Georgia Kotsch reports on Austin Lewis’ speech to a Los Angeles I.W.W. meeting in solidarity with militants of the inter-racial Brotherhood of Timbers Workers jailed in Louisiana after the ‘Bogalusa massacre’. Lewis remarks that it was the I.W.W., called the ‘dregs of society’ by right-wing Socialist Party leaders, that did the impossible and broke the color line in the South, where the Socialists had segregated locals.

‘In Behalf of the Timber Workers’ by Austin Lewis from Solidarity. Vol. 3 No. 44. October 26, 1912.

(Special to Solidarity.) Los Angeles, Calif., Oct. 15. “Come dungeons dark or gallows grim, This song shall be our parting hymn.”

I have often heard it sung as a pious ceremony in socialist meetings, but hearing it sung by vigilante victims and others in the actual army and on the march, so to speak, in the industrial warfare, sends gruesome little shivers over one.

Burbank hall, Los Angeles, was crowded Friday night, the 11th, to listen to Austin Lewis in a protest meeting in the interest of the Louisiana timber workers. J.E. Cook, of the I.W.W., presided.

Mr. Lewis was not complimentary to the Socialist Party, but it is always salutary to get the other viewpoint and see yourself as others see you. Nothing is so conducive to cross-eyed judgment as looking fixedly all the time at one idea or at one set of ideas

“Before we go into the Louisiana matter,” he said, “I will point to the curious condition of the labor movement at the present time. We have passed through two years of exceedingly strenuous agitation and fighting. This country is large, the area of the field of operations so great that it is probable that it has not dawned upon the majority of you that the working class is at war with the capitalist class and the fighting has actually begun. Even professors in universities recognize that the social revolution is actually under way. Up to the present time it has been an abstract theory and we have had all sorts of lectures year after year. Now the time for talk has gone, (applause) and action has begun. All over the civilized world the long skirmish lines of the proletariat are advancing to the fray to determine the question of victory for the working class for years to come.

“At Indianapolis 50 men are on trial; at Salem representatives of the I.W.W., and in Louisiana 60 of its members are on trial for their lives. Everywhere the prisons are full of our men. The gallows confronts us. It is no time to talk about fine-spun theories.

“No movement in the history of labor has been more effective than that of the last 12 months. Seven thousand are out on the Canadian Northern, 300 miles deserted, and those men with their own mounted police have preserved discipline and the police of the Dominion have had no chance to interfere. The I.W.W. has been called the riff-raff, the unorganizable; but in the last 12 months its discipline and self-control have equaled that of any body of organized labor in my knowledge Why? They have relied upon themselves and have had no outside political chiefs, mayors or congressmen to give them orders.

“I am not anti-political. I know politics will happen that you can no more escape them than you can your shadow, but we don’t want to monkey with political action. We stand for direct action on the job. This means organization, discipline, self-control. You can’t have direct action otherwise. I am not fighting any body of organized labor. Any man who is against the capitalist class is my friend and my voice and pen are ready to help him, however I may disagree with him as to methods; but I would be false to my convictions and to the I.W.W. if I did not say that it has developed the cleanest, the most capable, the best organized body in the United States and has done it in two years. Then you were only 2,000 and were called by your critics the dregs of society.

“The Socialist Party calls itself the friend of the proletariat and pretends to stand by the poor and the workers, but it is against you and would exterminate you because you are not popular with the middle class. It is intriguing against you even in Los Angeles. This is a very bitter thing to say, but it is true.

“I have been in San Diego the past week watching the operations of the State Federation of Labor. It looks like a pretty hopeless bunch, but it is not so much so as it was two years ago. Andrew Gallagher, representing 65,000 organized men in San Francisco, a most conservative man and one with whom I personally disagree in regard to tactics, but for whom I have the greatest respect as a man strong and straight for labor as far as his peculiar position will allow, spoke of the resolution passed by the body be represents, that “henceforth the boycott be a sympathetic strike.” He said: “Many of you may think this was a capitulation to the I.W.W, but it was not, in my estimation.” Now, it was. Two years ago you were hoboes. Today Andrew Gallagher comes before the State Federation of Labor and says, “I have done so and so, but it was not a capitulation to the I.W.W.” This shows a little of the way you are progressing.

“I will tell you just what I think. I couldn’t lie to an audience like this. In court it would be different. What hurt me in San Diego was that men recognized as socialist leaders in this city, when confronted by the delegates of the Federated Trades in the state of California, instead of speaking what they knew and instructing the delegates, went into the dust and groveled for cheap applause. It is not right. They have had the advantage of training and education themselves. After dinner I went to your candidate for mayor and I said: “Henceforth I am going to do all in my power to put you and what you represent out of business.”

“I came to the convention hoping I had been mistaken or hasty in leaving the party because I had become disgusted with the local dirty politics played around the bay–hoping that the socialists might take such a position that I could again come alongside of them. But after 26 years of work in the socialist movement I find the Socialist Party in California has reached a deplorable degradation which should call forth reproof from the entire working class.

“In Louisiana the timber workers were in a bad condition. The B. of T.W., now the I.W.W., went in and organized the white and black together, taking the stand that the socialists always have taken that there is no race, color or creed in the exploitation of labor. It was more Ithan the socialists have ever dared to do. They have white and black locals down there. If we can get the white workers in the south to sink their prejudices in a common cause with the black worker the jig is up. The movement has developed very painfully in the south. We are dealing there with different material, a people very susceptible to emotional influences. It is the home of the revival and camp-meeting, and if they ever flare up God knows where they will land. Once start the fire of rebellion in the south and also eliminate the color question and we can sweep in a tide of victory from the Mason and Dixon line to the Gulf. Hence the steps taken against this union which dares to eliminate the color line.

“The men went back into the woods and made themselves disagreeable, practiced sabotage, made unaccountable mistakes. They say on the Canadian Northern the locomotives have an unaccountable tendency to run into the rivers and never in all the history of railroad construction were there so many pick handles broken. (I recommend here that any member of the Socialist Party present put his fingers in his ears, for he is liable to expulsion for listening to such language.)

“The bosses in Louisiana brought men–and snub-nosed bullets–and out of the shelter of an office at Grabow opened fire on a peaceful group coming to present their grievances to the bosses. It was absolutely wanton murder and has but one parallel and that occurred in Russia on Bloody Sunday. Two were killed outright and in the cross or return fire a sheriff was killed. Sixty men were immediately arrested charged with murder. Emerson, president of the union, being among those sent to jail. Then a most unusual thing happened. This scum of the earth, sneered at by respectable organized labor, sent for books on political economy–Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin and set to work to organize an I.W.W. ideal in the jail. The same thing occurred at Fresno and San Diego. The first call was for books. I saw Jack Whyte the other day and asked him what I could do for him and be said: “Send me some books. That’s all I want.” This is your hobo, reading, studying and forming into organizations.

“In Louisiana the men are on trial for the same offense as are Ettor and Giovannitti and the way in which it is being handled is one of the most dangerous situations which can confront us. It is not claimed Ettor and Giovannitti killed and the case is similar in Louisiana, but out goes the arm of the law and seizes the leaders. If a jury can be satisfied that they so conducted themselves and used such language that the death of Annie La Pizza resulted they can be electrocuted. This is the law and it was upheld by the Supreme court in the case of Spies and Parsons, the most dastardly judicial murder in history. Later came Governor Altgeld with courage to face the whole capitalist class of the country and say they were unjustly hanged. BUT IT WAS TOO LATE. We don’t want martyrs. We want fighters. This was the most humiliating chapter in the history of labor in the United States. Labor leaders fled like whipped curs before the press and manufactured sentiment and when the deed was done 50,000 brave men followed the corpses to Waldheim cemetery. If these had said they wouldn’t stand for it in Chicago they would have been followed by 5,000,000 people.

“The only way to keep juries in Massachusetts and Louisiana from convicting is to make them afraid to do it. It war to the knife. The time to talk poetry and philosophy has passed, along with the day of the ex-preacher in the labor movement. Unless you do something these men in prison will go. How will you do it? Change the law? Fine job for politicians that. To get a two-thirds vote in 48 states to change a constitutional provision would take 25 years at least. The only thing you can rely on is organization on the job. That is the lesson to be hammered in.

“The capitalist class is strong because it controls the machinery of production. The only man who can handle it is the man who is in contact with it. He’s got the goods and can stop it and set it going when he likes. He is the emperor of the world. The only way to get control is by organization. Every train should have stopped at the border of Louisiana until these men were released or assurance given for their safety. We see in the Lawrence I.W.W. the greatest achievement of organized labor–the short, spontaneous strike where the workers are pulled out and sent back. France did it once. If England could have done it, it would have been a working class republic today But their organization was not good enough yet.

“I have listened to the federated trades talk of the minimum wage, old age pensions and such hallucinations. It’s good educational stuff, but of no practical value. Girls work for $4 and $5 a week. Suppose by legislation you get them $2 a day. Six girls will get $12 and six will be out on the street. The boss will put in a system of efficiency and speed up and off go two more. You can’t force a man to employ labor. Legal restrictions are some advantage in individual cases, but of no advantage to the working class as a whole. If you have a shop organization in which the whole shop will strike if a girl is paid less than $12, you have the difference between political and direct action. Direct action does not mean to hurt some one or to employ forcible means. It means employ yourself as your own agent without an intermediary who in nine cases out of ten comes from a different class from yourself.”

Resolutions were adopted and a collection of $26.90 taken up for the timber workers.

GEORGIA KOTSCH.

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/1912/v03n44-w148-oct-26-1912-Solidarity.pdf