Writing here under his nom de guerre, a reference to coal mining hollow in West Virginia off the Kanawha that was the site of an epic strike in 1912-13, the poet’s voice of Ralph Chaplin was responsible for lasting words in our arsenal, the song Solidarity Forever as an example. Chaplin also gave us these lines reacting to April 20, 1914’s ‘Ludlow Massacre,’ the mass murder of strikers and their families by the National Guard and John D. Rockefeller’s gun thugs at the miner’s tent colony during a long U.M.W.A. coal strike in Colorado.

‘A Voice from the Pit—Ludlow’ by A Paint Creek Miner (Ralph Chaplin) from International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 1 July, 1914.

A Voice from the Pit—Ludlow

(Holly Grove–Not Forgotten)

WILD volleys and volleys of murderous lead
        And whirlwinds of air-leaping flame,
With hell-screaming agony writhing and red
        In fields that were calm ere the yellow-legs came!
From the tattered black village Death rears up his head
And leeringly numbers the names of the dead.
        “But who is to blame?” cries the voice from the pit.

And there, ‘mid the embers that some one had lit,
        Pale children are weeping alone;
While women and babies are strewn in the pit,
        Disfigured and mangled and burned to the bone,
With red gaping wounds where the bullets have bit.
“And who is to blame?” cries the voice from the pit.

“O, who is to blame for the shot and the flame?”
        Cries the voice from the depths of the pit.
“I am covered with mud and spattered with blood;
        My children have ashes and blood in their hair…
        O, who is to blame for the misery there?
In this murderous game I will find who’s to blame
And shout to the whole world the fiendish name!”

Quoth Death, “I have shown their encampment before–
        My own most dependable crew.
So why do you roar and plead and implore,
        I have brought them from Hades expressly for you;
They are yellow-legged curs who are greedy for gore
And mine-guards who clamour for more and for more…”
        “But WHO is to blame?” cried the voice from the pit.

‘Who is to blame for the shot and the flame—
        The machine-guns that sputter and spit,
What tyrant serene is directing unseen
        His black-hearted cowards who kill at command—
        The safe one who orders his own hellish band
        To slaughter and stay with an iron-gloved hand…
        O, HE is to blame for the gun and the brand!”

Wild volleys and volleys of murderous lead,
        And whirlwinds of air-leaping flame;
With hell-screaming agony writhing and red  
        In fields that were calm ere the yellow-legs came.
In the black smoking ruins does Nemesis sit
With a burned-out torch that some one had lit
“And WHO IS TO BLAME?” cries the voice from the pit.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n01-jul-1914-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf