You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday April 4, 1915
New York, New York - I. W. W. Fights Conspiracy of Employment Agencies
The New York Times recently reported, with its usual air of disapproval, on a meeting held by the I. W. W. for purpose of organizing hotel workers and eliminating the corrupt practices of unemployment agencies:
I. W. W. PLAN HOTEL STRIKE.
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Tanenbaum, Tresca, and Others Organize
Union of Workers.
Frank Tannenbaum, on his way to jail in 1914,
after leading protest of unemployed.
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The Industrial Workers of the World are organizing the hotel employes with the object of calling another strike, if necessary, to enforce an eight hour schedule and the elimination of the employment agencies. At a meeting held in Bryant Hall, Sixth Avenue near Forty-second Street, last night. I. W. W. Hotel, Restaurant and Club Workers' Industrial Union No. 110 was organized. About 250 attended and at the close many signed as members of the union. One of the organizers said that 1,000, were ready to join. Much strike talk was heard.
The I. W. W. assisted the hotel waiters in their disastrous strike of two years ago. This time they are going to disregard the waiters and give their attention to organizing all help "below stairs." Already Polish, French and Italian hotel workers' unions have been organized.
The speakers last night were Frank Tanenbaum, Elizabeth G. Flynn, Carlos Tresca, Nick Cuneo, Charles Ashleigh and Howard Schaeffle. Carlos Tresca said the hotel workers were convinced there was a conspiracy between employment agencies and some chefs and head waiters whereby men were continuously hired and discharged so that each time the agencies and others might profit by the ten per cent of a month's salary exacted as fee.
The headquarters of the new union will be at the I. W. W. Unemployed Union, 64 East Fourth Street.
Today's
The Washington Times reports that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn will speak on the subject of unemployment:
Socialists to Hear Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, of New York, socialist and labor organizer, will speak on "Unemployment, a Menace to Society," on Monday evening at the Public Library under the auspices of the northeast local Socialist Party. Miss Flynn is noted for her activities among the textile workers of Lawrence and Paterson.
Below the fold,
Hellraisers offers further thoughts on the Unemployment Crisis from the
Labor World of Minnesota, and from this month's edition of the
International Socialist Review.
From The Labor World of April 3, 1915:
An Unemployment Program
The closing of congress records not one measure either temporary or permanent for the relief of unemployment. In the most critical period of unemployment ever known in this country we have failed again to acknowledge that no local power can adequately deal with it.
In the first place congress has done nothing to furnish work. Ten thousand dollars was appropriated for a federal census of unemployment. Not a cent was appropriated to hasten necessary public works to draw off the desperate thousands cast off this winter from the building trades and from private industry everywhere. The unemployed do not need to be counted again; they need work.
Reactionary Congress.
Fearful of appropriating moneys for pork barrel projects in the rivers and harbors bill, congress took the safe line of allowing only enough money to continue work that is already under way and cannot be interrupted. It saw no way of weeding out the pork barrel projects and substituting other really necessary works. Representative Britten proposed a bill to draw off 100,000 of the unemployed in a citizen soldiery. Nobody proposed a bill to draw them off in federal cohorts building dams, dredging channels and clearing lands for home-seekers and for development.
Secondly congress has done nothing to organize the labor market. Three important bills capable of doing this have been allowed to drift silently into committee. The president believes, according to his Indianapolis speech, that a system of federal employment agencies would be a good thing. But if they will ever be needed, they are needed now. The less work there is the more need to look for it economically. The federal government is the only economic distributor of labor. No lesser power can prick the industrial war map of this country, show the line-up of labor and industry, the advances and the retreats.
A Notable Book.
By a curious coincidence, in the same week that congress, in closing, files this negative unemployment record, there appears the first comprehensive analysis of unemployment ever made in America, and the first definite presentation of the problem as a federal responsibility.
The book is "Out of Work." The author is Frances A. Kellor, former chief of the Bureau of Industries and Immigration of the State of New York, and now vice chairman of the Committee for Immigration of the state of New York, and now vice chairman of the Committee for Immigrants in America, under the auspices of which the book is published.
It is important because its program of federal responsibility is not presented as a theory. The conclusion is reached through a careful and keen interpretation of the failure of the 20 already existing state bureaus to deal with the problem, and the limitations of the cities in attempting to deal with it single-handed, without federal aid and supervision. The city, not the state, according to Miss Kellor, is the logical unit for the distribution of labor. The state unit has no correspondence to industrial conditions. The labor reserve cities, if united by a common federal supervision, have.
"Out of Work", while insisting upon the immediate need for organizing the nation's labor market, recognizes that the present disorganized labor market is only one of the causes of unemployment, and at present not the main cause-which is lack of work. Federal exchanges are not a complete solution for a problem that is, at base, industrial; but they can do two things; conserve the resources of unemployed men and women in search for work; and furnish the skeleton for the national industrial policy which this country is the last of the great nations to approximate.
The book contains a long-time preventive program, and a shorttime program designed for crises like the present. In its treatment of emergency measures, whether official or civic, as well as in its treatment of permanent constructive measures, the book is a protest against duplication of effort on the part of various agencies, and decentralization of work. Its recommendations are in a marked sense definite and specific. It is not a treatise; it is a program-for congress, for legislatures, for city councils, for civic bodies-and even for individual citizens.
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From the International Socialist Review of April 1915:
PLENTY OF JOBS!
One day last week a fat, greasy, over fed individual, wearing those quack-doctor side whiskers that make a man look as though he were peeking through the sage-brush, sauntered into the office of the REVIEW to Let His Light Shine for a few moments.
He said there were some good things about us socialists, and that if the workingmen would submit to be "guided" by men of a higher intellectual order, we might hope to persuade such men to accept office and pilot the good ships of Industry into a safe harbor.
But there was one point upon which he insisted, we would have to change our minds. There were not enough jobs to go around in the world and there never were going to be, so it would be necessary for the socialists to inaugurate some world-wide charitable organizations if they ever hoped to "settle the world's problems." In fact, according to his view, "the broad view," the chief function of socialism ought to be "Charity work."
And this reminds us of a short communication which we received some time ago from a Chicago workingman, S. B. Davidson, entitled "Work for the Eight Hour Day." Some of the things Comrade Davidson says are so good an answer to our would-be side-whiskered Saviour, that we are going to try to give them here. When it comes to mental illumination, Comrade Davidson's advice is like a metropolitan electric light plant set upon the top of a high hill, beside which our "charity" friend looks like a fire-fly in comparison. It goes a long way toward establishing our faith in working class ability to save the working class.
You may line up college and professional brains beside the most ordinary day laborer when it comes to solving the problems of the unemployed or shedding some light on how to abolish the wages system, and you will nearly always find our professional friends piffling away over some minor phase, while the hard-handed, rough-neck lays his finger on the cause of the trouble.
If you want to know how utterly bankrupt the capitalist class is both in brains and efficiency, you want to read what our high-browed statesmen have had to say on the problem of unemployment. One and all have almost invariably come to the conclusion that there is not enough work for everybody, and that we may as well make up our minds to facing a constantly growing Army of Unemployed.
And now comes Comrade Davidson with his suggestion:
We can only work effectively on the political field by backing up our efforts on the industrial field. We can only work effectively on the industrial field by backing up our efforts on the political field. The two go hand in hand. Let us now give our earnest efforts to the industrial field and win for ourselves the eight-hour day. Make this our slogan: "Not a man or woman shall be working more than eight hours a day at the close of the year 1916."
Some one has suggested that we cooperate with the unemployed, and we know of no better way to co-operate than BY ABSORBING THEM IN INDUSTRY BY REDUCING OUR HOURS OF LABOR.
If we reduce the hours of labor of four men from ten to eight, we can give eight hours' work a day to one man who is now idle. If we reduce the hours of one hundred men from ten to eight, we can GIVE EIGHT HOURS' WORK DAY to TWENTY-FIVE MEN WHO ARE NOW IDLE.
By the time we have reduced the hours of ten million workers from ten to EIGHT, we will have ABSORBED TWO MILLION OF THE UNEMPLOYED. Then our jobs will be more secure, and when we demand more wages there will be fewer idle men to take our places. Don't forget that the idle workers are the ones who set your scale of wages.
So work for the Eight Hour Day. It will benefit you. Enough can be produced in less than eight hours a day to supply every human want. You have no need to work more than eight hours a day in order to live in comfort.
Capitalists pay the workers just enough to keep them in working condition and to produce children to take their places when they can no longer be used at a PROFIT to the owners of industry. But the boss has GOT to give you a living while you are on the job, for when YOU STOP, PRODUCTION ALSO STOPS. As long as the profit system lasts you are going to get a living while you are at work, and that is about all you are going to get. If you get any more you will have to fight for it. You will have to fight to keep on getting what you receive now. Life is a constant warfare between the employers and the employed
Did you ever hear anything like this from the great "Institutions of Learning" (?) or from our presidents or ministers or U. S. senators? Did you ever hear Jim Hill or John D. Rockefeller suggest that the way to help the working people would be to cut down the hours of labor and give work to the unemployed? There ARE PLENTY OF JOBS, there is plenty of work for every human being in the world. Take the steel mills, where men labor ten or twelve hours a day seven days a week. Here is an opportunity to make FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND GOOD JOBS OUT OF 250,000 rotten jobs by cutting the hours of labor in HALF and paying out the profits that are absorbed by the idle mill owners IN HIGHER WAGES FOR THE MEN.
The same thing applies to the farms, the railroads, the mines and factories all over the world. Millions of human beings NEED food, clothing and homes, and millions of men and women want to go to work to produce these things. The only thing that prevents them is the fact that the EMPLOYING CLASS ARE UNABLE TO MAKE PROFITS BY EMPLOYING SO MANY MORE WORKERS. And they prefer to let men and women starve to employing them when there are no profits to be gained for themselves.
And this is why we intend to abolish the profit system. We intend that the value of their products shall go to the workers when the Glad Day arrives. And we are not going to MAKE UNNECESSARY work for anybody. We are going to cut down the working hours just as low as possible for everybody, and we are going to use machinery where it will do the work of men and women, so that every factory, mill, mine and shop in the world will be turning out things with as little labor and as little time as possible to supply all the needs and desires of Man.
And, as the workers will themselves own and enjoy the things they have produced, there will be no poverty for any man who wants to work.
From The Masses of January 1915:
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SOURCES
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Mar 31, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Washington Times
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Apr 4, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-April 3, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The International Socialist Review, Volume 15
Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr, 1914July 1914 - June 1915
http://books.google.com/...
ISR April 1915
http://books.google.com/...
"Plenty of Jobs!"
http://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Frank Tannenbaum
http://universityseminars.columbia.edu/...
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Coffee An'
http://books.google.com/...
Florence Kellor
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
ISR Cover Dec 1914
http://books.google.com/...
Their Last Job
(search with "Tactics of the Unemployed" & choose p. 266)
http://books.google.com/...
Cheer up, Bill!
http://dlib.nyu.edu/...
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Hallelujah I'm a Bum - Utah Phillips
Hallelujah! We're All Bums!
new verses by JayRaye
Oh, we were all working
And paying our tax,
And that's when Bain Capital
Gave us the ax.
(Chorus)
Hallelujah! We're All Bums,
Hallelujah! Bums again.
Hellelujah! Give us some hand-outs
To revive us again.
How we love to go begging
For something to eat,
And waiting for food stamps?
Well, that can't be beat!
(Chorus)
Then we fixed us a feast
Of beans and cornbread,
But the Billionaires said
We'd be better off dead.
(Chorus)
Oh, but we ain't dead yet,
We're having such fun
Collecting our hand-outs
And watching reruns.
(Chorus)
Well George Bush love us
When we work three jobs.
Why if we never slept,
We'd have dough by the gobs!
(Chorus)
Recommended reading:
The Right to Be Lazy
by Paul Lafargue
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