from Michael Johnson, Reading the American
Past, 96-98
Progressive
reformers concentrated their attention on large cities, and most labor unions
focused on big factories. Many working people moved from job to job in small
towns, in western mining and logging camps, or from farm to farm as migratory
laborers in fields of wheat, sugar beets, grapes, or vegetables. T'he
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), formed in Chicago in 1905, tried to
organize these scattered workers under the tent of One Big Union dedicated to
overthrowing capitalism. The IWW- or Wobblies, as they were called- attracted
many working people throughout the west. One of them wrote an anonymous account
of why he became a Wobbly- an account that illustrates the appeal of
revolutionary doctrines rejected by Progressives.
Although written in 1922, it is quite representative of the IWW in the
Progressive Era.
'Why
I Am a Member of the IWW, 1922,’ Four L Bulletin, reprinted form Joyce L.
Kornbluh, ed. Rebel Voices, an IWW anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1964) 286-289
I come from a part of Europe which
furnishes a very large percent- age of the loggers in the northwest.
As to my past I might say that life has
offered me a very varied bill of fare. From my seventh to my fourteenth year I
generally put in from seven to eight months a year at the 'point of
production.' We kids in the sugar beet fields of southern Sweden began our day
at 6 A.m. and were kept busy until 8 Pm., with three rests a day, totaling
altogether two hours, making a twelve-hour day. You can easily imagine how much
time we had for play or study and how physically fit we were for either.
So my childhood was lost and I was an
old man at 14, when I struck a job in a grocery store, and at the age of 23 1
found myself manager for quite a large business enterprise in my native
country- -a co-operative association composed of several thousand members . .
.
At the age of 25 I emigrated to the United
States. To me it was not a question of journeying to some place where I hoped
to gain fortune and fame. It was merely the satisfying of a desire for
adventure and for knowledge of the world, a desire long suppressed for reasons
of entirely personal nature. My first job in this country was in a packing
plant at South St. Paul, Minn. There I received a splendid illustration of
Upton Sinclair's book, "the Jungle,' perhaps the most read book in Sweden
at the time of my departure. It was a ten-hour day, with lots of overtime at
regular pay, 16 1/2 cents per hour. Never do I see a sign advertising a certain
brand of ham
and bacon without thinking of the terrible high premium in sweat and blood, in
misery and starvation, in ignorance and degeneration, the workers in those
establishments have to pay before these products reach your table.
I turned down offers to again enter
the commercial field back in Minnesota in order to be able to study another
class of men, the man of the .wild west," as well as the wild west itself,
and early in March, 1910, 1 headed for this coast.
I'll never forget my first experience
in camp. It was a railroad camp up in the Rockies. I was tired after the hike
with my bundle on my back, and attempted to sit down on a bed, the only
furniture I could see that would furnish me a rest. Before I could accomplish
the deed I was told in a very sharp voice in my mother tongue not to do so. I
moved a little and tried another bed, when another Swede gave a similar
command. After a third experiment which ended in a similar way, I got kind of
peeved and began to lecture my countrymen a little as to civilized manners,
when one of the boys explained: 'We only warn you so as not to get lousy."
Suffice it to say that I made no more attempts
to rest in that camp, but took a freight train that very evening and stayed two
nights and one day in a box car before 1, nearly froze to death, was dumped off
at Hill- yard, Wash., penniless, with no one I knew, and unable to speak a word
in English.
Shortly
after this incident I found myself in a logging camp in Idaho, across from the
city of Coeur d'Alene. It was double beds two stories high, sleep on straw,
work eleven to twelve hours per day, but the board was fairly good. I stayed
there for several months, mostly because I wanted to stay away from my
countrymen in order to learn the language. From there I went to British
Columbia. Put in one year in a logging camp in the Frazer Valley and then one
year and a half in a railroad camp on the Kettle Valley railroad. It was here
aligned myself with the I.WW, and may I state that there was no delegate in
that camp, and, to the best of my knowledge, not one member, I went over a
hundred miles into Vancouver, B.C., to get that 'little red card."
Why did I do it? The reasons were many. While young I had
associated myself with the prohibitionists, joining the Independent Order of
Good Templars. I soon came to the conclusion that the liquor traffic itself is
but a natural outgrowth of our existing social system, and that I could not
abolish it without a fundamental change in society itself.
When working on the Kettle Valley road I
observed quite a few interesting facts in this connection. Of over three
thousand workers employed for a couple of years I doubt if there were two dozen
men who left that job with sufficient funds to carry them for two months. The
general routine was to work for a month, draw your check, go down to a little
town named Hope (the most hopeless city I've seen) composed of two very of
dirty rooming houses, a couple of stores and half dozen houses of prostitution,
and to spend in a day or two, your every nickel in either the saloons or the
brothels, usually in both....
The IW.W. seemed to me then and seems to
me now the only group offering me any sensible program under which I could operate with a
view of gaining these good things in life, and such changes in society as I
desired. The I.W.W. declared that our real ruler is our boss. He decides our wages and thereby our standard of living, our
pleasure or our misery, our education as well as the education of our children,
our health and our comfort in life; in fact, he almost decides if we shall be
allowed to live.
The I-W-W- also told me that by uniting with my fellow-workers in the industry
and all industries combined into One Big union of all the workers, we could
successfully combat our masters’ one Big Union and gain the good things in
life. We did not need to live in misery, we did not need to be ignorant for lack of time and access
to study. And furthermore, we would become trained and organized for our final
task, the control and management of industries. And as this program met my
demands I naturally joined the I.W.W.
Some particular influences caused me to
devote my whole life to the organization, and I am sure that perhaps thousands of others have been
similarly influenced and simply forced to align themselves with the movement.
I knew a young), fellow-worker in
Seattle, by name Gust Johnson. He was only a little more than 20 years of age,
a very quiet and very studious fellow. He surely had the courage of his
convictions and he practiced what he preached to the limit of his ability. He
was refined in manners, exceedingly clean, neat and orderly. He had been in the
United States for about two years, when the Everett free-speech fight took
place. He went on board the Verona to go with the bunch to Everett on the fifth
of November, 1916, to assist in enforcing the constitutional right of free
speech and free assemblage. In the shooting that followed Gust Johnson was the
first one who fell with a bullet through his heart. Gust Johnson, who would
hesitate even to kill a fly, Gust Johnson, to whom violence and disorder were
an Abhorrence.
I did what every one of you would have
done for a true friend on whom such a cruel outrage had been committed. I threw myself into the
harness and faithfully worked for the defense of the seventy-two victims, unjustly arrested, until the
day of their release, and until the memory of Gust Johnson and the other four
victims of the Everett tragedy stood shining bright before their relatives and
their class.
During this defense work I got
acquainted with another countryman of mine who toured the country in behalf of
the I.W.W. His name is Ragnar Johanson. Ragnar has all the advantages in life
which I lack. He is well educated, well built, handsome, a gifted orator and
accomplished writer. Now there is no intelligent human being who thinks that any question
can be solved by violence.
So Ragnar's theme has always been: 'Violence signifies weakness; reason,
strength.' In hundreds of lectures I have heard this man urge his
fellow-workers to educate themselves, to study and organize, but never have I
heard him utter one word about using brutal force or violence to accomplish
their ends. On the contrary he has always argued against all such teachings as
being Harmful and detrimental to the workers as a class or as individuals.
Where is Ragnar Johanson now? He is serving ten years in the Leavenworth, Kan.,
federal prison, together with about seventy other fellow-workers who are my
personal acquaintances or friends.
And lastly, although I am a
foreigner, it is only because I am in America that I am an I.W.W. For, contrary
to the belief of many, the IWW is an outgrowth of advanced economic
developments in America, and the Italian, the Russian or the Swede that you may
find in the organization here would not have been 'wobblies' had they remained
in their native countries.
The economic law which says 'that
commodities shall be produced by that method which allows for the least
expenditure of human labor" is the real ruler of society. This law cannot
be abrogated by any combinations, trusts, monopolies, parties or organizations
of any kind.... At present time production on large scale affords the greatest
conformity to this law, hence the success of the trusts and the great,
industrial combinations. United States, with its immensely large natural
resources and its shortage of labor power in years gone by has offered
the best opportunity for the development of machine production on a large
scale, while -at the same time the aforesaid shortage of labor power has served
as a spur to progress in this direction. The result is that no country in the
world is so far advanced industrially, as the U. S., particularly in leading
industries, such as agriculture, mining, lumbering and manufacturing of
machinery and means of locomotion.
The saving of labor power appears
through a thorough-going specialization of the work, through elimination of
competition by means of amalgamations into large trusts whereby unnecessary
labor in management in advertising, in salesmanship, and in distribution are
avoided, and at the same time over-production with its loss of values in
perishable goods, etc., is limited to a minimum. The trust is the bosses' One
Big Union whereby they not only control the price on labor power, but also
safeguard themselves against waste of labor power.
The I.W.W. is the result of the trust, the bosses' One Big
Union. As the trust becomes universal, succeeds in organizing the industries
inter- nationally, so will the I.W.W. expand. As the trust is the logical outcome
of technical progress in our mode of production, is a means by which
commodities can be produced with a smaller expenditure of human labor than under
a competitive system, so is the I.W.W. [an] outcome of the same forces whose
object is to counteract the power of the trust and ultimately take full control
of the trusts and the means of production for the benefit of mankind as a
whole. Neither of them can be talked, written or legislated away. Let’s make an
effort to understand them and the underlying causes for their existence, and
much suffering and much hatred will be avoided.