1919 (54 page)

spectacle of ruined villages and tortured earth “the work of fiends” wrings heart of Mr. Hugh C. Wallace during his visit to wasted and shelltorn regions

 

WHIPPET TANKS ON FIFTH AVENUE STIR LOAN ENTHUSIASM

 

U. S. MOBILIZES IN ORIENT AGAINST
JAP MENACE

 

Rule Britannia, rule the waves

Britains never never shall be slaves

 

YOUNG WOMAN FOUND STRANGLED IN YONKERS

 

the socialrevolutionaries are the agents of Denekine, Kolchak and the Allied Imperial Armies. I was one of the organizers of the Soldiers, Sailors and Workmen's council in Seattle. There is the same sentiment in this meeting that appeared at our first meeting in Seattle when 5000 men in uniform attended. E
X
-K
AISER
SPENDS HOURS IN WRITING.
Speaking broadly their choice is between revolutionary socialism and anarchy. England already has plunged into socialism, France hesitates, Belgium has gone, Italy is going, while Lenine's shadow grows stronger and stronger over the conference.

 

TEN SHIPS LAID BARRIER OF SUDDEN DEATH FROM
ORKNEYS TO SKAGGERAK

 

NO COAL? TRY PEAT

 

If you want to find the generals

    
I know where they are

If you want to find the generals

    
I know where they are

 

masses still don't know how the war started, how it was conducted or how it ended, declared Maximilian Harden. The war ministry was stormed by demonstrators who dragged our Herr Neuring and threw him into the Elbe where he was shot and killed as he tried to swim to the bank

 

VICIOUS PRACTICES RESPONSIBLE FOR HIGH LIVING
COST, WILSON TELLS CONGRESS

 

I saw them

   
I saw them

Down in the

   
Deep dugout

arent you coming to the anarchist picnic      there's going to be an anarchist picnic sure you've got to come to the anarchist picnic this afternoon it was way out at Garches in a kind of park it took a long time to get out there we were late there were youngsters and young girls with glasses and old men with their whiskers and long white zits and everybody wore black artist ties      some had taken off their shoes and stockings and were wandering around in the long grass      a young man with a black artist tie was reading a poem      Voilà said a voice c'est plûtot le geste proletaire it was a nice afternoon we sat on the grass and looked around le geste proletaire

But God damn it they've got all the machineguns in the world all the printingpresses linotypes tickerribbon curling irons plush-horses Ritz and we      you      I?      barehands a few songs not very good songs plûtot le geste proletaire

 

Les bourgeois à la lanterne nom de dieu

 

et l'humanité la futurité la lutte des classes l'inépuisible angoisse des foules la misère du travailleur tu sais mon vieux sans blague

it was chilly early summer gloaming among the eighteenth-centuryshaped trees when we started home      I sat on the impériale of the third class car with the daughter of the Libertaire (that's Patrick Henry ours after all give me or death) a fine girl her father she said never let her go out alone never let her see any young men it was like being in a convent she wanted liberty fraternity equality and a young man to take her out      in the tunnels the coalgas made us cough and she wanted l'Amérique la vie le theatre le feev o'clock le smoking le foxtrot      she was a nice girl we sat side by side on the roof of the car and looked at the banlieue de Paris a desert of little gingerbread brick maisonettes flattening out under the broad gloom of evening she and I tu sais mon ami but what kind of goddam management is this?

CRIMINAL IN PYJAMAS SAWS BARS;

SCALES WALLS; FLEES

 

Italians! against all and everything remember that the beacon is lighted at Fiume and that all harangues are contained in the words: Fiume or Death.

Criez au quatre vents que je n'accepte aucune transaction. Le reste ici contre tout le monde et je prépare de très mauvais jours.

Criez cela je vous prie a tû-tête

the call for enlistments mentions a chance for gold service stripes, opportunities for big game hunting and thrilling watersports added to the general advantages of travel in foreign countries

 

Chi va piano

    
Va sano

Chi va forte

    
Va 'la morte

Evviva la libertá

 

EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY DEVASTATES
LIKE WAR

 

only way Y.M.C.A. girls can travel is on troop ships; part of fleet will go seaward to help Wilson

 

DEMPSEY KNOCKS OUT WILLARD

IN THIRD ROUND

 

Ils sont sourds.

Je vous embrasse.

Le cœur de Fiume est à vous.

A young Swede name Hillstrom went to sea, got himself calloused hands on sailingships and tramps, learned English in the focastle of the steamers that make the run from Stockholm to Hull, dreamed the Swede's dream of the west;

when he got to America they gave him a job polishing cuspidors in a Bowery saloon.

He moved west to Chicago and worked in a machineshop.

He moved west and followed the harvest, hung around employment agencies, paid out many a dollar for a job in a construction camp, walked out many a mile when the grub was too bum, or the boss too tough, or too many bugs in the bunkhouse;

read Marx and the I.W.W. Preamble and dreamed about forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

He was in California for the S.P. strike
(Casey Jones, two locomotives, Casey Jones)
, used to play the concertina outside the bunkhouse door, after supper, evenings
(Longhaired preachers come out every night)
, had a knack for setting rebel words to tunes
(And the union makes us strong).

 

Along the coast in cookshacks flophouses jungles wobblies hoboes bindlestiffs began singing Joe Hill's songs. They sang 'em in the county jails of the State of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, in the bullpens in Montana and Arizona, sang 'em in Walla Walla, San Quentin and Leavenworth,

forming the structure of the new society within the jails of the old.

 

At Bingham, Utah, Joe Hill organized the workers of the Utah Construction Company in the One Big Union, won a new wage-scale, shorter hours, better grub. (The angel Moroni didn't like labororganizers any better than the Southern Pacific did.)

The angel Moroni moved the hearts of the Mormons to decide it was Joe Hill shot a grocer named Morrison. The Swedish consul and President Wilson tried to get him a new trial but the angel Moroni moved the hearts of the supreme court of the State of Utah to sustain the verdict of guilty. He was in jail a year, went on making up songs. In November 1915 he was stood up against the wall in the jail yard in Salt Lake City.

“Don't mourn for me organize,” was the last word he sent out to the workingstiffs of the I.W.W. Joe Hill stood up against the wall of the jail yard, looked into the muzzles of the guns and gave the word to fire.

They put him in a black suit, put a stiff collar around his neck and a bow tie, shipped him to Chicago for a bangup funeral, and photographed his handsome stony mask staring into the future.

The first of May they scattered his ashes to the wind.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. 
. . .

The old people were Jews but at school Benny always said no he wasn't a Jew he was an American because he'd been born in Brooklyn and lived at 2531 25th Avenue in Flatbush and they owned their home. The teacher in the seventh grade said he squinted and sent him home with a note, so Pop took an afternoon off from the jewelry store where he worked with a lens in his eye repairing watches, to take Benny to an optician who put drops in his eyes and made him read little teeny letters on a white card. Pop seemed tickled when the optician said Benny had to wear glasses, “Vatchmaker's eyes . . . takes after his old man,” he said and patted his cheek. The steel eyeglasses were heavy on Benny's nose and cut into him behind the ears. It made him feel funny to have Pop telling the optician that a boy with glasses wouldn't be a bum and a baseball player like Sam and Isidore but would attend to his studies and be a lawyer and a scholar like the men of old. “A rabbi maybe,” said the optician, but Pop said rabbis were loafers and lived on the blood of the poor, he and the old woman still ate kosher and kept the sabbath like their fathers but synagogue and the rabbis . . . he made a spitting sound with his lips. The optician laughed and said as for himself he was a freethinker but religion was good for the commonpeople. When they got home momma said the glasses made Benny look awful old. Sam and Izzy yelled, “Hello, foureyes,” when they came in from selling papers, but at school next day they told the other kids it was a statesprison offence to roughhouse a feller with glasses. Once he had the glasses Benny got to be very good at his lessons.

In highschool he made the debating team. When he was thirteen Pop had a long illness and had to give up work for a year. They lost the house that was almost paid for and went to live in a flat on Myrtle Avenue. Benny got work in a drugstore evenings. Sam and Izzy left home, Sam to work in a furrier's in Newark; Izzy had gotten to loafing in poolparlors so Pop threw him out. He'd always been a good athlete and palled around with an Irishman named Pug Riley who was going to get him into the ring. Momma cried and Pop forbade any of the kids to mention his name; still they all knew that Gladys, the oldest one, who was working as a stenographer over in Manhattan, sent Izzy a five dollar bill now and then. Benny looked much older than he was and hardly ever thought of anything except making money so the old people could have a house of their own again. When he grew up he'd be a lawyer and a business man and make a pile quick so that Gladys could quit work and get married and the old people could buy a big house and live in the country. Momma used to tell him about how when she was a young maiden in the old country they used to go out in the woods after strawberries and mushrooms and stop by a farmhouse and drink milk all warm and foamy from the cow. Benny was going to get rich and take them all out in the country for a trip to a summer resort.

When Pop was well enough to work again he rented half a two-family house in Flatbush where at least they'd be away from the noise of the elevated. The same year Benny graduated from highschool and won a prize for an essay on The American Government. He'd gotten very tall and thin and had terrible headaches. The old people said he'd outgrown himself and took him to see Dr. Cohen who lived on the same block but had his office downtown near Borough Hall. The doctor said he'd have to give up night work and studying too hard, what he needed was something that would keep him outdoors and develop his body. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” he said, scratching the grizzled beard under his chin. Benny said he had to make some money this summer because he wanted to go to New York University in the fall. Dr. Cohen said he ought to eat plenty of milkdishes and fresh eggs and go somewhere where he could be out in the sun and take it easy all summer. He charged two dollars. Walking home the old man kept striking his forehead with the flat of his hand and saying he was a failure, thirty years he had worked in America and now he was a sick old man all used up and couldn't provide for his children. Momma cried. Gladys told them not to be silly, Benny was a clever boy and a bright student and what was the use of all his booklearning if he couldn't think up some way of getting a job in the country. Benny went to bed without saying anything.

A few days later Izzy came home. He rang the doorbell as soon as the old man had gone to work one morning. “You almost met Pop,” said Benny who opened the door. “Nutten doin'. I waited round the corner till I seen him go. . . . How's everybody?” Izzy had on a light grey suit and a green necktie and wore a fedora hat to match the suit. He said he had to get to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to fight a Filipino featherweight on Saturday. “Take me with you,” said Benny. “You ain't tough enough, kid . . . too much the momma's boy.” In the end Benny went with him. They rode on the L to Brooklyn Bridge and then walked across New York to the ferry. They bought tickets to Elizabeth. When the train stopped in a freightyard they sneaked forward into the blind baggage. At West Philadelphia they dropped off and got chased by the yard detective. A brewery wagon picked them up and carried them along the road as far as West Chester. They had to walk the rest of the way. A Mennonite farmer let them spend the night in the barn, but in the morning he wouldn't let them have any breakfast until they'd chopped wood for two hours. By the time they got to Lancaster Benny was all in. He went to sleep in the lockerroom at the Athletic Club and didn't wake up until the fight was over. Izzy had knocked out the Filipino featherweight in the third round and won a purse of twentyfive dollars. He sent Benny over to a lodginghouse with the shine who took care of the lockerroom and went out with the boys to paint the town red. Next morning he turned up with his face green and got his eyes bloodshot; he'd spent all his money, but he'd gotten Benny a job helping a feller who did a little smalltime fightpromoting and ran a canteen in a construction camp up near Mauch Chunk.