As long as the capitalists can throw their cast-off rags and a few crusts of bread
at the working-class in the name of "Charity,"
just so long will they have an easy and cheap solution for the problem of unemployment.
-Lucy Parsons
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Monday March 1, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on the Chicago Hunger "Riot"
The Chicago Hunger "Riot"
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From the International Socialist Review of March 1915:
A HUNGER "RIOT' IN CHICAGO
By RALPH H. CHAPLIN
Ralph Chaplin
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SUNDAY, January 17, witnessed an heroic attempt on the part of the notorious Chicago police force to solve the "unemployment problem." Strange as it may seem, the police are the only ones who have a clear and forcible answer to the question "what is to be done with the unemployed?" Their answer is unmistakably clear—and forcible. "Society" was too busy at the auto-show or the wheat pit to have time to bother with such trifles as unemployment and hunger. The preachers were too busy praying, the politicians grafting, the reformers talking; and most of the radicals were too busy settling the war or devising ingenious formulas for future class fights, to have time to listen to the clamoring of jobless crowds of homeless, hungry men.
So the unemployed themselves decided to get together and command a little attention. This they did; and they got attention—from the police. You see the police force in Chicago is "in bad" with the "respectable" element of the city. It seems that instead of protecting "property" they have been surreptitiously sabotaging the same, and dividing the spoils amongst themselves. Consequently they were more than anxious to prove to the tax-paying community the inestimable value of the police system to the existing order of things. And thereby hangs a tale.
From what has occurred it is very evident that these uniformed bruisers of the master class desired and planned to start a "riot" and then get the credit for crushing it. In other words the "riot" would be merely the means to an end—a glorious victory for the lawful slug-shot and club and pistol. And then....some big-jawed, gorilla-framed troglodyte in uniform could have posed as a heroic defender of "Law and Order." And the prostituted "Truth rapers" of the newspapers, eager to do with their scribbling pencils any dirty work left undone by the cossack's club, would have convinced the world with their unholy chorus of acclamation. But this dainty bit of mediaeval conspiracy was too "raw" to be "put over" even in Chicago.
Sunday the 17th was one of Chicago's typical winter days—a heavy, grey sky and a biting wind that went ravening through the dismal streets and around the tall buildings and the bleak and deserted factories. Bowen hall, at the Hull House, was the objective point, and from all the byways and alleys of the labor ghettoes came the crowds of hungry and jobless to the unemployed meeting. Through the bitter cold they came—men of all descriptions and all nations—all but the "barrel-house stiffs," and these were too busy hugging the comforts of the big stove and the saw-dust box to trouble about such a needless and disagreeable thing as work.
Through the icy streets they came in hundreds, and past them hurried smug Respectability, cuddled into its overcoat or motoring carelessly along in the plush-padded, rose-scented luxury of the Limousine. It was a polyglot crowd that crammed the big hall, and one really representative of Chicago's unemployed; Slavic and Latin laborers, wintering migratories and white-collared "stiffs," still proud and dreading the plunge into the yawning depths beneath them. Here and there too, were the red, beefy faces of the "gum-shoe" thugs, watching the jobless crowd with cat-like care, and waiting uneasily for the signal to spring the plot that was to cover them with "glory"—the plot that was to punish men for the crime of being hungry.
The meeting was orderly—even apathetic. The audience seemed pitiably glad to find a little warmth for their blue faces and stiff fingers. Back of the speakers' platform was a big black banner with the word HUNGER on it in white letters. Throughout the hall were pasteboard placards bearing such inscriptions as: "We want WORK; not Charity," "Why starve in the midst of plenty," "Hunger knows no law," etc. The speeches were made almost without exception by members of the unemployed—many of them by men from the audience. The general drift of these "speeches" was a denunciation of the crumby "flop-houses," bread-lines, soup kitchens, Mission "dog kennels" and the like. It was asserted that organized charity in Chicago is admittedly inadequate, and that, even if this were not the case, soup is no substitute for employment and the right to earn a decent living.
Lucy Parsons
Under arrest after Hunger Protest
The most radical speaker was Mrs. Parsons and the most radical thing she said was this:
The only property working men possess is their own bodies, and they should guard and protect these bodies at least as jealously as the master class guards and protects their possessions.
She also said that
as long as the capitalists can throw their cast-off rags and a few crusts of bread at the working-class in the name of "Charity," just so long will they have an easy and cheap solution for the problem of unemployment.
As a whole the speaking was far from fiery, and the audience was anything but boisterous.
A young Russian by name of Barron, after stating that Kansas had produced grain enough for the United States, closed the meeting with the pointed remark,
I am a baker and I am expected to starve because I cannot get work baking the bread you people need and cannot buy.
He then went on to ask the crowd if they were content to slink out of sight and suffer privation and hunger without a protest and to accept charity rags for their backs and charity soup for their bellies deluding themselves all the while with the idea that such things were the equivalent of labor and the right to live like men. A short time after this the audience voted unanimously to parade and to show to the smug and respectable the rags and suffering they never care to see or think about.
And so they streamed from the hall down into the cold street again, with the black Hunger banner in the lead. But the invisible minions of the "law" had passed their signals. The sluggers were already clutching their "billies," the squads of detectives and mounted police were in their places, and the ambulance was waiting around the corner for the finish of the work the strong-arm degenerates of Capitalism were about to do!
Down the street started the parade with a few men and valiant girls and women grouped about the black banner in the lead. There was no shouting, no cheering or undue excitement,—nothing that even remotely resembled the starting of a riot. Just pinched faces—blue with the cold, tightly buttoned rags and, if anything, indifference—they might just as well parade as not, having nothing else to do. And that parade would have been quiet and undemonstrative to the end. That crowd hardly had the spirit to protest—let alone fight! They went forward into the police trap like lambs to the slaughter.
The procession had scarcely turned the corner onto the main street when, without a word of warning, a gang of plain-clothes thugs set upon them with leaden "billies," smashing blindly—right and left, through the crowd. The purpose of the attack by these murderous gutter-rats seemed to be to cut the parade in two—to cut off the head, so to speak. These were followed by other burly red-faced, well-dressed brutes, who rushed every one in sight, sprawling the hungry men in all directions with their fists.
Still others followed, with drawn revolvers, firing over the heads of the crowd in order to drive it back into the street from which it was emerging. And that sight I shall never forget; the bestial faces of those low-browed sluggers—distorted with the blood lust, the smashing of fists into faces blue and pinched with cold, and the sickening crash of dripping slug-shots on the heads of defenseless men, the spurt of blood over hands and clothing and pavement stones. Is this the only answer, I wondered, of the Powers that be to workingmen who question why they should go jobless and cold and hungry in the midst of plenty?
But even this unexpected attack from the cowardly ex-second story men of the plain clothes force did not stop the parade. It swelled up around them and over them leaving them somewhat the worse for wear. And the determined paraders rejoined the tattered hunger-banner at the head of the procession and marched for almost a mile, many of them singing all the way in spite of torn clothing and bloody faces. Finally a goodly reinforcement of uniformed police met, manhandled and pinched as many as possible, and the mounted Cossacks clattered down the streets and sidewalks driving the paraders pell-mell before them. Soon the affair was all over save for the lying in the newspapers.
Two weeks later, after attorney Cunnea had proved to Judge Gimmel of the criminal court that police interference in an orderly parade was unconstitutional, another unemployed parade was attempted—successfully. This time a procession over a mile long and with a Hunger banner in the lead, wended through the cold and drizzle and slush for about five miles under the towering sky-scrapers, past the swell hotels and theaters in the heart of the city and through the streets and boulevards, returning at length to the hall from whence they had started. And the paid skull-crackers of the police force, who had predicted 'riot' were chagrined and disappointed—nothing happened to give them a chance to exercise their talents—nothing but the singing of revolutionary songs ; and coppers are not usually talented vocally. Besides, they could not have sung had they so desired; it's against the regulations to do anything as harmless as singing while on "duty."
As it is up to the working class to solve the 'problem' of unemployment, any efforts along that line are deserving of encouragement. No intelligent person claims that parading is a panacea for unemployment. But the instinct of solidarity that actuates a body of workers to go after something they want and get it is a good thing—even if they only get the right to parade the streets and startle respectability from its indifference and smug complacency.
The solidarity of the protest parade is apt to be a foretaste of the solidarity of the shop. Thousands of unemployed have been made rebels for life by the lessons this one bitter winter has taught them. They will be rebels on the job, too, when they find jobs. The parade is a good thing when nothing BETTER can be done. When masterless slaves decide to get together and show their condition to the public—when they meet together, discuss their miseries together, march together and sing together, they are tasting solidarity. And such action may help to jolt their brothers on the job into some kind of mass action in behalf of the working class as a whole. Solidarity spells emancipation. "Better any kind of action than inert theory."
[paragraph breaks added; photographs (except above title) added]
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SOURCE
The Internat
ional Socialist Review, Volume 15
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr, 1914-1915
http://books.google.com/...
ISR of March 1915
http://books.google.com/...
"A Hunger 'Riot' in Chicago" by Ralph Chaplin
(Also source for image above title.)
http://books.google.com/...
See also:
Chicago Hunger Riot + JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
IMAGES
ISR Cover of March 1915
http://books.google.com/...
Ralph Chaplin
http://spartacus-educational.com/...
Lucy Parsons
http://www.thenation.com/...
The Wealthy hand out dimes as the
unemployed line up for coffee an'
http://books.google.com/...
IWW Silent Agitator: Don't Buy a Job
(Many silent agitators were drawn by Ralph Chaplin)
http://www.folkarchive.de/...
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Coffee An' by Joe Hill to the tune of Count Your Blessings
Coffee An' by Joe Hill
An employment shark the other day I went to see,
And he said come in and buy a job from me,
Just a couple of dollars, for the office fee,
The job is steady and the fare is free.
CHORUS:
Count your pennies, count them, count them one by one,
Then you plainly see how "easy you are done,"
Count your pennies, take them in your hand,
Sneak into a "Jap's" and get your coffee an'.
I shipped out and worked and slept in lousy bunks,
And the grub it stunk as bad as forty-'leven skunks,
When I slaved a week the boss he said one day,
"You're too tired, you are fired, go and get your pay."
When the clerk commenced to count, Oh holy gee!
Road, school and poll tax and hospital fee.
Then I fainted, and I nearly lost my sense
When the clerk he said: "You owe me fifty cents."
When I got back to town with blisters on my feet,
There I heard a fellow speaking on the street.
And he said: "It is the workers' own mistake.
If they stick together they get all they make."
And he said: "Come in and join our union grand.
Who will be a member of this fighting band?"
"Write me out a card," says I, "By Gee!
The Industrial worker is the dope for me."
FINAL CHORUS:
Count your workers, count them, count them one by one,
Join our union and we'll show you how it's done.
Stand together, Workers--Hand in Hand!
Then you will never have to live on coffee an'.
-Joe Hill
Coffee an' = coffee an' doughnuts
The song was also known as "Count Your Workers, Count Them!"
pdf: 1923 Little Red Songbook
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