II
To Jimmie, living the obscure and comparatively peaceful life of a
Socialist propagandist, the question of "sabotage, violence and
crime" had been a more or less academic one, about which the
comrades debated acrimoniously, and against which they voted by a
large majority. But now Jimmie was out among the "wobblies", the
"blanket-stiffs"--the unskilled workers who had literally nothing
but their muscle-power to sell; here he was in the front-line
trenches of the class war. These men wandered about from one job to
another, at the mercy of the seasons and the fluctuations of
industry. They were deprived of votes, and therefore of their status
as citizens; they were deprived of a chance to organize, and
therefore of their status as human beings. They were lodged in
filthy bunk-houses, fed upon rotten food, and beaten or jailed at
the least word of revolt. So they fought their oppressors with any
and every weapon they could lay hands on.
In the turpentine-country, in a forest, Jimmie and his pal came to a
"jungle", a place where the "wobblies" congregated, living off the
country. Here around the camp-fires Jimmie met the guerillas of the
class-struggle, and learned the songs of revolt which they
sang--some of them parodies on Christian hymns which would have
caused the orthodox and respectable to faint with horror. Here they
rested up, and exchanged data on the progress of their fight, and
argued over tactics, and cussed the Socialists and the other
"politicians" and "labour-fakirs", and sang the praises of the "one
big union", and the "mass strike", and "direct action" against the
masters of industry. They told stories of their sufferings and their
exploits, and Jimmie sat and listened. Sometimes his eyes were wide
with consternation, for he had never met men so desperate as these.
For example, "Strawberry" Curran--named for his red hair and
innumerable freckles--an Irish boy with the face of a choir-singer,
and eyes that must have been taken straight out of the blue vault of
Heaven. This lad told about a "free speech fight" in a far Western
city, and how the chief of police had led the clubbing, and how they
had got back at him. "We bumped him off all right," said
"Strawberry"; it was a favourite phrase of his--whenever anybody
got in his way, he "bumped him off". And then "Flathead Joe", who
came from the Indian country, was moved to emulation, and told how
he had put dynamite under the supports of a mine-breaker, and the
whole works had slid down a slope into a canyon a mile below. And
then a lame fellow, "Chuck" Peterson, told about the imprisonment of
two strike-leaders in the hop-country of California, and of the
epidemic of fires and destruction that had plagued that region for
several years since.
All such things these men talked about quite casually, as soldiers
would talk about the events of the last campaign. This class-war had
been going on for ages, and had its own ethics and its own
traditions; those who took part in it had their heroisms and
sublimities, precisely like any other soldiers. They would have been
glad to come into the open and fight, but the other side had all the
guns. Every time the "wobblies" succeeded in organizing the workers
and calling a big strike, all the agencies of capitalist repression
were called in--they were beaten by capitalist policemen, shot by
capitalist sheriffs, starved and frozen in capitalist jails, and so
their strike was crushed and their forces scattered. After many such
experiences, it was inevitable that the hot-headed ones should take
to secret vengeance, should become conspirators against capitalist
society. And society, forgetting all the provocations it had given,
called the "wobblies" criminals, and let it go at that. But they
were a strange kind of criminal, serving a far-off dream. They had
their humours and their humanities, their literature and music and
art. Among them were men of education, graduates of universities
both in America and abroad; you might hear one of the group about
these camp-fires telling about slave-revolts in ancient Egypt and
Greece; or quoting Strindberg and Stirner, or reciting a scene from
Synge, or narrating how he had astounded the family of some lonely
farm-house by playing Rachmaninoff's "Prelude" on a badly
out-of-tune piano.
Also you met among them men who had kept their gentleness, their
sweetness of soul, men of marvellous patience, whose dream of human
brotherhood no persecution, no outrage had been able to turn sour.
They clung to their vision of a world redeemed, made over by the
outcast and lowly; a vision that was brought to the world by a
certain Jewish Carpenter, and has haunted mankind for nineteen
hundred years. The difference was that these men knew precisely how
they meant to do it; they had a definite philosophy, a definite
programme, which they carried as a gospel to the wage-slaves of the
world. And they knew that this glad message would never die--not all
the jails and clubs and machine-guns in the country could kill it,
not obloquy and ridicule, not hunger and cold and disease. No! for
the workers were hearing and understanding, they were learning the
all-precious lesson of Solidarity. They were forming the "one big
union", preparing the time when they would take over industry and
administer it through their own workers' councils, instead of
through the medium of parliaments and legislatures. That was the
great idea upon which the Industrial Workers of the World was based;
it was this they meant by "direct action", not the sinister thing
which the capitalist newspapers made out of the phrase.
