SABOTAGE
-the conscious withdrawal of
the workers’ industrial efficiency.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 1, 1916
From Solidarity: The A. W. O. Marches on to Industrial Freedom
Solidarity, organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, in this week’s edition, published the above cartoon by “Bingo” along with the good news that 1916 has been a year of great success for the army of organizers sent out into the harvest fields by the Agricultural Workers Organization. In August the A. W. O. gained over 800 members and in in the first three week of September 2000 more were issued their red cards.
SOURCE
IWW Year Book by IWW History Project
http://depts.washington.edu/iww/yearbook_intro.shtml
IMAGE
AWO & Black Cat, Ralph Chaplin, Bingo, Solidarity, Sept 30, 1916
https://www.iww.org/content/blackcat
SOURCE for date and title of cartoon:
Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology
Joyce L. Kornbluh
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1988
Chapter 8: Organizing the Harvest Stiffs
https://books.google.com/books?id=__IZJwAACAAJ
SOURCE for Ralph Chaplin as Bingo
(+ many other sources.)
Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World
-by Paul Buhle, Nicole Schulman
Verso, 2005
https://books.google.com/books?id=9ziQYFZgpBsC
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Report from the Harvest Fields by W. T. Nef of the Agricultural Workers Organization
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-report-from-the-harvest-fields-by-w-t-nef-of-the-agricultural-workers-organization/
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-of-a-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.