One of Mary E. Marcy’s marvelous Marxist fairy tales, published shortly after her death.

‘The Barbo Fair’ by Mary E. Marcy from Industrial Pioneer. Vol. 1 No. 1. May, 1923.

A TRAVELER once lost his way among  the Ragian Hills, and wandered about for many days until he came to a new and beautiful country.

The fields of this country were glad with ripened grain. Fat cattle grazed in the pastures, and flocks of white sheep covered the hills. The winds were filled with the perfume of vineyards, and all the barns seemed bursting with plenty.

The traveller journeyed onward until he came to a village which was called Barbo. And he entered gladly, for he said in his heart: So much wealth was never seen before.

The village consisted of a great square, and four streets leading. into it. And the square was filled with booths like the stalls of a market place. Gay ribbons of many colors waved in the breeze.

For it was the day of the Barbo Fair, when the masters brought forth their bags of gold to pay their laborers for the toil of the four seasons, and the workingmen were given a holiday to make their purchases for the year.

Thus there was but one market day and one day for the payment of wages in Barbo during the whole year, in order that the workers might spend their remaining days in peace and toil.

And the traveller saw that the masters had gathered together in the booths of the square all the goods that the laborers had produced during the year.

Coats and boots were in the first booth, and fine linens and coarse, and silks and jewels, and cloth and garments of every kind, sufficient to clothe the people of two villages like Barbo.

And in the second booth there were bags of white meal and yellow meal, and flour and salt and corn; and there were loaves of bread, and money and cheese and red and golden wine; grain was there also of every kind.

And in the third booth cattle and sheep, rabbits and hogs, and there were also fish and fowl for the feeding of an army.

The fourth booth was filled with fruit. Aloes there were, and bread fruit, and the sweet fig, and bananas, and other fruits in abundance; and spades and hoes and plows for the fields, also.

A crier stood at the gates of the square to make announcement to the people, of new houses to be sold upon the fourth street.

And the coat-maker came with his children, and they were without coats; the hatmaker came without a hat; and the bootmaker and his wife, and his children came with bleeding feet for the way was rough and their feet were bare.

Then came the baker, with his children crying for bread; and the keeper of the vineyard also, and the tillers of the soil, and the garment-maker, in his raiment of rags. The carpenter, who had built the new houses which were to be sold, rose from his bed of straw, and came also.

And all the people gathered together outside the gates of the square to receive their wages for the year. And after they were paid, they went into the Fair, and spent all the gold they had received, and bought many things.

But when they came forth the traveller saw that their faces were sad, and their burdens light; for the prices of those things of which they had need, were greater by three-fold than the wages they had received.

And there yet remained two-thirds of the goods that were gathered together at the Fair.

Then were the masters vexed, for they said: We must pay the banker for the money he has loaned us, and the landowner his rent, and we must take for ourselves a large profit; therefore is our price just.

But after they had taken away sufficient for their needs, they wondered what should be done with those goods that remained at the Fair. And they refused any longer to hire the laborers, for they said until all those things were sold, there would be no more work for them to do.

Then there arose a disturbance and a panic in the village of Barbo the cause whereof no man knew, until at last there came forth a doctor of law who said it was the curse of the village that God had given the masters more than they could sell.

The workers were afraid, for they did not know where to turn when their purchases should be consumed, and they went forth out of the fields weeping and cursing, because there was plenty in the village of Barbo.

The masters cursed also, because, having no place wherein to sell the remainder of their goods, they could make no more profits.

And the traveller journeyed on his way with great speed, for he knew in his heart that he was come to the dwelling place of FOOLS.

The Industrial Pioneer was published monthly by Industrial Workers of the World’s General Executive Board in Chicago from 1921 to 1926 taking over from One Big Union Monthly when its editor, John Sandgren, was replaced for his anti-Communism, alienating the non-Communist majority of IWW. The Industrial Pioneer declined after the 1924 split in the IWW, in part over centralization and adherence to the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) and ceased in 1926 to be reborn in the 1930s.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrial-pioneer/Industrial%20Pioneer%20(May%201923).pdf