Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Beneath its folds we’ll live and die,
Tho’ cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the Red Flag flying here!
-Jim Connell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Friday July 31, 1908
Fellow Worker James Wilson on the Songs of Social Revolution
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of July 25, 1908:
MUSIC
—–
One of the Most Powerful
of the Natural Forces.
[by James Wilson]
Among the physical forces, made useful to men, sound has played one of the most important parts. We use the word light, in a literal as well as figurative sense. But sound has more often a real, plain meaning.
Is not the ear the most perfect of the organs of sense? We can remember a tune, long after the words have been forgotten.
The association of sounds, and in a higher degree, music, is one of the most lasting and forcible of impressions.
What old cavalry veteran does not know that even the war horse remembers the different bugle calls, and will neigh and paw the ground with excitement when he hears the stirring blast of the trumpet?
We know that music stirs the emotions in every way. The majestic funeral march of Beethoven appeals to the mind with its solemn and awful grandeur; the latest rag-time dance tune fills us with the feeling of gaiety and enlivens our care-worn existence.
What more powerful to excite ridicule than a comic song? How very useful to bring out the hollowness of the sham religionists, with their sounding drum and doleful chants while they pick our pockets and tell us that “he that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord!” The debt to be repaid in the next world-probably Mars-for that its the world nearest to the earth!
The sky-pilots have long told us of reviving grace-whatever that may be. They also tell us to “taste of the Lord and see that He is good.”
How comforting to a hungry man!
