Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 18, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin Pens a Sonnet
From The New Appeal of February 15, 1919:
A Rebel in Jail
Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin, Prisoner #13104
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[Note by Upton Sinclair]
Recently I was addressing the ladies of one of the large clubs in Los Angeles, and they were much amused when I told them that whenever I was in jail I found myself irresistibly impelled to write poetry. Moreover, that was my one chance to get poetry published; newspapers were ready to give it space, because it had been written in jail! You will note from the following letter that others also make verses in captivity. You see, there is nothing else you can do; and you have an irresistible impulse to tell the people outside what is happening to you!
Wherever you live in America you will read in your daily paper about those desperate criminals called I. W. W.s, who want to destroy society, but whom a wise government has put behind bars where they cannot do harm.
From this letter you may see exactly what desperadoes they are. They write sonnets, and beg you to send them good literature to read!
I might explain that the reference in the letter to the “Clean Slate” has to do with the Clean Slate League, which my wife and some friends have organized in Pasadena, for the purpose of circulating a petition to President Wilson for immediate amnesty of all political prisoners. This demand for amnesty is rapidly becoming the first plank in the platform of all radicals. If President Wilson fails to grant it on his return from Europe in February, he will bitterly disappoint many of his liberal supporters:
[Letter from Ralph Chaplin]
Leavenworth, Kans., January 4, 1919.
Dear Comrade Sinclair:
This letter is written from the Federal Penitentiary at Levenworth, by one of the I. W. W. boys convicted in Chicago and sentenced by Judge Landis. My portion was a twenty-year sentence. Perhaps you may recall my name if I tell you that I wrote “When the Leaves Come Out,” which you included in your anthology, “The Cry for Justice.” Also I drew the cover design for the paper edition of your “Prince Hagen,” published by Kerr and Company. (Have worked as a commercial artist since I was quite a young kid.)
The foregoing is merely by way of introduction. My purpose in writing this is to ask you to donate a copy of the “Anthology” to the prison library here. There is only one copy in our possession at present, and the book is in great demand. A copy in the library would be read by hundreds who will not have a chance to read the privately owned copy. The Anthology is a perfectly wonderful thing for rebels (or anybody else) to read while locked up behind the bars. It would be awfully nice of you to send a copy of “Prince Hagen” and a couple of your other books also. “The Jungle,” “The Overman” and “Sylvia’s Marriage” are the only books of yours in the library.
Somebody told me to send you the following somewhat rude sonnet. It may interest you as the expression of the spirit of the class-war prisoners of to-day:
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The boys write little songs and jingles all the time, and this is one of them. We’re not always proud of our poems, but we are proud of the fact that the prosecution didn’t find a yellow streak in the whole bunch of us.
And if the “clean slate” is granted us we will scratch the I. W. W. preamble on with a knife and start all over again.
-Yours for the Revolution,
RALPH CHAPLIN: B 391-13104.
[Emphasis and mugshot of Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin, prisoner #13104, added.]
While the names of the wardens and jailors at Leavenworth are long forgotten, Ralph Chaplin’s most famous song is still sung by workers all over the world. https://www.iww.org/history/icons/solidarity_forever
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