Am I to die, starving in the midst of plenty?
Or shall I die fighting?
For my part, a thousand times over,
I’ll die fighting before I’ll die starving.
-J. H. Walsh
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday July 30, 1908
National I. W. W. Organizer Reports from the Pacific Northwest
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of July 25, 1908:
SHALL WE DIE STARVING, OR SHALL WE DIE FIGHTING?
[by J. H. Walsh]
We are confronting a new condition in the labor movement in the northwest, and judging from all the labor reports it is the same throughout the United States, as well as many of the foreign countries.
Every train in this country is loaded with dozens of “hoboes” (working men looking for jobs), and in some instances there are hundreds in place of dozens. Last night there arrived on one train in this city [Spokane?] 313 men who were beating their way. The previous night 73 arrived in one box car, and in another car 53. The men coming to the headquarters report the same news day after day, and that is that the unemployed army is growing larger and larger.
There are ten men in the harvest fields in this country for every job. They are working for as low as 75 cents per day. There are women and children in this country actually starving. This is not the worst. The worst is yet to come. After the harvest is over the hundreds who secured work, although at small wages, will return to the army of unemployed. Its ranks will be swelled again. And swelled just on the verge of winter, when hardships will be added to the workers’ struggles for an existence.
Those who are getting their “feet under dad’s table,” coupled with those who have a job sufficiently remunerative to eke out an existence, will stand united with the philosophers in passing resolutions condemning the conditions-Bryan, “God Knows” Taft, etc., etc. But resolutions, no matter how philosophically drawn, will not fill empty stomachs.
I am with the “down-and-outs”-I am broke. I am in a land of plenty. Am I to die, starving in the midst of plenty? Or shall I die fighting? For my part, a thousand times over, I’ll die fighting before I’ll die starving.
On the 11th of August the desirable citizens of this state will hold a good-roads convention. This convention is held to further perfect the arrangements for working the slaves on the public roads for their board, and in accordance with the suggestions of the good road apostle-John D. Rockefeller. This is the first step to serfdom. Shall we stand this, or shall we resist it? I realize that every I. W. W. man and woman will answer in chorus that we will resist it, and simultaneously with that breath will come the general philosophical “war dance” from those who are still “not quite down and out” as to “what not to do.”
Yes, knowing only one old program, we grow damn long on philosophy and a damn sight shorter on action. However, we are being confronted with a new condition, and which is going to demand the smashing of many a past precedent as the new facts confront us.
Let me outline briefly the two knotty problems we are face to face with in organizing. To organize industrially we must organize those who are working in the industries. It is impossible to organize the unemployed industrially when they are tramping from one place to another looking for a job. Apparently it is impossible to organize the employed in the industries while one-third of the working class is standing out at the gates looking for the job.
The employed jobites of today realize the fight that will be made against them by the masters in the event they organize, and especially so if they organize in the I. W. W.
No one realizes better than the bosses the desired effect of servitude brought upon those who are waiting by the presence of the unemployed army outside of the factory. The independence of the worker who is holding a job turns to servitude when he sees the unemployed standing at the gate ready to take his place should he make any protest to his boss as to shop conditions.
Therefore, the great problem is to organize the unemployed as well as the employed. Can this be done? It must be done! We are starting on that work here. We are getting a good organization under way at Spokane, Seattle and Portland. We are getting a hold of every cent possible, that a great amount of supplies can be secured from headquarters. We are attempting to establish that discipline necessary to carry out our program, and are meeting with good success so far. We propose to go down the railroad tracks and organize every worker we come to, whether working or not: also those in the “Mulligan bunch.” This will require supplies. The funds for these supplies must come from those who have a few dollars or a job. The “Mulligan bunches” must be organized with no initiation fee and issued out-of-work stamps. Or at least that is the only way I see at this time of organizing them.
We don’t propose to form a “Coxey army” to march to Washington, but we do propose to form a militant industrial army to march to the “ham-and-eggs” and “pork chops.” There are some 50,000 idle men in this northwest country, and if that many cannot be organized to protect themselves from starvation, then they ought to starve or go on the rock pile. We don’t propose to preach “to take and hold” forever without practicing some of the preaching. Better that a thousand men die in a contest with the master and his hirelings for the possession of wealth created by the workers than to know of one innocent child or woman starving to death. And yet our daily papers are filled with these incidents.
For the past few years the masters have been establishing rock piles and chain gangs all over the country, as well as enacting vagrancy laws, which is a move toward serfdom. Shall we stand this much longer? No! Shall these rock piles and chain gangs grow, or shall we abolish them? We propose to abolish them. How? Comes the question! By organizing the unemployed, training and disciplining ourselves, ready to fill those places to overflowing, and with the agitation carried into them they can be disrupted.
This very move has been carried to a partially successful conclusion in three western cities. I. W. W. agitators were fired off the rock pile and out of jail because of their agitation. If such can be accomplished by a few agitators, what can be accomplished by a well organized industrial army of thousands? Ask yourself all the questions you desire as to the obstacles that will be met in this work, but remember that asking questions solves none of the problems that we are confronted with, and only serve to develop the genius in the best ability of our membership that all obstacles in the way of the industrial organization can be surmounted.
We are confronted with a problem, a fact, and not a theory at this time. Times are getting worse. The unemployed army is growing. This is true the world over. We are marching to the revolution at a rapid rate. Don’t think that the fight is going to be along a path strewn with roses. Don’t fool yourself into believing that the master will surrender except through the greatest human struggle that the world has ever known. The coming revolution means the freeing of the slave. The freeing of the slave for the first time in the history of the world means a desperate struggle between master and slave.
Let us buckle on our armor. Let us get to the work that is before us. The workers are looking to the revolutionists, now as never before, for some tangible results. Let us clean up all the outposts first, and let us go in with a determination to finish every job we tackle.
We must abolish the chain gangs and rock piles. We must prevent the capitalists from building roads with stolen labor via the vagrancy law route. We must industrially organize those who are working by militantly organizing those who are not working. We must-we should-we will-die fighting, rather than die starving.
J. H. WALSH.
National Organizer.———-
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SOURCE & IMAGE
The Industrial Union Bulletin
“Official Publication of the
Industrial Workers of the World”
(Chicago Illinois)
-July 25, 1908
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iub/v2n21-jul-25-1908-iub.pdf
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday April 8, 1908
Spokane, Washington – Jawsmiths and Good Singers Enliven Street Meetings
Report from the IWW of Spokane by J. H. Walsh and a New Song, “Hallelujah I’m a Bum”
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