was friendliness and cheer
Till a simple lad began
To ask some questions impolite
Of a leading labor man
Who was busily expounding
A ten-year contract plan.
The lad was young and puzzled—
A rank-and-filer he—
“How come,” he asked, “that you receive
Six times more pay than we?
I cannot see the reason for
Such strange disparity.”
The leader bristled as he spoke:
“It is because we’re able
To push the union enterprise
Around the conference table;
And know our wage scales and can talk
About the union label.”
Another leader joined in—
Known for his verbal darts—
“And don’t forget statistics, man,
And differential parts,
And escalator clauses,
And cost-of-living charts!”
“Now, listen here,” a third one puffed—
A cagey little guy—
Who talked to presidents as well
As he managed the small fry,
“Take my advice and hold your tongue—
It’s better not to pry.”
The union brothers were impressed
By these superior men;
But still some said the lad had sense;
And some said more, but then
They didn’t know what else to say—
They were peaceful union men.
“Now, fellows, let’s not spoil the fun.
Forget it! Have a drink!”
A lively brother interposed
With an impish little wink—
“We’ll settle this some other time—
It’s later than you think.”
“Hear! Hear! Good fellow!” cried the men.
Someone proposed a cheer
For wise, intrepid leaders
And all of them drank beer
And talked about another raise—
Perhaps four cents—next year.
18
John Forbes, the author of “Nothing Down,” which appeared in the Industrial Worker (December 26, 1955), was the most recent member of the I.W.W. to go to jail for his antimilitary position. Born in Missouri in 1926, he se
rved in the Army in 1945-46. In 1947 Forbes burned his draft card and refused to register for the draft. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and worked at laboratory technician jobs in hospitals until 1954, when he was sent to Springfield, Missouri, Medical Center for Federal Prisoners on a three-year sentence for nonregistration for the draft. During this time he was a regular contributor to the Industrial Worker and wrote a series of satiric poems, The Bunkum Times. After his parole in 1956 he went to Puerto Rico and has worked as a social worker, laboratory technician, and administrator of a prepaid medical plan.
NOTHING DOWN
By JOHN FORBES
We nowadays sing of the company store
That held men in bondage of ever more debt
And think it belonging to ages of yore—
But the monster is with us, enslaving us yet.
Those marvelous trinkets of our jaded age,
Appliances, autos, TVs (with big screens)
The poorest of people who slave for a wage,
No matter how abject, find inside their means.
The trick is with credit. One pays nothing down;
But monthly for years from his paycheck they grub
So that interest, insurance, on cost put a crown
Much more than the cost—and, aye, there’s the rub!
And the little grubs added amount to a pile
Of mountain proportions that peace of mind banishes.
Defaulting must come after struggling a while—
They’re reclaimed, and the phantom of property vanishes.
MORALS
1
With phantom dollars people buy
And credits keep the prices high.
2
For the warehouse they produce
What common sense would mean for use.
3
On such a system one must frown—
Buying one’s chains for nothing down!
19
Fred Thompson, a former editor of the Industrial Worker, wrote “The Art of Making a Decent Revolution” which was printed in the Industrial Worker (July 29, 1957)- Thompson, who was born in New Brunswick, took part in the Halifax shipyards strike of 1920 before coming to this country. He was a member of the One Big Union in western Canada before coming to the United States in 1922. Arrested under California’s criminal syndicalism law, he was a “class-war prisoner” from 1922 to 1927. He organized for the I.W.W. in the mines in Butte in the late 1920’s, in the auto plants in Detroit in the early 1930’s and in fabricating plants in Cleveland. He was on the teaching staff at the I.W.W. Work Peoples’ College in Duluth. Thompson is the author of The I.W.W., Its First Fifty Years (Chicago, 1955). In June 1964 the U. S. Court of Appeals, Seventh District, ordered the federal judge to grant Thompson U. S. citizenship, which had been denied him because of his I.W.W. membership.
THE ART OF MAKING A DECENT REVOLUTION
By FRED THOMPSON
The I.W.W. aims at some major changes in the social order. It wants to abolish the wages system. It wants to replace production for profit with production for use. It wants to substitute industrial democracy for the growing autocracy, oligarchy and bureaucracy of the world.
These objectives have been declared worthy, good and necessary by many thinking people outside the ranks of the I.W.W. The distinctive characteristic of the I.W.W. in this respect is the choice of means by which we hope to see these objectives attained.
In distinction from most of those who share these ideas, we do not count on legislation to create the good world. We count instead on what workers themselves can do for themselves.
Our Way
Our hope is that workers will build large and effective unions that are run by the rank and file; that the structure of these unions will correspond to the actual economic ties between workers, so that workers on every job will be in a position to determine more and more what happens on that job, and through a collective class-wide structure, decide what happens in industry as a whole.
It is in this way, as we see it, that the working class can reshape its world into something consistent with our better aspirations and with the technical capacities mankind has developed.
This choice of means grew some sixty years ago probably from a plain distrust of politicians. Since then there has been wide experience in welfare programs, in nationalization schemes, in the experiments of fascism, in the Soviet system, in the entire history of the last 40 or so years, to indicate that this choice of means was wise. Reflecting this experience there has been an increasing concern in the various social sciences, about the cause and effect relation between social means chosen, and results achieved. The conclusions developing there, form a major buttress for the sort of choice the I.W.W. made long ago.
The Question
This question of the relation between means chosen and results obtained, is a typically modern question. It used to be customary to assume that about the only question to ask about a proposed way of getting a result—apart from law and morals—was its adequacy—or so to speak was the hammer big enough to drive the spike? The experience of the last four decades has shown that when we are talking about social means, we have to question more than its adequacy. We have to ask: How will the choice of this way of seeking our objective reshape the situation after we have made extensive use of it?
The older notion was that any means, if it could do the job, could bring the desired result. The idea fitted the makeshift devices of individual action in a pioneer age. If a nail had to be driven and no hammer was at hand, a rock took the place of the hammer; the housewife who wanted another nail in the kitchen wall so she could hang up her frying pan, took off her shoe and drove the nail with the heel. Final outcome seemed the same regardless of means selected.
Nothing in our experience since then will refute that conclusion so long as we are talking about individual or small scale action. But today the question of means and ends relates to efforts to be made on a large social scale, and that reasoning no longer applies. If everyone drove nails with shoes, among other consequences the manufacture and sale of hammers would decline, and the shoe business would boom. And that, while the assumption is absurd, illustrates quite fully the sort of consequences that follow from the use of any means of a wide social scale, whether as a matter of national policy or as a widespread practice.
Means Outvote Purpose
With that point of view in mind, it is instructive to look back at history and note that the schemes of mankind have left as their only result the expansion of the means that have been used, regardless of purpose.
At times the purposes for which these means were selected, have been approximated. At other times the purposes have not been achieved. The only invariable result was the expansion of the means used.
For this reason we should most certainly avoid the selection of means when the growth of those means will be repugnant to us.
We can reason further that to achieve a social goal we must make that selection of means which, upon expansion, will constitute the goal. The I.W.W. program of building democratic unionism and prodding it to have steadily more to say about the industrial process, is such a rational choice of means.
It is surprising how little attention has been given to the causal relation between social means and ends. Most of the discussion of the question has been of a rather moralizing character: the question of whether a drastic means is morally justified, or what will be the psychological effect of its use upon the user. This discussion however relates to the scientific problem: what is causal relation between the means we adopt on a large scale to solve a social problem, and the results it brings us?
The question has an answer only if we keep in mind the circumstance that it relates to action on a large scale—social action. Perhaps a couple more illustrations as absurd as the shoe versus hammer one already given, will put the issue into a cartoon-like simplicity.
To Fry an Egg
When you fry an egg, it makes no
significant difference in result whether you cook with gas, electricity, oil, coal or wood. The egg will fry the same. But if we should all become determined to cook with wood, it would make a vast difference. The facilities for all to cook with wood do not exist. But if we persisted in that determination, eventually the mechanics of supply and demand by way of stiff prices and extensive reforestation could make it possible. The fried eggs would go the way of all fried eggs. The net result of the decision, the permanent result, would be the extensive woodlots, the widely distributed yards for distributing firewood, the piles of wood in back yards, the accumulation of wood-stoves—in short, the expansion of the means used. There would be a parallel reduction in other industries and other means of cooking. Those two sets of increased and decreased means constitute the assured result.
We are not likely to develop a collective determination to fry eggs on wood-stoves. Conceivably the womenfolk may develop a decided preference for heating homes and cooking with electricity. If they do, it will be necessary to re-route the gas and coal they would otherwise have burned to the additional plant facilities for generating the electricity they would then use, and to convert or replace stove and furnace manufacturing facilities. By Tuesday, Monday’s heating and Sunday’s cooking will all be gone—and what will be left will be the expanding facilities for doing it all over again. And one should note that this sort of change is not simply that of demand stimulating supply. The young couple setting up housekeeping buys the sort of stove that is in style for burning the sort of fuel most likely to be available-just as it brings up its children to speak the language of the community and to share the heroes and hopes and folkways of the community.