Mary E. Marcy speaks to directly to railroad workers during the rolling strikes that occurred in 1915, explaining the extraordinary collective power they have, and urging them to use it.

‘The Power of the Railroad Boys’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 11. May, 1915.

NO class of workingmen in the world possess more power than the Railroad Boys, and the men who run the great ships, and the seamen all over the world.

England and Germany are today howling for shipments of FOOD, and when we stop to remember that it is the transport workers–the railroad boys, the dockers, the stokers and seamen who carry every ounce of food, clothing and chemicals, who transport the ore with which battleships and guns are made, it gives us a very small notion of how important the transport workers are.

They are so strong that they can tie up and paralyze the entire world of industry in a week if they WANT to. In the great class war waged by the workers and the capitalists for possession of the PRODUCT OF THE WORKERS, the transport and railroad boys HOLD THE STRATEGICAL POSITION.

And just so far as the railroad boys and the steamship men become class conscious, just so soon as they become LOYAL to the interests of their own class, they will take this wonderful power into their own hands and make it a resistless weapon against the master class.

Just as the railroad boys may make the most important revolutionists, just so have they opportunity to do the most scabbing. It is the railroad boys who are called on to haul scabs into mining camps to break strikes; it is the railroad boys who are commanded to haul guns for the thugs that shoot the strikers, and these same railroad boys who run the cars that bring supplies to the CAPITALIST ENEMY in times of strike or labor warfare.

And it is the railroad boys who are finding ways by which they are going to defeat the enemies of labor and throw in their lot with the men and women of their own class.

Two railroad boys dropped into the office this month from Indiana, and told us how some of the boys handled the ammunition that was enroute to the Rockefeller Gun Men in Colorado.

O, I suppose some of the readers of the REVIEW will claim that it is not quite “ethical” to let little accidents happen to the property of John D.’s gumshoe thugs, that it would have been “more honorable” to shoot the dynamite and ammunition straight through and help these dirty-workers kill off more Ludlow men, women and children. But we are not concerned with people of this calibre.

We are glad to record that something both unfortunate and unforeseen (?) happened to that carload of death-dealing property and that it never reached its destination. And we prophesy that soon the day will arrive when the railroad boys will communicate with the boys on strike and see that the ammunition reaches OUR SIDE in any labor war. It would be strange, would it not, if some of the miners should happen to be occupying a mountain pass and should stop a train and switch off any cars of food or protective material they might need?

Of course, we are all agreed that the best method of fighting the boss is with organization instead of with GUNS. It is true that the bosses can’t even get guns without trusting to the train crews any more than they can get food, or clothes or anything else in the world. And so we may be reasonably sure that the day will soon come when GUNS shipped to the capitalist enemy (your enemy and MY enemy) will not reach. their destinations. We don’t want to fight guns or with guns if we can help it.

In the meantime it is up to us to educate the railroad and steamship boys into what the class war really means.

We know there are still old-fashioned people in the world who believe that the Rich Men worked along honestly, picking up pins and saving pieces of string, and studying by grate fires until they saved up a few millions of dollars to buy a railroad or a copper mine, or 60 per cent of the oil wells. They imagine that all you have to do today is to stay away from the nickel shows and put your pennies in the bank and become a capitalist in your old age.

They don’t stop to think that according to the U.S. Government statistics the average American workingman only receives a little over five hundred dollars a year TO RAISE A FAMILY on, and that if the unhappy father drowned off his offspring at birth, as men sometimes drown puppies, and refused to support his wife, and managed to live without spending his wages–he couldn’t possibly save more than a little over five hundred dollars a year, anyway.

He would have to live to be as old as Methuselah to cut any ice in the Wall Street crowd.

On the other hand, according to U.S. Government statistics, the average workingman produces something near $2,500 worth of value a year. His boss keeps about four-fifths, which is divided up among the landlords, lawyers, advertisers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, etc., etc. And YOU, Mr. Workingman, get about ONE-fifth in wages.

No matter how you figure it out, the stockholder in the railroad or the steamship line by which you are employed DRAWS DOWN the FAT pickings (or profits) for DOING NOTHING, while you, who run the roads and make the clothes, or build the houses, or produce the food–you get about a measly little one-FIFTH of the value YOU create, for DOING ALL THE WORK.

When people ask you what Socialism is–it is simply the fight to STOP this system of generous reward for the Do-nothings paid OUT of the value that is produced by the workers. It means the PRODUCTS FOR THE WORKERS themselves.

“Well,” a man said to us the other day, “that is true, perhaps, but Old Man Vanderbilt BUILT the ROAD.” DID HE? If you want to know who built the railroads and who stole the railroads, you want to read Myers’ History of the Great American Fortunes, published by Charles H. Kerr & Co. Myers gives facts and figures that show up our Great Railroad Kings as the biggest bunch of financial pirates the world has ever known.

And wasn’t it our little old school readers that taught us that the original Old Man Astor bought the Island of Manhattan from the Indians for about twenty dollars? And today his princely grandsons are still forcing people to dig up millions of dollars every year for the privilege of living in New York on the land their grandsire cheated the Indians out of a few score years ago.

There are so many workers and so few capitalists, who exploit them, that once the workers are united to abolish the present system of profit grabbing; when they make up their minds to stop this crazy system of DIVIDING UP with those-who-do-not work (but take all the CREAM), the idle exploiters will not be able to hold out against us.

What we need is EDUCATION of the workers and class conscious solidarity. We want to unite on election day, and we want to remember that we often have a chance to SHOW OUR working class loyalty EVERY day in the week. one way or another. We can HELP to win strikes, we can work for ONE BIG working class union, we can pass around the magazine, the book, the paper that will make our friends wake up and learn to FIGHT.

Socialism does not only mean that you must elect your comrades to office; it means carrying on the educational work and the FIGHT every day in the year.

Keep in touch with the REVIEW, and whenever you know a good story of how the railroad boys have shown their class loyalty, send it in to us. The boys are going to be one of the most important, if not the most important, group in the great struggle to abolish the wages system. You want to do YOUR share to getting them organized.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n11-may-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf