_New York Comrade, April, 1902_
As I have some doubt about the readers of “The Comrade” having any
curiosity as to “how I became a Socialist” it may be in order to say
that the subject is the editor’s, not my own; and that what is here
offered is at his bidding—my only concern being that he shall not have
cause to wish that I had remained what I was instead of becoming a
Socialist.
On the evening of February 27, 1875, the local lodge of the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Firemen was organized at Terre Haute, Ind., by Joshua A.
Leach, then grand master, and I was admitted as a charter member and at
once chosen secretary. “Old Josh Leach,” as he was affectionately
called, a typical locomotive fireman of his day, was the founder of the
brotherhood, and I was instantly attracted by his rugged honesty, simple
manner and homely speech. How well I remember feeling his large, rough
hand on my shoulder, the kindly eye of an elder brother searching my own
as he gently said, “My boy, you’re a little young, but I believe you’re
in earnest and will make your mark in the brotherhood.” Of course, I
assured him that I would do my best. What he really thought at the time
flattered my boyish vanity not a little when I heard of it. He was
attending a meeting at St. Louis some months later, and in the course of
his remarks said: “I put a tow-headed boy in the brotherhood at Terre
Haute not long ago, and some day he will be at the head of it.”
Twenty-seven years, to a day, have played their pranks with “Old Josh”
and the rest of us. When last we met, not long ago, and I pressed his
good, right hand, I observed that he was crowned with the frost that
never melts; and as I think of him now:
“Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast and turns the past to pain.”
My first step was thus taken in organized labor and a new influence
fired my ambition and changed the whole current of my career. I was
filled with enthusiasm and my blood fairly leaped in my veins. Day and
night I worked for the brotherhood. To see its watchfires glow and
observe the increase of its sturdy members were the sunshine and shower
of my life. To attend the “meeting” was my supreme joy, and for ten
years I was not once absent when the faithful assembled.
At the convention held in Buffalo in 1878 I was chosen associate editor
of the magazine, and in 1880 I became grand secretary and treasurer.
With all the fire of youth I entered upon the crusade which seemed to
fairly glitter with possibilities. For eighteen hours at a stretch I was
glued to my desk reeling off the answers to my many correspondents. Day
and night were one. Sleep was time wasted and often, when all oblivious
of her presence in the still small hours my mother’s hand turned off the
light, I went to bed under protest. Oh, what days! And what quenchless
zeal and consuming vanity! All the firemen everywhere—and they were all
the world—were straining:
“To catch the beat
On my tramping feet.”
My grip was always packed; and I was darting in all directions. To tramp
through a railroad yard in the rain, snow or sleet half the night, or
till daybreak, to be ordered out of the roundhouse for being an
“agitator,” or put off a train, sometimes passenger, more often freight,
while attempting to deadhead over the division, were all in the program,
and served to whet the appetite to conquer. One night in midwinter at
Elmira, N. Y., a conductor on the Erie kindly dropped me off in a
snowbank, and as I clambered to the top I ran into the arms of a
policeman, who heard my story and on the spot became my friend.
I rode on the engines over mountain and plain, slept in the cabooses and
bunks, and was fed from their pails by the swarthy stokers who still
nestle close to my heart, and will until it is cold and still.
Through all these years I was nourished at Fountain Proletaire. I drank
deeply of its waters and every particle of my tissue became saturated
with the spirit of the working class. I had fired an engine and been
stung by the exposure and hardship of the rail. I was with the boys in
their weary watches, at the broken engine’s side and often helped to
bear their bruised and bleeding bodies back to wife and child again. How
could I but feel the burden of their wrongs? How the seed of agitation
fail to take deep root in my heart?
And so I was spurred on in the work of organizing, not the firemen
merely, but the brakemen, switchmen, telegraphers, shopmen, track-hands,
all of them in fact, and as I had now become known as an organizer, the
calls came from all sides and there are but few trades I have not helped
to organize and less still in whose strikes I have not at some time had
a hand.
In 1894 the American Railway Union was organized and a braver body of
men never fought the battle of the working class.
Up tn this time I had heard but little of Socialism, knew practically
nothing about the movement, and what little I did know was not
calculated to impress me in its favor. I was bent on thorough and
complete organization of the railroad men and ultimately the whole
working class, and all my time and energy were given to that end. My
supreme conviction was that if they were only organized in every branch
of the service and all acted together in concert they could redress
their wrongs and regulate the conditions of their employment. The
stockholders of the corporation acted as one, why not the men? It was
such a plain proposition—simply to follow the example set before their
eyes by their masters—surely they could not fail to see it, act as one,
and solve the problem.
It is useless to say that I had yet to learn the workings of the
capitalist system, the resources of its masters and the weakness of its
slaves. Indeed, no shadow of a “system” fell athwart my pathway; no
thought of ending wage-misery marred my plans. I was too deeply absorbed
in perfecting wage-servitude and making it a “thing of beauty and a joy
forever.”
It all seems very strange to me now, taking a backward look, that my
vision was so focalized on a single objective point that I utterly
failed to see what now appears as clear as the noonday sun—so clear that
I marvel that any workingman, however dull, uncomprehending, can resist
it.
But perhaps it was better so. I was to be baptized in Socialism in the
roar of conflict and I thank the gods for reserving to this fitful
occasion the fiat, “Let there be light!”—the light that streams in
steady radiance upon the broadway to the Socialist republic.
The skirmish lines of the A. R. U. were well advanced. A series of small
battles were fought and won without the loss of a man. A number of
concessions were made by the corporations rather than risk an encounter.
Then came the fight on the Great Northern, short, sharp, and decisive.
The victory was complete—the only railroad strike of magnitude ever won
by an organization in America.
Next followed the final shock—the Pullman strike—and the American
Railway Union again won, clear and complete. The combined corporations
were paralyzed and helpless. At this juncture there were delivered, from
wholly unexpected quarters, a swift succession of blows that blinded me
for an instant and then opened wide my eyes—and in the gleam of every
bayonet and the flash of every rifle _the class struggle was revealed_.
This was my first practical lesson in Socialism, though wholly unaware
that it was called by that name.
An army of detectives, thugs and murderers were equipped with badge and
beer and bludgeon and turned loose; old hulks of cars were fired; the
alarm bells tolled; the people were terrified; the most startling rumors
were set afloat; the press volleyed and thundered, and over all the
wires sped the news that Chicago’s white throat was in the clutch of a
red mob; injunctions flew thick and fast, arrests followed, and our
office and headquarters, the heart of the strike, was sacked, torn out
and nailed up by the “lawful” authorities of the federal government; and
when in company with my loyal comrades I found myself in Cook county
jail at Chicago with the whole press screaming conspiracy, treason and
murder, and by some fateful coincidence I was given the cell occupied
just previous to his execution by the assassin of Mayor Carter Harrison,
Sr., overlooking the spot, a few feet distant, where the anarchists were
hanged a few years before, I had another exceedingly practical and
impressive lesson in Socialism.
Acting upon the advice of friends we sought to employ John Harlan, son
of the Supreme Justice, to assist in our defense—a defense memorable to
me chiefly because of the skill and fidelity of our lawyers, among whom
were the brilliant Clarence Darrow and the venerable Judge Lyman
Trumbull, author of the thirteenth amendment to the constitution,
abolishing slavery in the United States.
Mr. Harlan wanted to think of the matter over night; and the next
morning gravely informed us that he could not afford to be identified
with the case, “for,” said he, “you will be tried upon the same theory
as were the anarchists, with probably the same result.” That day, I
remember, the jailer, by way of consolation, I suppose, showed us the
blood-stained rope used at the last execution and explained in minutest
detail, as he exhibited the gruesome relic, just how the monstrous crime
of lawful murder is committed.
But the tempest gradually subsided and with it the bloodthirstiness of
the press and “public sentiment.” We were not sentenced to the gallows,
nor even to the penitentiary—though put on trial for conspiracy—for
reasons that will make another story.
The Chicago jail sentences were followed by six months at Woodstock and
it was here that Socialism gradually laid hold of me in its own
irresistible fashion. Books and pamphlets and letters from socialists
came by every mail and I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy
of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered
and battened and splintered at a single stroke. The writings of Bellamy
and Blatchford early appealed to me. The “Cooperative Commonwealth” of
Gronlund also impressed me, but the writings of Kautsky were so clear
and conclusive that I readily grasped, not merely his argument, but also
caught the spirit of his socialist utterance—and I thank him and all who
helped me out of darkness into light.
It was at this time, when the first glimmerings of Socialism were
beginning to penetrate, that Victor L. Berger—and I have loved him ever
since—came to Woodstock, as if a providential instrument, and delivered
the first impassioned message of Socialism I had ever heard—the very
first to set the “wires humming in my system.” As a souvenir of that
visit there is in my library a volume of “Capital,” by Karl Marx,
inscribed with the compliments of Victor L. Berger, which I cherish as a
token of priceless value.
The American Railway Union was defeated but not conquered—overwhelmed
but not destroyed. It lives and pulsates in the Socialist movement, and
its defeat but blazed the way to economic freedom and hastened the dawn
of human brotherhood.