We have organizers throughout the wheat district.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Tuesday August 3, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: "Among the Harvesters," Part 3
Over the past two days, Hellraisers has republished parts one and two of an article by Nils H. Hanson on life among the wheat harvesters. Today we publish the third and final part of the article. The campaign is now on to organize these men into the newly formed Agricultural Workers Organization. Today we hear Hanson call for organization of and solidarity among the harvest workers in order that "they will be able to ride [the rails], and to eat and to get more of the value of the crops they harvest."
From the International Socialist Review of August 1915:
AMONG THE HARVESTERS
By NILS H. HANSON
[Part 3.]
WAR WAGES DURING WAR PRICES.
Strenuous efforts are, being made to prevent the migratory workers from organizing this summer. The farmers would rather see them living on handouts in Chicago, New York or Kansas City than pay them living wages. But the workers are saying to the farmers:
"You are expecting war prices for your wheat and you will have to pay war wages, too, or do the work yourself. Three dollars for a ten-hour day is the lowest wage we are going to accept this year, with fifty cents extra for every hour overtime."
We have not only the slugging, hold-ups, and possible jail sentences to contend with while we ride the rod for thousands of miles in order to earn a "stake" for the winter. Some of us go up against the employment sharks. You have probably heard of the type of buzzard that will send workingmen off for several hundreds of miles where some accomplice will employ them for a day or two and then discharge them. This enables the employment shark to bleed every applicant with a few dollars in his pocket, of several dollars apiece. I know of cases where government employes have sent men several hundreds of miles (the men paying their own fares) to work for farmers who have been dead for several years.
[Continued below.]
[Continued from above.]
SOLIDARITY OF LABOR.
But it is not only the employer and his servants, the public authorities, with whom we have to contend. The workers, themselves, are their own greatest enemy. It is the lack of solidarity, the lack of sticking together that causes all our unemployment and our wretchedness. Most of the "organized" railroad men are ready to obey the rules of their masters and pitch in to us in order to hold their jobs. They stick to the boss instead of sticking to the workers of their own class. And next month when this same railroad man is in the fix we are in today, he will find other "organized" workingmen who will throw him off a train, or scab on him, or spy on him, at the commands of the boss.
But as the migratory workers learn to unite, to stick together, they will be able to ride, and to eat and to get more of the value of the crops they harvest.
ONE BIG UNION.
What the workers need is CLASS solidarity—ONE BIG UNION OF ALL the workers. When they learn that by uniting together and sticking up for, instead of fighting, each other, they can win ANYTHING, can even abolish the present system wherein they are robbed of nearly all they produce, the workers will be the real Masters of the Bread. Railroad men will learn that the man who rides the freight is a workingman, a comrade in the struggle, and will lend him a hand. The mechanic will learn that the unskilled worker is as important as the skilled laborer, and that the skilled laborer must co-operate with him in a common struggle against the exploiting bosses. The driver of the engine who hauls the grain from the fields will learn that he would have no job if there were no "low-down bums" to reap and thresh the grain and he will unite with the dollar and a half a day man against the master class.
The harvest workers are being organized into the Agricultural Workers Organization of the I. W. W. And in spite of the brutal methods used to prevent this organization, they are waking up to the fact that they have a weapon in their own hands before which the farmers will prove powerless. They are learning that when they unite with their fellow workers they will have the whole country at their mercy—for bread is the staff of life.
Organize with your comrades, you harvest workers, you railroad men, you mill and factory and mine workers—organize to take control of the plants, the lands and the roads and mines you operate. Organize to make this the world of the workers!
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~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 16
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1915
https://books.google.com/...
ISR Aug 1915
https://books.google.com/...
"Among the Harvesters" by Nils H. Hanson
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Harvest Workers, Oklahoma,
International Socialist Review, Aug 1915
https://books.google.com/...
History of 400 A. W. O. by E. Workman, 1939, Cover
https://archive.org/...
See also:
History of the "400" A. W. O.
-by E. Workman [Walter T Nef], February 1939
One Big Union Club of New York, N. Y.
(Source also for image of cover.)
https://archive.org/...
Note: E. Workman was actually
Walter T Nef per several sources
including this one:
http://www.abebooks.de/...
For more on Walter T Nef and
the founding of the AWO:
https://books.google.com/...
Shall Freedom Die?
166 Union Men In Jail for Labor
IWW, about 1917
(Walter T Nef was one of the 166.)
https://en.wikisource.org/...
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Tune for One Big Industrial Union
One Big Industrial Union
by George G Allen
Bring the good old red book, boys, we'll sing another song.
Sing it to the wage slave who has not yet joined the throng;
Of the revolution that will sweep the world along,
To One Big Industrial Union.
Chorus
Hooray! Hooray! The truth will make you free.
Hooray! Hooray! When will you workers see?
The only way you'll gain your economic liberty,
Is One Big Industrial Union.
You migratory workers of the common labor clan,
We sing to you to join and be a fighting Union Man;
You must emancipate yourself, you proletarian,
With One Big Industrial Union.
First published in the Little Red Songbook,
7th edition, June 1914.
More verses here.
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