Organizing for the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, Phineas Eastman takes his fellow Socialist Party members to task for channeling their support of the lumber strike into the electoral arena.

‘’Socialists’ at Work’ by Phineas Eastman from Solidarity. Vol. 4 No. 20. May 24, 1913.

Rosepine, La., Dec. 12. The writer recently visited the scene of the big strike at Merryville, La, and found the lumberjacks standing firm and practicing solidarity to a finish.

The committees are working harmoniously with their fellow workers, composed of Mexicans, whites and colored men: race and national lines are done away with, and they are consequently getting the goat of the lumber trust and foiling all attempts of the labor-baiting Santa Fe lunch to get workers Yesterday the train pulled up about 200 yards from the depot, where our fellow workers, the strikers, always do picket duty, and unloaded 20 colored workers, who were quickly surrounded by 40 gunmen and marched up to colored quarters, which are fenced in.

Now, they have tried this game before, but our colored fellow workers always get in touch with these imported strike breakers, and said S. B.’s soon melt away; for the negroes practice solidarity even when they are not organized–they stick by one another, because they have always been exploited. These 20 will prove no exception.

Provisions are being sent in to the boys at Merryville, and all that is needed to make them win out is help, and continued solidarity, and everything looks favorable for us.

One disturbing element, strange to say, are certain socialist speakers, who are visiting all our locals and trying their damnedest to stop supplies and other aid from flowing into Merryville.

Martin, Socialist Party state organizer for Texas, delivered an address here las night, and stated to his audience (nearly all union men and socialists) that political action was the only hope of the working class–that you could not organize the workers into the One Big Union. But just before saying this, he declared that he believed in the idea of Big Bill Haywood and the O.B.U. He further declared that there would be riot and bloodshed at Merryville, and that he was a purely political socialist and condemned direct action. Now this stuff has considerable effect on unthinking socialist members of the Forest and Lumber Workers, of whom there are many who are otherwise A 1.

I was prepared to refute all be said, but just before he wound up his bunk, I was called out by a fellow worker who had come overland with a team to get provisions for the Merryville strikers, and had to go with him and show him where to put up his team. Martin talks again tonight and I hope to be present to confound him.

I am a dues-paying socialist, but I heartily condemn this back-stabbing indulged in by S.P. organizers, under instructions, I dare say, from the Hilquitt-Berger-Barnes bunch, who are working the workers. Since our union woods are full of these “purely political organizers,” talking against the I.W.W. and throwing cold water on our strike funds, I think it is a deliberate scheme on the part of the job and power wanting higher-ups in the Socialist Party to discredit the I.W.W. and its methods, because they see therein a menace to their political doctrine that promises the workers something in thirty years, if they (the politicians) get into power.

If the S.P. would do as it promised several years ago–and back up labor in its disputes with the masters–it would not be sending “organizers” throughout our union belt to knock a working class fight like that at Merryville.

Forewarned is forearmed, and we shall make these knockers come through with the facts to back up their garbled and twisted accounts of things done by the I.W.W or beat a hasty retreat.

On with the fight! Let the funds keep coming into Merryville, and we are bound to win!

Rebels, everywhere, arise and come into your own!

For the I.W.W. and Solidarity. PHINEAS EASTMAN.

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/v04n20-w176-may-24-1913-solidarity.pdf