In the forests of Louisiana, governed by a brutally violent Jim Crow, Black, white, and Mexican workers unite in the Brotherhood of Timbers Workers to strike against the region’s lumber lords. A miracle in Dixie.

‘A Miracle in Dixie’ by Covington Hall from Industrial Worker. Vol. 4 No. 40. December 26, 1912.

And it came to pass that a miracle happened in the land of Dixie, forasmuch on the morning of a red day three Clans of Toil awakened from an hard superstition and the Anglo-Americans and the Afro-Americans and the Mexico-Americans arose and gathered together around the council fire, and men arose from among them, speaking after this manner:

“Children of Labor, wherein are we of different races! Why fight we each other over an superstition, we who have all things in common and have a world to gain by so recognizing? We do an foolish thing in fighting one against the other. Yea! we do so to our great injury, for the Boss taketh advantage thereof and compeleth us to make bricks without straw and likewise he putteth us into a stockade; yea, he catcheth us coming and going and he skineth us to the limit; he sendeth us into the forests to get a commissary living with a cross-cut saw and he maketh our days: too short upon the earth, for he driveth us to the eleventh hour, yea! even unto the twelfth hour, and he sendeth our bones to the potters field and he consigneth our souls to peonage. Why stand we for it, seeing that without our labor nothing is, and that, once united, we hold the earth and the fullness thereof in the hollow of our hand! We be not three Races. That is but an superstition. We are but three Clans of the House of Work and should be one Race, in our Mother Labor. Now, therefore, let us Unite, we the Race of Toilers, and go up against the Boss in One Big Union, and verily, verily, we say unto you, the Boss will come across. And the people, hearing them patiently, said: “That ye have spoken soundeth like it will get the goods: even as ye have said, so let us do. Might is Right.” And so it came to pass that they all, the three Clans, arose as one, girded up their loins and went forth to do battle, the Race of Toilers against the Race of Spoilers. Now, when the Race of Spoilers heard of this miracle, it so happened that they were astonished and could not believe their cars, so, sending for the Soothsayers, they saith unto them: “Tell us, we adjure thee, if this evil hath come to pass, if it be true the Clans of Toil have United into One Big Union, forasmuch if it be so, ye have been false to our fathers’ faith and society is in great danger.” To which the Soothsayers answered, saying: “It is true, O Masters, the impossible has happened, but blame us not. We were wearied by sixty centuries of labor well performed. We slept but a single night, yet in that one night, woe is us, certain evil men, called agitators, stole among the people whispering the watchword of the cursed, rebellious sons of Lucifer, ‘Solidarity and freedom;’ and, in the morning when we awoke and went about our work to morphine them as usual, the people met us, saying: ‘Go to, ye fatheads; wait until the next election and eat your pie in the sky yourself, and drink your own platitudes; as for us we are tired of canned bull and bottled bunco; come across with the porter-house and champagne, or shut up. Go to, and tell it to the Lumber Kings, ye fatheads! Wire it to Weyerhauser, ‘phone it unto Downman, prophesy it to Long and shoot it into Kirby, we will be peon-slaves no more!’ “Thus, O mighty Bosses, spake the people called Lumberjacks and, woe is us, we know not what to do. We thinketh the world is coming to an end, for, not only hath this Tribe rebelled, but the Tribe called the Tenant Farmers, which occupied the country lying ’round and about the territory of the Lumberjacks, is also in an exceeding ugly and rebellious mood, O Bosses.”

Now, therefore when Bosses heard this calamity they were exceeding wroth and swore many sulphrous oaths, and likewise they did cuss the Soothsayers a good and plenty, and the Soothsayers were sore distressed and went off saying one to the other: “If the Bosses find out that people have gotten onto us, woe is us, for we will be in overalls even before the Bosses. And they went unto the Temple and the Capitol and did sit down in sackcloth and ashes, mourning that the good old days of our fathers were no more.

Then did the Bosses gather themselves together, and they did form an Association with a Texas Jackass as the head thereof, and they said: “The Soothsayers are worth no more a damn to us, therefore let us send for our servant Burus, the great Defective, and let us see if he cannot spy out this thing for us, for it is said that he in the original Big Sensation and hath, what we are badly in need of, some brains; and let us also, brethren, (said  the great apostic from Kansas City) send our agents provocateurs out into the inholes of society, Commanding them to gather together the lowest degenerates therein, and let them be armed with pumpguns, and rifles and magazine pistols, and let them be commissioned, so that all the murders they may commit may be done in an lawful and legal manner, and let them be sent into the territory of the Lumberjacks to keep the peace while our servants Burns and Pujo are greasing the gallows, for these Lumberjacks are an exceeding dangerous people, belonging to the Godless I.W.W. Nation, which is even pow endangering the soul of the working class by inciting it to demand porterhouse steaks and champagne here instead of milk and honey in the sky, which is blasphemy against the Grafts and Profits, anarchistic, unconstitutional and irreligious. Brethren, if our grafts and profits and the souls of the Lumberjacks are to be saved, the Union must be destroyed.” And the assembled Banditti, being of one accord, it was so ordered, and the Jackass and the Apostle went forth to bray and to pray. Whereat the Nation of the Godless did give them the horse-laugh, yea! they did ha ha at “impartial justice,” and they did swat the gallows greasers in the solar plexus, and. they did cap the climax on “law and or der” by bucking the Santa Fe at Merryville, and did add socialism to anarchy by invading the Sultanate of John Henry, and in many other ways likewise did they get off the “civilized plane” of “section six”, article 4-11-44, and raise sabotage, syndicalism and sheol in Dixie, “for,” they said, “Blessed are the Strong for they shall inherit the earth, even if they do lose a peon’s soul.”

Let the Jackass bray and the Apostles. pray, but the world hath seen a miracle in Dixie.

The Industrial Union Bulletin, and the Industrial Worker were newspapers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1907 until 1913. First printed in Joliet, Illinois, IUB incorporated The Voice of Labor, the newspaper of the American Labor Union which had joined the IWW, and another IWW affiliate, International Metal Worker.The Trautmann-DeLeon faction issued its weekly from March 1907. Soon after, De Leon would be expelled and Trautmann would continue IUB until March 1909. It was edited by A. S. Edwards. 1909, production moved to Spokane, Washington and became The Industrial Worker, “the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism.”

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n40-w196-dec-26-1912-IW.pdf