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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 27, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Industrial Control Will Defeat Employment Sharks
From Spokane’s Industrial Worker of March 25, 1909:
[Part II.]
How to Fix Things
The importance of a systematic fight can hardly be overestimated. The employment agencies are IN OUR WAY. It is not worth while to try to reform them, even if it were possible. They MUST BE DONE AWAY! There are a number of very good reasons for this, and there is every certainty of success of the I. W. W. in doing it. So well known to the workingmen is it that the Union is fighting this thing that it would a dull day for the Secretary if from a dozen to fifty men did not come into the hall who had been robbed and who want the Union to recover the money for them. The instinct of the workers teaches them where their interest is. A systematic boycott of these dives, the continue advertising they get from the Union and other means, such as picketing, etc., etc., are having a great and good effect. The opposition of the agents themselves shows us that we are on the right track. But the fight must be urged, kept up, increased! Down with the employment shark! Up with the Union! During the few weeks that the Union has been unable to hold street meetings some may imagine that we have got slack in this fight. It is only the lull before the storm. The I. W. W. men know well enough who started the riot on the streets of Spokane and then tried to throw the blame on the Union! We have forgotten none of these things. They are simply drawing interest for the near time to come.
The Political Scabs.
The employment sharks, who it is only fair for them to say, are so degraded that they have few friends outside of the criminal element, are supported in their fight against the workers by a small group of cowardly scabs, known as the “Church,” or the “Socialist” Labor Party(!) This bunch circulates a paper printed in New York and furnished free to the saloons and employment offices of Spokane. Besides personal abuse of the Union, men of the I. W. W., it deals in misery, despair and woe. It would be a popular paper among cranky old maids or dyspeptics. What, with this rag, known as the Weakly and Sickly People [Weekly People], and its running mates, the Spokesman-Review, Chronicle, Press, etc., the employment agents have their side of the fight always in print. It may not be thought surprising that a group of cockroaches and ex-convicts like the employment sharks should wish to defend their own graft. But what can be said of these scabs-workingmen-who spend their time fighting, the Union and helping the common enemy, the sharks? These S. L. P.ites have Farley out-scabbed. The S. L. P.-well to the rear in the fight. Sharks, grafters, scabs and politicians, they all look alike to us.
We Will Win Out.
The Industrial Union in France found it necessary to abolish all the employment offices, and in the city of Paris it took just one day’s work to persuade the employment agents to quit business in favor of the Unions. Now the Industrial Union controls the employment business to the great help of the Union and sorrow of the bosses.
In Denmark the same success has attended the union. It is hard to overestimate the importance of these victories.
True, the “scientists” and the always hopeless politicians do not approve of this fight. They would have sensible workingmen think that all efforts along this line are useless. That the workers are born for trouble as the sparks fly upward and that there is no hope till Congress gives every man a vote, and till every man VOTES for this or that political crook. But we know better, and so do the enemy, the grafting employment sharks! They realize well enough what the I. W. W. means, to them.
Industrial Control.
The main thing to be fought for is not merely the abolition of private employment offices as well as the worse ones, the “city” offices, but because the EMPLOYMENT OFFICES ARE IN THE WAY OF ORGANIZATION. By means of these go-betweens the bosses are able to pick out the most willing and the men ignorant slaves, those that are the hardest to organize. The fresh supply of help and the fight between the workers allow the bosses to keep down the food supply, to increase the hours and furnish worse conditions of work. A different story where Mr. Boss has to come to the Union for his help and take not “fifty Italians, twenty Swedes, ten Americans, etc.,” but that many Union men who are looking for the BEST of it!
Hurry up calls and emergency demands for men are the occasions to shove in a bunch of I. W. W. Reds who, in a railroad washout, for instance, would jack up the boss for over-time, double-time, triple-time, etc., etc. Today the same boss gets his men for the regular $1.50 or $1.75 per day, washout or no washout.
The EMPLOYMENT OFFICES HAVE TO GO! It is for you to say when and how, workingmen. They are criminals of the lowest type-even the police admit it!
You cannot have better things without organization. You can make life worth the living by means of it. Conditions are vile. The average grading camp stinks like and Indian village, or like an army on the march. This is your home! The employment shark has a a fine home, good clothes, an easy life and a good time and you are paying for it.
PUT HIM DOWN, AND YOU CAN GET UP!
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[Part II of II.]
[Emphasis added.]
Note: We find the derogatory remark concerning Indian villages to be a violation of the principles of the I. W. W. Denigrating any group within the working class promotes neither Unity nor Solidarity.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote JH Walsh, re Employment Sharks, IUB p1, Feb 27, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iub/v2n30-feb-27-1909-iub.pdf
Industrial Worker
-“by the Spokane Local Unions
of the Industrial Workers of the World”
(Spokane, Washington)
-Mar 25, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n02-mar-25-1909-IW.pdf
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 26, 1909
Spokane’s Industrial Worker: “Employment Sharks Must Go!”-Part I, The System of Graft
Tag: Employment Sharks
https://weneverforget.org/tag/employment-sharks/
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
Note: I could not find Weekly People (SLP) on-line for 1909,
-the following edition is from Dec 29, 1906:
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/061229-weeklypeople-v16n40.pdf
Re: The People (SLP) & other press of SLP, see:
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/index.htm
GenealogyBank has Daily People (SLP) for 1909
-and indeed, the paper refers to Spokane IWW as
“I Am Bums,” a rioting mob, and specifically calls
out J. H. Walsh and James Wilson, see:
Daily People (SLP)
(New York, New York)
-March 9, 1909, page 1
https://www.genealogybank.com/
Re: DeLeon and SLP v migratory workers
-whom they called “the bummery,” see:
The IWW
A Study of American Syndicalism
-by Paul Frederick Brissenden, Ph.D.
2nd Edition, NY, 1920
https://books.google.com/books?id=5CRAAAAAYAAJ
Page 213-Chapter IX: Doctrinaire Versus Direct-Actionist (1908)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=5CRAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA213
Page 220-re 1908 Convention, beginning Sept 21, 1908
-DeLeon v the Western “bummery” (migratory workers):
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=5CRAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA220
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There is Power in The Union – Utah Phillips
Lyrics by Joe Hill