Legendary Southern activist Covington Hall (writing as Covington Ami) reports on the class war in the West Texas-Southern Louisiana district for the wobbly’s ‘One Big Union.’

‘Southern Conditions’ by Covington Hall from One Big Union Monthly. Vol. 1 No. 7. September, 1919.

I note that The Monthly wants news from all foreign countries, so I thought the editor might be interested in a few items from the strange Land of Dixie, especially as to the drift in the Lone Star State.

First, the inhabitants down here are being jealously guarded from all “dangerous thoughts,” but strict as has been the censorship, the serpents seem to be trailing thru this “democratic” Eden, for ex-Senator Bailey, now said to be of “26 Broadway”, has lately been among us to organize a brand new, or rather, a brand old political party; he wants to go back to the times and principles of Thomas Jefferson, with, of course, all Jeffersonianism cut out. This makes the 13th. new political party I’ve recently heard about, which seems to indicate that the politicians are fast going up in the air. How true is Marx’s statement that “When the working class moves all the superstructure of society is sent up into the air”!

Second, and more important, the Oil Operators Association met on July 31st. and recommended an advance for all workers in the industry, this, of course, to head off the growing sentiment for a Big Union in the industry. The Oil Workers will sure be suckers to let this stop them from organizing. The minimum wages in the Oil Fields is said to be $7.00 a day, this in the Burkburnett and Ranger Fields, with H.C.L. still in the lead “and then some”, which last probably accounts for the “ingratitude” of the workers, for the Belly sure beats the Brain when it comes to agitating for better days and conditions.

Farm and other “common” labor is getting wages from $2.50 a day up, with cotton around 30 cents a pound, and still the workers and working farmers are not “satisfied”, tho their discontent has not yet taken on intelligence, that is to say, this section has so far made no real move to ORGANIZE INDUSRIALLY, which is the main thing worth striving for these days. But the restlessness must be steadily on the increase, for not a day passes now but local papers carry some wild story about the I.W.W. and the radicals, giving lurid accounts of all the awful things the Union intends to do, tho strangely they never quote its official literature, but that of some other organization. The latest story is that of today, August 2d., where it is strongly insinuated, using garbled quotations from a live Negro magazine, that the Union is trying to start “a Race War in the South” and that the Bourbons “will not be responsible for anything that may happen”. When one considers that all these sheets support the alleged Democratic Party that has lived off of and prospered on race hatred for more than 50 years, and which has done its level best all during the World War to still further divide the people of this Nation into race hatreds and riots, and further considers that from vital self-interest the I.W.W. has thru out its history done everything in its power to ally racial hatreds, all one can say for the Southern “Democratic” Press in that it, like the party it represents, is a true descendant of the God of Hypocrisy.

I have heard that a new A.F. of L. Union of Lumber Workers had been organized at Lake Charles, La., and was making headway, but I feel sorry for the boys in it; for, had the A.F. of L. Machine really wanted to organize the Oil and Lumber Workers of the South it could easily have done so during the War, but my opinion is that it had no such desire, for the reason that this would have brought the Gompers Machine into open collision with the Machine of the Democratic Party, which was something that the Morgan-Wilson-Gompers Oligarchy could not then, or now, afford, and so the Workers, as usual, “paid the price”. All of which makes me wonder how much longer the Workers of this country are going to wait for some Moses to lead them somewhere, which is usually nowhere. “God helps those who help themselves”, is as true today as ever, and he helps no others.

In New Orleans and Houston the boys tell me they get the Monthly, New Solidarity, and like papers pretty regularly, but in Dallas I never get Solidarity and The Monthly except by accident, for which I hunch that the Dallas Post office has set up a little censorship all by its lonely, tho I fail to see howinhel the papers mentioned could possibly hurt me and the other fellows who want to read them; besides by these tactics the Plutes are fast driving all the Bergerites over to the Left Wing, and I sure would weep to see Bergerism banished from Dixie.

Also the “Land Question” is showing signs of coming to the front fast. With one “Ranch”, the King, claiming nearly 1,500,000 acres of land; the Taft ranch 160,000 acres and a few towns; the Kirby Lumber crowd holding 1,240,000 acres; the Long-Bell bunch holding not less than 2,000,000 acres in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana; with one man in Texas “owning” 3,000,000 acres and another Eleven Hundred SECTIONS of land, you could just naturally see that, sooner or later, more and more people were bound to rise and ask why God (?) had been so damn generous to certain plain citizens and why the Race should stand for it? Some people are actually getting so blasphemous as to say they don’t believe God had anything at all to do with swiping at all and that the land should be immediately un-swiped. All of which is certainly “seditious” or something and should be burlesoned at once. In connection with this terrible land monopoly, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest curses to the South, it is being whispered over Texas that the economic cause of Attorney General Gregory’s bitter hunting down of the I.W.W. was because his wife was a member of one of the richest lumber families in the State, but I do not believe so great a man would allow himself to be influenced by any such marital reasons.

Still Colonel House is said to be a Christian Scientist and it is a fact that Capitalism is “wonderfully and fearfully made.”

One Big Union Monthly was a magazine published in Chicago by the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World from 1919 until 1938, with a break from February, 1921 until September, 1926 when Industrial Pioneer was produced. OBU was a large format, magazine publication with heavy use of images, cartoons and photos. OBU carried news, analysis, poetry, and art as well as I.W.W. local and national reports.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/sim_one-big-union-monthly_1919-09_1_7/sim_one-big-union-monthly_1919-09_1_7.pdf