Bringing the One Big Union to the hardscrabble, isolated construction camps of the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia.

‘Organizing in British Columbia’ from Solidarity. Vol. 4 No. 37. September 20, 1913.

Revelstoke, B.C., Sept. 3. The I.W.W. has started organization work on C.P.R. double tracking in B.C. We were on the job as soon as the first camps were opened up, and expect to be here until it is done.

Most of the little contractors have taken their work at a low figure and are therefore having lots of trouble of their own and naturally look on the agitator as an addition to their already over-stocked troubles. Some contractors get into such an insane state of mind that they try to fight us openly.

This always works to their own undoing as was the case with a contractor by the name of Wilson at Three Valley, B.C. He has two camps both within a mile of that little burg. Another Fellow Worker and myself applied for work at one of his camps and obtained promise of some from one of the station men for whom he had worked before on the same job. Wilson, the contractor, recognized him as being a member of the I.W.W. who had worked there before and had been doing some agitating against the irregularities of the camp. He would not let him in to dinner and told him he could not work or eat at his camps. He did not know me and let me into dinner, but had the timekeeper meet me when I came out of the cook shack and tell me he didn’t need me. Most of the action of interfering with their hiring station men are shy of men and this action of interfering with their hiring men put most of them in an angry mood. He plainly told the station men that he was running that outfit and was not going to allow any agitators around to “cause trouble.”

The next Sunday after this, which was last Sunday, we came back well supplied with papers and literature and started to hold a meeting on the C.P.R. grade which is only about 30 or 40 feet from one of his camps. He came out of his office and said: “You will have to get out of here; you can’t hold any meetings around here; I won’t stand for any of that dope,” to which the other Fellow Worker who was speaking replied: “We can’t hold any meetings you say! Well, this is supposed to be a free country and if we can’t hold any meetings we are going to have some fun trying to.” By that time most of the camp was outside to see what was up. Mr. Contractor took a quick sneak into his office and stayed there while the meeting was in progress. We sold a good bit of literature considering the size of the camp and finished our meeting just at supper time. We had just gotten our blankets into traveling shape as the men were coming out from supper and they asked us why we did not have supper and we told them the circumstances of our experience at the other camp. The foreman and some of the other men went into the office and wanted to know if we could not eat and offered to pay for it, but he said: “Those, men can’t eat here if every man in the camp quits.” Most of them took him at his word and ordered their time made out first thing on Monday morning.

Most of the men went with us to the other camp, and we held another good meeting, and that camp on being informed of the action of the other camp, decided to take the same action.

When that petty contractor woke to the real situation, he was certainly a sick looking sort. He has been bragging on his “Scandinavians being such “good men” and would not hire any other nationality when they could be secured. He did not realize that working people of all nations are developing a class spirit that recognizes only one foreigner and that is the employing class and all their retainers. He has managed to cripple all his own work in the worst way as well as to cripple the work of the station men, most of whom are already in the hole.

The station men on the double tracking are getting it in the neck worse than usual as most of the work is right at the side of the main line which has a heavy traffic and they have a list of rules and regulations a mile long to observe so as to not delay any trains for the C.P.R. If a passenger train is delayed over a few minutes (ten minutes, I believe) it costs the station man one dollar a minute and if very long it gets heavier. They have to pay $12.50 a box for dynamite. $50.00 for each dump car, $1.50 each week for every 100 feet of rail used; have to make their own ties, pay $2.00 a day for a horse while working and $1.00 a day if not working, and have to buy their spikes to hold rails to the ties and also bolts and nuts, have to pay 5c for every drill that they have sharpened and buy all other supplies from the contractor at his own figures. He gets 72 cents a yard for rock. (These figures are from station men in Wilson’s camps.) Anybody who is familiar with this line of work can see, where the “strong back” station man gets off at. Most of the station men are trying to make ends meet by working hard themselves and trying to kill everybody working for them. If the station men of B.C. would stop taking station work and work one-tenth as hard for more wages and shorter hours, as they do to make something out of a piece of station work, we would soon have an 8 hour day on construction work and be getting whatever wages we asked.

The station men always get the butt end of it. The contractors generally use them as the cat’s paw to. get nuts out of the fire for themselves. Any good pieces of work the contractor generally lets out to some relative or “good sucker,” or keeps them himself. When the station man gets wise to the fact that a contractor would not let station work out if a big piece of money could be made on it, he might get the rusty cog wheels in his head to working and learn to do something for himself instead of working like hell for somebody else and doing two or three men’s work on a small chance of making a good stake.

If a station (brute) man gets off a job with $5 or $6 a day clear. He has worked so hard that his physical energy is all played out and he drags himself to the first bar and “tanks up” and generally stays that way until his money is gone. Then he goes back to the job and cusses luck and says he will never drink again. He works so hard while working that he has no energy left to think about himself, and when in town he tries to recuperate by drink, but only makes things worse.

S. Murchinson’s camp 9 miles out, had a strike for a new cook about a weeks ago, but the station men got scared of losing their contracts and went back to work to eat the same rotten grub. That broke the strike.” If any of our “Sabotage critics” care to put some of their ideas in practice on the job instead of the union hall there is a big field open for work in B.C. If our ideas are practical, we will have to put them to use some time. If some of the “weak-headed” and “strongback” station “brutes” happened to find the “Sab-cat” in camp they might take time to think about the number of men they keep out of work and stop doing the lowest kind of scabbing by doing three men’s work on a small chance of getting one man’s pay.

Yours in Revolt.

A Camp Delegate.

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1913/v04n37-w193-sep-20-1913-solidarity.pdf