_December 9, 1900_
It was in 1886 that Martin Irons, as chairman of the executive board of
the Knights of Labor of the Gould southwest railway system, defied
capitalist tyranny, and from that hour he was doomed. All the powers of
capitalism combined to crush him, and when at last he succumbed to
overwhelming odds, he was hounded from place to place until he was
ragged and foot-sore and the pangs of hunger gnawed at his vitals.
For fourteen long years he fought single-handed the battle against
persecution. He tramped far, and among strangers, under an assumed name,
sought to earn enough to get bread. But he was tracked like a beast and
driven from shelter. For this “poor wanderer of a stormy day” there was
no pity. He had stood between his class and their oppressors—he was
brave, and would not flinch; he was honest, and he would not sell; this
was his crime, and he must die.
Martin Irons came to this country from Scotland a child. He was
friendless, penniless, alone. At an early age he became a machinist. For
years he worked at his trade. He had a clear head and a warm heart. He
saw and felt the injustice suffered by his class. Three reductions in
wages in rapid succession fired his blood. He resolved to resist. He
appealed to his fellow-workers. When the great strike came, Martin Irons
was its central figure. The men felt they could trust him. They were not
mistaken.
When at the darkest hour Jay Gould sent word to Martin Irons that he
wished to see him, the answer came, “I am in Kansas City.” Gould did not
have gold enough to buy Irons. This was the greatest crime of labor’s
honest leader. The press united in fiercest denunciation. Every lie that
malignity could conceive was circulated. In the popular mind Martin
Irons was the blackest-hearted villain that ever went unhung. Pinkerton
blood-hounds tracked him night and day.
But through it all this loyal, fearless, high-minded workingman stood
steadfast.
The courts and soldiers responded to the command of their masters, the
railroads; the strike was crushed and the workingmen were beaten.
Martin Irons had served, suffered for and honored his class. But he had
lost. His class now turned against him and joined in the execration of
the enemy. This pained him more than all else. But he bore even this
without a murmur, and if ever a despairing sigh was wrung from him it
was when he was alone.
And thus it has been all along the highway of the centuries, from Jesus
Christ to Martin Irons.
Let it not be said that Irons was not crucified. For fourteen years he
was nailed to the cross, and no martyr to humanity ever bore his
crucifixion with finer fortitude.
He endured the taunts and jeers and all the bitter mockery of fate with
patient heroism; and even when the poor dumb brutes whose wounds and
bruises he would have swathed with his own heart-strings turned upon and
rent him, pity sealed his lips and silent suffering wrought for him a
martyr’s crown.
Martin Irons was hated by all who were too base or ignorant to
understand him. He died despised, yet shall he live beloved.
No president of the United States gave or tendered him a public office
in testimony of his service to the working class. The kind of service he
rendered was too honest to be respectable, too aggressive and
uncompromising to be popular.
The blow he struck for his class will preserve his memory. In the great
struggle for emancipation he nobly did his share, and the history of
labor cannot be written without his name.
He was an agitator, and as such shared the common fate of all. Jesus
Christ, Joan of Arc, Elijah Lovejoy, John Brown, Albert Parsons and many
others set the same example and paid the same penalty.
For the reason that he was a despised agitator and shunned of men too
mean and sordid to comprehend the lofty motive that inspired him, he
will be remembered with tenderness and love long after the last of his
detractors shall have mouldered in a forgotten grave.
It was in April, 1899, in Waco, Texas, that I last pressed this
comrade’s hand. He bore the traces of poverty and broken health, but his
spirit was as intrepid as when he struck the shield of Hoxie thirteen
years before; and when he spoke of Socialism he seemed transfigured, and
all the smouldering fires within his soul blazed from his sunken eyes
once more.
I was pained, but not surprised, when I read that he had “died penniless
in an obscure Texas town.” It is his glory and society’s shame that he
died that way.
His weary body has at last found rest, and the grandchildren of the men
and women he struggled, suffered and died for will weave chaplets where
he sleeps.
His epitaph might read: “For standing bravely in defense of the working
class, he was put to death by slow torture.”
Martin Irons was an honest, courageous, manly man. The world numbers one
less since he has left it.
Brave comrade, love, and farewell.