You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Monday September 11, 1916
Midwest Harvest Fields: A. W. O.’s 1000-Mile-Long Picket Line
From the International Socialist Review:
JOB CONTROL IN THE HARVEST FIELDS
By W. T. NEF
Sec y-Treas. Agricultural Workers OrganizationFOR the first time in the history of the United States a successful organization of migratory workers has been built thru the grain growing states of the middle west.
The organization of the despised harvester has demonstrated that these men actually had backbone and the spirit to fight in an organized body to eliminate the 15th century conditions they were forced to work and live under while garnering one of the main sources of the country’s wealth.
The Agricultural Workers’ Organization of the I. W. W. in which the harvesters are organized, has flung out the greatest picket line the sun ever looked down upon, extending from Kansas City, Mo., to 300 miles north of Aberdeen, S. D. Every picket carries organizers’ credentials, and the unorganized harvest hand is out of luck this summer unless he kicks in and helps in the struggle for job control.
Four thousand eight hundred harvest hands signed up during the month of July and they are joining at the rate of 300 per day at the present writing. The result of this solidarity is that wages have been raised and working conditions greatly improved, but it has been a bitter struggle all along the line, as the union harvest worker has had to face the bitter hostility of every element in the grain growing states which is interested in keeping the men unorganized and defenseless.
Again, gamblers, boot-leggers and hold up men follow the harvest from Oklahoma to the Canadian line and in former years the unorganized harvesters have fallen easy victims, but, there is a new deal of the cards this year, as the A. W. O. is rapidly eliminating these types of vultures, who are finding employment as gun men, vigilantes and deputies in various towns in the harvest belt.
In Aberdeen, S. D., the Commercial Club is using these gun men to convoy groups of unorganized men to various localities, where they are forced to work at such wages and under such conditions as the farmers may dictate.
These unorganized groups stick close together and wear yellow tickets as marks of identification, so that their gun men protectors may see that none of their flock get away.
It has been the experience of the union delegates that the “yellow ticket men,” once they get away from their kind shepherds, are always anxious to line up in the union, for the reason that, as a rule, they are fleeced and shorn in every conceivable manner.
At many places along the line the union harvesters are receiving a cordial welcome. At other points they are treated as hoboes and hold-up men. In Mitchell, S. D., all incoming freight trains are met by deputies, gun men and vigilantes at the point of rifles. Harvesters are searched. Those without union cards are allowed to proceed and the union men are turned back. If it were not for the fact that so many union men have been crippled and maimed by these thugs, the futile attempts to sift the organized from the unorganized would be amusing, because many organized men do not carry their cards, but send them on ahead. By so doing, they not only succeed in getting by, but often pick up much information valuable to the organization. Men of all nationalities, occupations and trades make up this migratory army of union workers who are on the job with both feet and hard fists fighting for job control.
The most serious accident of the season so far, occurred recently near Yankton, S. D. Three harvesters were killed outright and thirty wounded as a result of a railroad wreck. Prompt relief was rendered and everything done by the organization to make the survivors as comfortable as possible.
The cause of the accident was reported as unknown, but there is good grounds for a growing belief that the engineer deliberately buckled up the empty box cars in order to jar up the men. The matter is now being investigated by the organization.
Owing to the partial failure of crops in many localities the organization is finding it hard work to maintain the scale, but in spite of all handicaps the A. W. O. will close the harvest season 20,000 strong and will then be in a good position to organize in other fields and industries.
From Solidarity of September 2, 1916-
“Farmer’s First Lesson” by Bingo:
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 17
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company,
July 1916-June 1917
https://books.google.com/books?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ
ISR September 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA133
“Job Control in the Harvest Fields” by W. T. Nef
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA141
IMAGES
Harvest Fields-1, Nef, ISR, Sept 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA141
Harvest Fields-2 to 4, Nef, ISR, Sept 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA142
Harvest Fields-5, Nef, ISR, Sept 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA143
See also:
Harvest Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World and Agricultural Laborers in the American West, 1905-1930
-by Greg Hall
Oregon State University Press, 2001
Note: page 118 states: “Ralph Chaplin (“Bingo”)…penned drawings that expressed the spirit of union workers.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=5YoFAQAAIAAJ
Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology
-ed by Joyce L. Kornbluh
PM Press, Mar 1, 2013
(Search preview with: harvest.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=sE0Qc0M61fkC
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917
-by Philip Sheldon Foner
International Publishers, 1965
(See Chapter 21. The Agricultural Workers Organization)
https://books.google.com/books?id=e-KlAAAAMAAJ
The Harvest War Song set to the Tune of Tipperary
(Tune also used by Joe Hill for his Soupline Song)
THE HARVEST WAR SONG
BY PAT BRENNAN
(Tune: “Tipperary”)
We are coming home, John Farmer; we are coming back to stay.
For nigh on fifty years or more, we’ve gathered up your hay.
We have slept in your hayfields, we have heard your morning shouts;
We’ve heard you wondering where in hell’s them pesky goabouts?
CHORUS:
It’s a long way, now understand me it’s a long way to town;
It’s a long way across the prairie, and to hell with Farmer John.
Here goes for better wages, and the hours must come down;
For we’re out for a winters stake this summer, and we want no scabs around.
You’ve paid the going wages, that’s what’s kept us on the bum;
You say you’ve done your duty, you chin-whiskered son-ofa-gun;
We have sent your kids to college, but still you rave and shout,
And call us tramps and hoboes, and pesky go-abouts.
But now the wintry breezes are a-shaking our poor frames,
And the long-drawn days of hunger try to drive us boes insane.
It is driving us to action—we are organized today;
Us pesky tramps and hoboes are coming back to stay.