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Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
Tales
FOLKLORE
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Wayne Walden
ADDRESS 51 Bank Street, New York City
DATE October 17,1938
SUBJECT Reminiscences of a Rebel
1. Date and time of interview
2. Place of interview
3. Name and address of informant Told by one who is desiriou2 of
remaining anonymous
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Wayne Walden
ADDRESS 51 Bank Street, New York City
DATE October 17,1938
SUBJECT Reminiscences of a Rebel
Tales
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
It was in 1915, during the days when we were trying to
organize the agricultural workers in the Dakotah harvest fields.
Pat Kilcoln, a new convert to the aimsIstructure and methods of
our union, had never before heard such words as we used. The very
phrase economic interpretation of history' was, to Pat a huge
mouthful. 'The materialist conception', 'bourgeoise,' 'proletariat-'
when you could use these kind of words you had attained erudition.
But to really be one of us, a full-fleded card member of our fighting
fraternity, a'rellow-Worker', equal in rank to the highest brow among
vs that,indeed, was enough to swell Pat's pride, as well as his head.
When, in listening to our discucsions,you heard a guy use 'economics'
you were,or should have been,convinced that the guy was educated and
a deep thinker. To employ such terms yourself was to be eligible for
the inner circle, if we would have had one; at least you mald have
been looked up to, by the likes of Pat. However,Pat, having become one
of us
strove
istened even more eagerly to our words. He liked them, and
to add a few to his own vocabulary.
Leaving us one mornhig, for a trip into town,Pat
returned at evening in a joyful mood. He, too was an
intellectual. He now knew a thing or three himself. "This,
as he came plunging into our 'jungles; is what he excitedly
proclaimed: 'Wot d'ye tlnk happened to me today! I goes in
to dis hoozier burg here for some cigs, and was 1,00fi,.' it up
on the main stem, see, and I gets to talkin' to a blokelsee,
so I starts to tell him somethinl. Furty soon I find out he
c,ont know a damn thing. Why, the bloody scissorbilllhe didn't
even know wot an economic is. I busted him one on the ear, and
I'll bet he'll know from now on.,"
Those were great days,alright. We were all etre that the
worker's commonwealth was just around the corner. For a time the
slaves came tumbling in as fast as our delegates could write 'em
out tickets. The message was being spread like wildfire.
Whereever you went,in the jungles or under railroad water -tank,
harvest fields,woods canpc,the mining -towns- in fact wherever two
guys met, you'd hear us being either praised or damned. In the towns,
at our street meetings, we'd break in as speakers fellows who never
face(' a crowd in their lives before'. Some of them became in time
fairly good spell -binders, but some,of course, never amounted to
a damn. And it was these birds who caused us the greatest embarrassment
these punk kind, 1 mean -for they were always ready to spout, and
would rush in where a wiser guy wouldn't feel so cockeyed sure of
himself.
I still shudder at the flop I saw a guy pull off out in Seattle,
in either 116 or'15. That gink was worse, if anything, than Pat
I was telling you about.
The large auditorium of the Labor Temple was crowded with
people. They had come to hear a variety of outstanding speakers
on a variety of what might be considered burning issues.
A clergyman,in behalf of religion,preached a beautifully worded
A
harangue; a leading local F of L-ite orated melodiously upon the
A m A
great A.F. of L; a socialist spoke most eloquently upon his
particular philosophy -it was a verbal fireworks worth listening to,
I'm telling you. Every speaker seemed inspired and, as I said, they
put it over in grand style. But I waited. Naturally, I had an idea
that the best was yet to come. I kept expecting a Wobbly speaker,
who would have something real to say one whose eloquence would
be on a par st least with any of the others, but whose message
would far transcend in importance anything they had said. So I
waited for the appearance of one of our own speakers. Being the
last would be fine, I thought; getting in his say so at the windup
of the whole series, I thought, would leave the crowd with something
to think about. We had some damned good speakers too, there was Ellis,
and Belmont, and J.P.Thompson, and others also. But where the devil
where they! Anyhow,none of them showed up. Finally, out saunters a
_guy who the chairman said would represent the Wobs. I had seen the
guy several times so when I saw him coming forth now, my heart sank.
Well,this is what he said, andomind you,it was right after all
the others had shot the works in the grand style I mentioneds
'Ladies and Gents, I -I aint much of a speaker,but there's
one thing to it. Ylaint goin, to get nowhere unless yigit in the
one big union. You gotta line up in the O.B.U. to git anywhere.
Uh-you just gotta,thas all. You've been listenin' to the crap of
a lot of other guys this afternoon and what Id they tell you?
Yawthin'. Well, Ladies and gents and fellow workers, I aint much
of a speaker,but there's one thing to it; you just gotta organize
for pork chops. Git in the right kind of a gang. Use yer bean -if
yl got one. Solladies and gents, as I was saying, I guess
I aint
much of a speaker and I'll now pull the chain.'4As T-bone Slim
would say, I was mortified. Mortification set right in.
Then there was cross-eyed Cunningham, about the ugliest ding
you ever laid eyes upon. He was a hell of a nice little fellow but,
gosh
hat a homely mug he carried around with him. Not only was he
cross-eyed,but he had a snozzle on him that ought to have got him
a job in the circus. He wasn't any bigger than a pint of whiskey.
He'd have had to stand on a soap -box to kick a duck from behind.
But he was a witty little cuss though. Some of the bunch was kidding
him one day about his looks. They was rubbing it in kind of hard.
The average guy would have gotten sore about some of the things they
said to him. Bat he didn't get sore. 'Say' ,he says to themolwhen I
was in the navy,I was the best lookin' kid anyone ever saw. Why, two
Admirals once fought a duel over me.'
In Chicago, Sam Scariett was delivering a streetmeeting
lecture. That was just before our getting into the war,in 1916,
it
Sam was a ciOackerjack speaker,and his Scotch wit was generally
4
ready for whatever happened. At tnat time some rather nasty cracks
were fashionable concerning us. A favorite one was taking the
initials of our organization and twisting them out of all semblance
to what it really was...industrial Workers of the -"orld, usually
shortened to just I.W.W.,became frequently, by those against us
'I wont work', or 'I want whiskey', or some such foolish taunt.
Well, as Sam was talking, a big shiny limousine pulls up on the
outskirts of his meeting, and soon as the elegantly attired lady
within had satisfied herself as to the nature of his speech, she
shriekcs forth 'I wont work'. Sam turns around and• says,'You
dont need to boast about it madam. It was obvious without your
shouting it. We are all aware as to how you make your living.
But I'm talking to working men, men, contrary to you,who will work,
and do work, and would also prefer to see the likes of even you,['o
a little work once in a while.'
itifilHHHI*****
About as funny a darned farce as I ever saw was one pulled
off in Minneapolis, at a smoker, right after we came in from the
harvesting of 1915. The farce was ma1nlpwr1tten by Charlie Ash-
leigh, who was the literary light among us, but several others of
__
us had a hand in it. About a dozen of us were the actors, including
Ashleigh, who took the part of an eccentric Count. Previous to being
attracted and starting to hobnob with us Wobblies, Count de Kakyak
had been roaming the world in search of some Copenhagen snuff mines.
In a high stovepipe hat, a swallow-tailed coat and a monocle, Ash-
leigh, who could affect the English accent to perfection, was about
the last word in the role of a Count.
The
scratching
had run an
scene opened with a bunch of us laying around a fire,
ourselves. It is early in the morning. For a fire, we
extension down to the stage floor, with a couple of elec-
tric lights covered with stuff to make it look real. On the other
side of the fire were some harvest stiffs who were scissorbills.
Pretty soon they gets up and starts to make some coffee for them-
selves. We other stiffs, representing the Wobblies, let 'em get
everything set, and then took over the Java for ourselves. The
scissors didn't like that, but they liked still less being told that
we were conducting a general strike and that no one could go to work
until we won it. "But I only got eleven dollars, and I need some
laundry done," one of the scissorbills spoke
a guy who would be rarin' to go to work with
possessions Why, that was more than most of
at the end of the harvests
The general strike was supposed to be
the Dawn of a New Day for the workers of the
let the scissorbills go out to work and help
is a free country, ain't it?" another one of
up. Imagine the kind of
eleven dollars in his
us had as our whole stake
the last spasm to bring
world. So we couldn't
defeat us. "Well, this
the scissors says as he
starts to go. "It will be," says one of the Wobblies, "when we get
you 14 -carte, Ivory -domed scissorbills to line up and help make it
free." Well, these particular slaves saw the error of their trying
to get away, so they took out cards which were issued to them by
Teddy Frazier. Ted, in the play, was "Line -em -up -Shorty", and was
disguised as a preacher. We accomplished the disguise by putting a
white collar on him the wrong way, and a black, flat-topped hat.
Well, as the strike goes on and we stick it out, we finally
exhaust the patience of every farmer in the whole district, so that
they gave up fighting us and were ready to listen to reason. All ex-
cept one fool farmer who, reading the capitalist press, thought he,
with the aid of the law, could whip us into submission. The "Law" was
Fred Hardy, a little runt about five feet two inches tall, while the
part of Lydia Pinchem, his daughter, was played by Scotty MacPherson,
who stood six feet four and looked even tallc- in the female getup we
had him rigged out in. Scotty was a scream as Lydia Pinchem, and the
contrast between her and her old man, the sheriff, was about as ludi-
crous as they come. Hardy was made up as sheriff, with a long droop-
ing moustache with other disfigurements and a ten-gallon hat on his
head that came down over his ears. I'm telling this from a memory of
it that, no doubt, leaves out quite a few of the real points of the
farce. There were some really funny parts to it that was great stuff.
Anyhow, while we stood around in the jungles, expecting to be
raided by the dreaded sheriff, someone conceived the brilliant idea
that it might help matters if one of us could woo and win over the
daughter, the fair Lydia herself. That job falls to the Count. He,
above all, was best qualified by birth, manner and experience. So
pretty soon, when we hear from off-stage, but supposedly from out among
the surrounding trees, the shrill and silly voice of Lydia Pinchem,
singing on her way to our jungles, we beats it, leaving the stage to
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Count de Kakyak to carry out the love scene.
Lydia comes in and, seeing the eount, begins to cavort around
befitting a young and innocent American girl suddenly smitten by the
charms of a nobelman. We depended upon the Count. His success in
this lovemaking was of tremendous importance to us, despite that we
had, by our economic might, brought paralysis upon the whole sgrarian
industry.
Well, into the jungles stumbles the large and ungainly
sheriff's daughter, almost wrecking our cooking utensels, and knock-
ing over Ashleigh in her wild charge.
Ashleigh, the Count, partly rising, remains on one knee and,
adjusting his monocle, gazes up at the towering Lydia.
"Ah," he says,
"What is this before me? Surely 'tis no living maiden that I see, but
some wood -nymph: Or, perchance, some disordered vision of my white
lime dreams! Ah, do but speak and assure me that I have at last found
what I have sought throughout a long and checkered career." Giggling-,
and with a finger in her mouth, Lydia Pinchem answers, "Oh, this
strange feelin, in my bosom: it feels like cascarets. Can I be in
love, or is it sauerkraut I et?" She says, "Are you a live Count?"
as she picks 1.4m up and hugs him to her rag -stuffed breast.
After a little the sheriff comes on the scene. He confronts
the pair of lovers and demands of Lydia ifformation as to her buy
friend. "Oh, father, forgive me!" she says, "but I've et me last
meal under your crool roof, and me and me Count is fleein' fur away.
I'm even quittin' me job of pearl glaumin' in Starvum's greasy hash
joint, and, me dear father, you can go plumb to hell, for I'm going
to join the Wobblies," she says.
"Well, daughter," says the sheriff, "I'm right glad to get rid
of you. Never was a greater appetite than yours, you great gawk, but
lay off the Wobblies," he says, "and go back to your job." "No, no,"
put in the Count, seizing one of Scotty's big paws (I mean Lydia's),
"Never shall shall these little fingerettes again be sullied in sordid
dishwater."
By this time the rest of us actors had, one or two at a time,
come back on the stage and again became part of the breath -taking beauty
of the scene. When about all of us were back, in rushes one fool far-
mer. Puffing, he pointed at us and hollers, "That's them, sheriff;
arrest them. Don't let 'em get away: Quickl",he says, "put 'em in
the hoosgow." but just as he is pleading, a terrifically loud explo-
sion is heard off-stage. The hayseed, looking skyward, moans, "There
goes my new autymobile." Another explosion is heard. This time he
shrieks, "Tarnation, by the looks of them pieces, there goes my new
threshing machine:"
Just then, Line -em -up Shorty comes on and reports that every
scissorbill in the entire territory had taken out cards and, no longer
scissorbills, were now Wabblies in good standing. This news was too
much for John Farmer. He casts one agonized look at the undisguised
organizer who, he thought, was a friend as well as a preacher, and
falls dead. The sheriff, realizing that the class struggle was over,
and himself no longer in power, rund like hell to get away from every-
thing. We start singing, "We're coming home, John Farmer"--thh curtain
drops, and we come out to find the place swarming with sure -enough cpps
and ourselves under arrest. We weren't long in the can, though, for we
didn't happen to be the particulay wobblies they were after. It was a
funny darned farce.
We all liked Joe Hill. His execution was a blow to us all. His
songs --in our little red songbook --of sarcasm and rebel defiance ex-
pressed the sentiment of most of us. We were proud of him and recog-
nized him as a great Wobblie. But even those of us who truly revered
him were a bit skeptical of dome of the assertions about him. For
-10
instance, out in the Pot Latch country, not long after Hill had baor
killed, Joe Ratti was acting as literature seller at one of our meet-
ings. Holding up a little songbook, he said, "Fellow workers --we
wants to sell you dese songs, for dese songs and de music you sings
'em to was written by fellow -worker Joe Hill, an' dat guy was de
de
greatest pote and/greatest musician in de whole won'."