Extraordinary words on the razing of prisons from revolutionary wobbly, later leading Communist, Harrison George, who would himself be tortured by police and spend years in Leavenworth penitentiary, to later see his own son murdered by reactionaries.

‘Idealism And Destruction’ by Harrison George from Solidarity. Vol. 6 No. 262. January 16, 1915.

An article recently syndicated through the press has honored the I.W.W. as a “National Menace.” From a far-fetched effort to connect the transparent bomb-planting devices of the New York police with Bouck White and Tannenbaum, the article proceeds to a statement that it is “Idealism mixed with destruction which makes I.W.W. manipulations a menace.”

Before proceeding to analyze this let me say that any “malcontent” in the I.W.W. or out of it who resorts to crude inefficient bombs and such medieval methods of personal reprisal in this progressive age of turpenite, and maxim silencers is not only a menace but a common fool. “Mal-contents” do not seem to learn from their devout brothers who build warships on Monday, forts on Tuesday, improve machine guns on Wednesday, invent explosives on Thursday, mine harbors and eat fish on Friday, turn all hell loose on Saturday and go piously to Sunday a service to kneel before the only image of the nude Anthony Comstock overlooked, asking God to end wars and especially the class war by destroying those awful I.W.W. who sanction violence. To one who loves efficiency these bomb attempts are very distressing indeed.

To get back to Idealism and Destruction. Yes, we must plead guilty of harmonizing these two words. Rebels who rebel agree, others are not rebels. We, the working class, are in a Chamber of Horrors with barred windows and strong walls. We are surrounded by various implements of torture of the Capitalist Inquisition. The heavy door is fastened and although we occasionally get a sense of the outer freedom when a gust of wind fresh from the far reach of meadow and mountain penetrates our fetid, prison, yet we can only SENSE that freedom; we cannot LIVE in the airy sunshine of Liberty for we are chained–chained to the work-bench. Our minds are torn by the red-hot pinchers of poverty-damned servitude, our bodies broken on the rack of economic oppression.

We would be free. We ask our jailor, our masters, to liberate us. They laugh. We plead, they sneer. We cry out and struggle, they prod us with bayonets and lash us with injunctions to submission.

They throw us a bone–wages, and statistical Christianity doles out a carefully recorded crust with the adjuration to be meek and thank the Lord that the bone was not smaller, and the Christ-given crust not more stale.

But we crave the outer freedom. I make secretly in my corner a rude file and wait a chance opportunity. I pass the file to all the rest, who cut their chains and wait. The guard sleeps. I cry out for you. The guard is bound. A window broken, an iron bar wrenched out. A timber of the floor is pried up and–the door is battered down. We pour out info the free air after setting the torch to our prison-house.

I may fall, another may be wounded. But there are so many of you and the master is powerless once you are free of your chains. Yet, he protests that you have destroyed his building. You laugh, for science has told you that nothing can be destroyed but only changed in form. The scrap iron shall be made into school desks, the ashes shall serve as fertilizer and the stones we shall fashion into useful homes for useful people. We are free. I am captive no more. Yet I am very dangerous in the eyes of the master for I linked Idealism to Destruction. Yes, I am guilty. Being born into a system that sanction slavery, I had no choice but servitude. I am guilty of discontent; of wanting freedom. And worst of all, I am guilty of despising cringing subserviency and fighting to free us all. The sunlight was far off until I made a file, the fresh air was distant until we destroyed the door of our prison. Idealism and Destruction, Yes!

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/1915/v06-w262-jan-16-1915-solidarity.pdf