Women of the World, Unite.
You have double chains to lose
and you have the world to gain.
-May Wood Simons
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday May 31, 1908
Chicago, Illinois: City of the Impoverished Men, Women and Children
From the Montana News of May 21, 1908:
Extracts from the speech of May Wood Simons at the opening of the Chicago convention:
When his auditors had come back from he heights to which Wanhope had lifted them, it remained for May Wood Simons to take them down into the Valley of the Shadow. It is safe to say that such a stirring appeal to the heart of an American audience was never made before. Before Mrs. Simons had spoken for five minutes there was hardly a dry eye in the house.
The sobs of women resounded through the vast auditorium. In one of the front seats William D. Haywood, who came through his great persecution and trial at Boise without batting an eyelash-the man who did not even pale before danger and death when they menaced him and his-was crying openly.
At the press table the hardened reporters, who have seen misery in all its many forms time and again, until their very souls were calloused, were coughing suspiciously and unbidden tears were falling on the shorthand notes of the speech. It was a masterpiece of pathos, that simple description of “The State of Things as They Are.”
Plain Little Recital.
And yet there was nothing theatrical about the little statement. It did not savor of the dramatic in the least. It was just a plain little recital of fact. That was all. And yet a big six-footer just behind the writer of this article was blubbering like a baby. And he was a magazine writer, too. Not for a small magazine, but for one of the most prominent in America.
A bearded man whose face showed noting but aggression and strength, a man whose name has gone from end to end of America as an author of power, was making suspicious dabs at his eyes and clawing his beard before Mrs. Simons had hardly begun.
And there was nothing astonishing about the utterance. The trouble with it seemed to be that it was just a little plain truth. And the truth was hurting the hearts of every man and woman in that great audience. It was searing truth. It was the fire that burns to ashes. It was also the fire that creates the Phoenix, arising from those same ashes.
Text of Her Address.
When the Socialist Bible is written it will appear on the printed page that “May Wood Simons arose and spoke, even as Jeremiah of old:
It is fitting, altogether fitting, it seems to me, that the Socialist convention should be held in Chicago. Chicago represents today perhaps better than any other city in the world, that capitalistic age which we plan to abolish. As we gather in this auditorium this morning, the vanguard of those forces which are to emancipate the working classes, there arises before my mind another picture.
That picture is before my mind as I bring to you the greetings of the army of unemployed men who are looking up and down the streets of our city for work which may not be found, sleeping in the station houses at night, eating semi-occasionally, and begging for work which is refused them. They walk the streets, some times day and night, and their cry is work, work, work. To you I bring their greetings.
Brings Idle’s Greetings.
To you also I bring the greetings of the men who have raised Chicago to its pinnacle as the industrial center of the world, the city to which all cities look. I bring you the greetings of the men who built up Chicago’s great wealth and industry, the men and women shrunken and misshapen in body, soul and mind, the men and women of our factories and our “Jungle,” who are trickling their lifeblood out of their finger tips to turn into gold in the coffers of their masters.
I bring you the greeting from an army-the army of men and women and children, very little children, sometimes, who are torturing out their days and nights in the sweatshops. I bring you their greeting.
From the widows with breaking backs and sunken cheeks doing the work of men that their masters may glory in riches and power, I bring you their heartiest greeting also.
Greetings From the Grave.
And I also bring you greeting from the dead; from beyond the grave I bring you greeting from those who have been slaughtered and hidden in nameless graves, or worse, in our great steel mills. Across the gulf of death they reach out to you hands of greeting; in muffled voices they call from nameless holes of death into which their corpses have been thrown and bid you, you men and women of the future, “God-speed!”
Chicago stands today the foremost representative of capitalism built upon industry yes, industry. It is the best representation of modern society. It has made of the men and women who have built it a society which it turning to rend the very beings upon whose labor and toil and blood its magnificences was teared.
Hands Reaching Out.
There are hands reaching out to you in this hall this morning. There are hard, bony hands, the hard, old bony hands of the man who has been cast onto the scrap heap because he cannot produce dividends.
Then there are young hands, the hands of young men in the height of their enthusiasm, begging you to save them from slavery.
Then there are the hands of women thin hands they are, calloused hands with fingers twisted from unwonted toil of men. These hands, too, have gone to the industrial scrap heap.
Mothers’ hands are stretched out to you; you all know what a mother’s hand is like. They are stretched out to you now in appeal; do your duty and they will reach forth to you from the land of the living and from beyond the grave in blessing.
Baby hands-
The speaker paused at the shudder which ran through the audience.
[She repeated:]
Baby hands, little hands in which the bones have not yet hardened, but which know the meaning of toil. Yes, and which will know to the full the bitter meaning of that dreadful word in the years to come, the short years which will be theirs in the “Jungle” and the sweat-shop.
What Will Answer Be?
You men and women assembled here, what will be your answer to the pleading of the hands? In your hands rests the hope of the souls behind the pulsing, twisting fingers.
You have come to Chicago at an auspicious time. You could not have come at a better time. You have come to Chicago when the great industrial system which has been built up here is confessing the inability of capitalism to control and rule because it cannot feed and clothe the worker. You have come at a time when it is proven that capitalism has failed, when it is proven that the man who works, who produces, is not allowed to produce; at a time when it is proven that only in socialism, organized socialism, is there any hope for the salvation of the worker. (Cheers.)
I want you men and women when you go from this hall to the convention hall to remember that you are responsible for the greatest cause at the greatest crisis in this nation’s his tory.
All over this hall this morning I notice the faces of the women. The most inspiring thing to me about the whole combat for the betterment of human kind is that the women are standing shoulder to shoulder with the men in this struggle.
I know of a case in point. In one of our great strikes a striker was beginning to weaken when the loaves and fishes began to run low. His wife said to him, “If there was not half a loaf in the house, John, you must stand by the rest of the men.” He stood there where his wife told him to stand.
When the women make up their minds to stand by the men in this fight the fight is won. You women must stand together with the men. Comrade Wanhope has seconded the great slogan, “Workingmen of the World, Unite; you have only your chains to lose.” This was said by Karl Marx when that great committee first sent forth the great call.
Double Chains to Lose.
If that grand old German were alive today and could stand before you as he stood in the old days of ’48 he would say to you as he said then, “Workingmen of the World, Unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains and you have the world to gains.” But, as he said to the men then, he would say to the women now, “WOMEN OF THE WORLD, UNITE. YOU HAVE DOUBLE CHAINS TO LOSE AND YOU HAVE THE WORLD TO GAIN”
There were no cheers as the speaker finished. There seemed to be certain little baby fingers laying over the hearts of the audience still. It was not easy to forget the soft touch of the little hands, in which the bones had not yet formed. But the most casual onlooker could note the firm-set jaws of the men, behind the tear-dimmed eyelids. Those set jaws spelled Socialism. As the Germans would say the “ursprung” had been touched. The deep fountains were welling forth,but the tears were inflammable. They were kindling a fire.
* * * * *
Socialists Want Harmony.
[She continued:]
Kindly also bear in mind the fact that you are delegates, that you are not the Socialist movement, but only the empowered officers of that movement. The delegates are a small body, charged with a great mission. It is the large body of Socialists who look to us for harmony, for conscience, for devotion to the greater and for the conteming [contemning?] of the lesser.
Let us regard our responsibilities in their true light. Let us reach up and toward the real; let us forget the ephemeral, the passing. Let us discharge our duties to the great cause of Socialism to the best of our ability. We have many struggles before us, but our goal is sure; remember that. Therefore let our cry be: “Onward, onward, ours is the future. Ours is the world.”
———-
[Photographs added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of December 29, 1906:
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SOURCE
Montana News
(Helena, Montana)
-May 21, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77934400
IMAGES
Socialist Party of America Button
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam/spa/socialistparty.html
Child Labor in South by G Gardner from
The Wilkes-Barre Leader, Oct 5, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/118094943/
From the Depths by JA Mitchell, AtR Dec 29, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586781/
See also:
May Wood Simons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Wood_Simons
Tag: May Wood Simons
https://weneverforget.org/tag/may-wood-simons/
Proceedings: National Convention of Socialist Party
Chicago May 10-17, 1908
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89073013468;view=2up;seq=12
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