JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE ROAD
I
Jimmie Higgins was wandering down the street, when he ran into “Wild
Bill”, who was, of course, greatly surprised to see his friend in a
drunken condition. When he heard the reason, he revealed an
unexpected side of his nature. If you judged “Wild Bill” by his
oratory, you thought him a creature poisoned through and through, a
soul turned rancid with envy, hatred and malice and all
uncharitableness. But now the tears came into his eyes, and he put
his arm over Jimmie's shoulder. “Say, old pal, that's bum luck! By
God, I'm sorry!” And Jimmie, who wanted nothing so much as somebody
to be sorry with, clasped Bill in his arms, and burst into tears,
and told over and over again how he had gone to what had been his
home, and found only a huge crater blown out by the explosion, and
how he had gone about calling his wife and babies, until at last
they had brought him one leg of his wife.
“Wild Bill” listened, until he knew the story through and then he
said, “See here, old pal, let's you and me quit this town.”
“Quit?” said Jimmie, stupidly.
“Every time I open the front of my face now, the police jump in it.
Leesville's a hell of a town, I say. Let's get out.”
“Where'll we go?”
“Anywhere--what's the diff? It's coming summer. Let's slam the
gates.”
Jimmie was willing--why not? They went back to the lodging-house
where Bill lived, and he tied up his worldly goods in a
gunny-sack--the greater part of the load consisting of a diary in
which he had recorded his adventures as leader of an unemployed army
which had started to march from California to Washington, D.C., some
four years previously. They took the trolley, and getting off in the
country, walked along the banks of the river, Jimmie still sobbing,
and Bill in the grip of one of his fearful coughing spells. They sat
down beside the stream not so far from where Jimmie had gone in
swimming with the Candidate; he gave a touching account of this
adventure, but fell asleep in the middle of it, and Bill wandered
off and begged some food at a farm-house, using his cough as a
convenient lever for moving the heart of the housewife. When night
came, they sought the railroad and got on board a southward-moving
freight; so Jimmie Higgins went back to the tramps life, at which he
had spent a considerable part of his youth.
But there was a difference now; he was no longer a blind and
helpless victim of a false economic system, but a revolutionist,
fully class-conscious, trained in a grim school. The country was
going to war, and Jimmie was going to war on the country. The two
agitators got off the train at a mining-village, and got a job as
“surface men”, and proceeded to preach their gospel of revolt to the
workers in a lousy company boarding-house. When they were found out,
they “jumped” another freight, and repeated the performance in
another part of the district.
The companies were too vigilant for there to be any chance of a
strike; but “Wild Bill” whispered to the young workers that he knew
a trick worth two of that--he would teach them the art of “striking
on the job”! This idea, of course, had great charm for embittered
men; enabling them to pay back the boss, while at the same time
continuing on his pay-roll. Bill had read whole books in which the
theory and practice of “sabotage” were worked out, and he could tell
any sort of workman tricks to make his employer sweat under the
collar. If you worked in a machine-shop, you dropped emery-powder
into the bearings; if you worked on a farm, you drove copper nails
into the fruit-trees, which caused them to die; if you packed
apples, you stuck your thumb-nail into one, which made sure that the
whole box would be rotten when it arrived; if you worked in a
saw-mill, you drove a spike into a log; if you worked in a
restaurant, you served double portions to ruin the boss, and spit in
each portion to make sure the customer did not derive any benefit.
All these things you did in a fervour of exaltation, a mood of
frenzied martyrdom, because of the blaze of hate which had been
fanned in your soul by a social system based upon oppression and
knavery.
II
To Jimmie, living the obscure and comparatively peaceful life of a
Socialist propagandist, the question of “sabotage, violence and
crime” had been a more or less academic one, about which the
comrades debated acrimoniously, and against which they voted by a
large majority. But now Jimmie was out among the “wobblies”, the
“blanket-stiffs”--the unskilled workers who had literally nothing
but their muscle-power to sell; here he was in the front-line
trenches of the class war. These men wandered about from one job to
another, at the mercy of the seasons and the fluctuations of
industry. They were deprived of votes, and therefore of their status
as citizens; they were deprived of a chance to organize, and
therefore of their status as human beings. They were lodged in
filthy bunk-houses, fed upon rotten food, and beaten or jailed at
the least word of revolt. So they fought their oppressors with any
and every weapon they could lay hands on.
In the turpentine-country, in a forest, Jimmie and his pal came to a
“jungle”, a place where the “wobblies” congregated, living off the
country. Here around the camp-fires Jimmie met the guerillas of the
class-struggle, and learned the songs of revolt which they
sang--some of them parodies on Christian hymns which would have
caused the orthodox and respectable to faint with horror. Here they
rested up, and exchanged data on the progress of their fight, and
argued over tactics, and cussed the Socialists and the other
“politicians” and “labour-fakirs”, and sang the praises of the “one
big union”, and the “mass strike”, and “direct action” against the
masters of industry. They told stories of their sufferings and their
exploits, and Jimmie sat and listened. Sometimes his eyes were wide
with consternation, for he had never met men so desperate as these.
For example, “Strawberry” Curran--named for his red hair and
innumerable freckles--an Irish boy with the face of a choir-singer,
and eyes that must have been taken straight out of the blue vault of
Heaven. This lad told about a “free speech fight” in a far Western
city, and how the chief of police had led the clubbing, and how they
had got back at him. “We bumped him off all right,” said
“Strawberry”; it was a favourite phrase of his--whenever anybody
got in his way, he “bumped him off”. And then “Flathead Joe”, who
came from the Indian country, was moved to emulation, and told how
he had put dynamite under the supports of a mine-breaker, and the
whole works had slid down a slope into a canyon a mile below. And
then a lame fellow, “Chuck” Peterson, told about the imprisonment of
two strike-leaders in the hop-country of California, and of the
epidemic of fires and destruction that had plagued that region for
several years since.
All such things these men talked about quite casually, as soldiers
would talk about the events of the last campaign. This class-war had
been going on for ages, and had its own ethics and its own
traditions; those who took part in it had their heroisms and
sublimities, precisely like any other soldiers. They would have been
glad to come into the open and fight, but the other side had all the
guns. Every time the “wobblies” succeeded in organizing the workers
and calling a big strike, all the agencies of capitalist repression
were called in--they were beaten by capitalist policemen, shot by
capitalist sheriffs, starved and frozen in capitalist jails, and so
their strike was crushed and their forces scattered. After many such
experiences, it was inevitable that the hot-headed ones should take
to secret vengeance, should become conspirators against capitalist
society. And society, forgetting all the provocations it had given,
called the “wobblies” criminals, and let it go at that. But they
were a strange kind of criminal, serving a far-off dream. They had
their humours and their humanities, their literature and music and
art. Among them were men of education, graduates of universities
both in America and abroad; you might hear one of the group about
these camp-fires telling about slave-revolts in ancient Egypt and
Greece; or quoting Strindberg and Stirner, or reciting a scene from
Synge, or narrating how he had astounded the family of some lonely
farm-house by playing Rachmaninoff's “Prelude” on a badly
out-of-tune piano.
Also you met among them men who had kept their gentleness, their
sweetness of soul, men of marvellous patience, whose dream of human
brotherhood no persecution, no outrage had been able to turn sour.
They clung to their vision of a world redeemed, made over by the
outcast and lowly; a vision that was brought to the world by a
certain Jewish Carpenter, and has haunted mankind for nineteen
hundred years. The difference was that these men knew precisely how
they meant to do it; they had a definite philosophy, a definite
programme, which they carried as a gospel to the wage-slaves of the
world. And they knew that this glad message would never die--not all
the jails and clubs and machine-guns in the country could kill it,
not obloquy and ridicule, not hunger and cold and disease. No! for
the workers were hearing and understanding, they were learning the
all-precious lesson of Solidarity. They were forming the “one big
union”, preparing the time when they would take over industry and
administer it through their own workers' councils, instead of
through the medium of parliaments and legislatures. That was the
great idea upon which the Industrial Workers of the World was based;
it was this they meant by “direct action”, not the sinister thing
which the capitalist newspapers made out of the phrase.
III
The country was going into its own war, which it considered of
importance, and it called upon Jimmie Higgins and the rest of his
associates to register for military service. In the month of June
ten million men came forward in obedience to this call--but Jimmie,
needless to say, was not among them. Jimmie and his crowd thought it
was the greatest joke of the age. If the country wanted them, let it
come and get them. And sure enough, the country came--a sheriff, and
some thirty farmers and turpentine-workers sworn in as deputies and
armed with shot-guns and rifles. Should their sons go overseas to be
killed in battle, while these desperadoes continued to camp out on
the country, living on hogs and chickens which honest men had worked
to raise? They had wanted to break up this “jungle” for some time;
now they could do it in the name of patriotism. They surrounded the
camp, and shot one man who tried to slip out in the darkness, and
searched the rest for weapons, and then loaded them into half a
dozen automobiles and took them to the nearest lock-up.
So here was Jimmie, confronting a village draft-board. How old was
he? The truth was that Jimmie did not know definitely, but his guess
was about twenty-six. The draft-limit being thirty, he swore that
he was thirty-two. And what were they going to do about it? They
didn't know where he had been born, and they couldn't make him
tell--because he didn't know it himself! His face was lined with
many cares, and he had a few grey hairs from that night of horror
when his loved ones had been wiped out of existence.
These farmers knew how to tell the age of a horse, but not how to
tell the age of a man!
“We'll draft ye anyhow!” vowed the chairman of the board, who was
the local justice of the peace, an old fellow with a beard like a
billy-goat.
“All right,” said Jimmie, “but you'll get nothin' out o' me.”
“What d'ye mean?”
“I mean I wouldn't fight; I'm a conscientious objector to war.”
“They'll shoot ye!”
“Shoot away!”
“They'll send you to jail for life.”
“What the hell do I care?”
It was difficult to know what to do with a person like that. If they
did put him in jail, they would only be feeding him at the expense
of the community, and that would not help to beat the Germans. They
could see from the flash in his eyes that he would not be an easy
man to break. Local interest asserted itself, and the old fellow
with the wagging beard demanded: “If we let ye go, will ye get out
o' this county?”
“What the hell do I care about your old county?” replied Jimmie.
So they turned him loose, and “Wild Bill” also, because it was
evident at a glance that he was not long for this world and its
wars. The two of them broke into an empty freight-car, and went
thundering over the rails all night; and lying in the darkness,
Jimmie was awakened by a terrified cry from his companion, and put
out his hand and laid it in a mess that was hot and wet.
“Oh, my God!” gasped Bill. “I'm done for!”
“What is it?”
“Haemorrhage.”
The terrified Jimmie did not even know what that was. There was
nothing he could do but sit there, holding his friend's trembling
hand and listening to his moans. When the train stopped, Jimmie
sprang out and rushed to one of the brakemen, who came with his
lantern, and saw “Wild Bill” lying in a pool of blood, already so
far gone that he could not lift his head. “Jesus!” exclaimed the
brakeman. “He's a goner, all right.”
The “goner” was trying to say something, and Jimmie leaned his ear
down to him. “Good-bye, old pal,” whispered Bill. That was all, but
it caused Jimmie to burst out sobbing.
The engine whistled. “What the hell you stiffs doin' on this train?”
demanded the brakeman--but not so harshly as the words would
indicate. He lifted the dying man--no very serious burden--and laid
him on the platform of the station. “Sorry,” he said, “but we're
behind schedule.” He waved his lantern, and the creaking cars began
to move, and the train drew away, leaving Jimmie sitting by the
corpse of his pal. The world seemed a lonely place that long night.
In the morning the station-agent came, and notified the nearest
authorities, and in the course of the day came a wagon to fetch the
body. What was the use of Jimmie's waiting? One “Potter's field” was
the same as another, and there would be nothing inspiring about the
funeral. The man who drove the wagon looked at Jimmie suspiciously
and asked his age; they were scarce of labour in that country, he
said-the rule was “Work or fight”. Jimmie foresaw another session
with a draft-board, so he leaped on to another freight train, taking
with him as a legacy “Wild Bill's” diary of the unemployed army.
IV
It was harvest-time, and Jimmie went West to the wheat country. It
was hard work, but the pay made your eyes bulge. Jimmie realized
that war was not such a bad thing--for the ones that stayed at
home! If you didn't like one farmer's way of speaking to you, or the
kind of biscuits his wife offered you, you could move on to the
next, and he would take you in at four bits more per day. It was the
nearest approach to a working-man's paradise that Jimmie had ever
encountered. There was really only one drawback--the pestiferous
draft-boards that never stopped snooping round. They were for ever
hauling you up and threatening and questioning you--putting you
through the same scene over and over. Why couldn't the fools give
you a card, showing that you had been through the mill, and let that
settle it? But no, they wouldn't give you a card--they preferred to
go on jacking you up because you had no card. It was all a trick,
thought Jimmie, to wear him out and force him into their army by
hook or by crook. But here was one time when they would not get away
with it!
However, Jimmie Higgins was not nearly so dangerous a character, now
that “Wild Bill” was gone out of his life. It was really not his
nature to cherish hate, or to set out deliberately to revenge
himself. Jimmie was a Socialist in the true sense of the word--he
felt himself a part of society, and that peace and plenty and
kindness which he desired for himself he desired for all mankind. He
was not dreaming of a time when he could turn the capitalists out of
power and treat them as they were now treating him; he meant the
world to be just as good a place for the capitalists as for the
workers--all would share alike, and Jimmie was ready to wipe out the
old scores and start fair any day. His propaganda regained its
former idealistic hue, and it was only when somebody tried to drag
him into the slaughter-pen that he developed teeth and claws.
So he became fairly happy again--happier than he had thought he
could ever be. It was in vain he told himself that he had nothing to
live for; he had the greatest thing in the world to live for, the
vision of a just and sane and happy world. So long as anybody could
be found to listen while he talked about it and explained how it
might be achieved, life was worth while, life was real. It was only
now and then that his bitter heartache returned to plague him--when
he awakened in the night with his arms clasped about the memory of
the soft, warm, kindly body of Eleesa Betooser; or when he came to a
farmhouse where there were children, whose prattle reminded him of
the little fellow who had been his prime reason for wanting a just
and sane and happy world. Jimmie found that he could not bear to
work in one farmhouse where there were children; and when he told
the farmer's wife the reason, he and the woman declared a temporary
truce to the class-war, and celebrated it with half a large apple-pie.
V
The Socialists held a National Convention at St. Louis, and drew up
their declaration concerning the war. They called it the most
unjustifiable war in history, “a crime against the people of the
United States”; they called on the workers of the country to oppose
it, and pledged themselves “to the support of all mass movements in
opposition to conscription”. This was, of course, a serious step to
take at such a time; the comrades realized it, and there were solemn
gatherings to discuss the referendum, and not a little disagreement
as to the wisdom of the declaration. In the town of Hopeland, near
which Jimmie was working, there was a local, and he had got himself
transferred from Leesville, and paid up his back dues, and had his
precious red card stamped up-to-date. And now he would go in and
listen to debates, just as exciting and just as bewildering as those
he had heard at the outbreak of the war.
There were some who pointed out the precise meaning of those words,
“all mass-movements in opposition to conscription.” The leading
dry-goods merchant of the town, he was a Socialist, declared that
the words meant insurrection and mob violence, and the resolution
would be adjudged a call to treason. At which there leaped to his
feet a Russian Jewish tailor, Rabin by name; his first name was
Scholem, which means Peace, and he cried in great excitement: “Vot
business have ve Socialists vit such vords? Ve might leaf dem to de
enemy, vot?”
You might have thought you were in Leesville, listening to Comrade
Stankewitz. The only difference was that there were not many Germans
in this town, and those few confined their discussions to Ireland
and India.
Jimmie would hear the arguments, back and forth and back again, and
his mind would be in greater confusion than ever. He hated war as
much as ever; but, on the other hand, he was learning to hate the
Germans, too. The American government, going to war, had been forced
to assert itself, and the stores and billboards were covered with
proclamations and picture-posters, and the newspapers were full of
recitals of the crimes which Germany had committed against humanity.
Jimmie might refuse to read this “Wall Street dope”, as he called
it, but the working-men with whom he was associating read it, and
would fire it at him whenever they got into a controversy. Also the
daily events in the news dispatches--the sinking of hospital-ships
filled with wounded, the shelling of life-boats, the dragging away
into slavery in coal-mines of Belgian children thirteen and fourteen
years old! How could any man fail to hate and to fear a government
which committed such atrocities? How could he remain untroubled at
the thought that he might be assisting such a government to victory?
Jimmie was honest, he was trying to face the facts as he saw them;
and when he stopped to think, when he remembered the things he had
done in company with “Wild Bill” and “Strawberry” Curran and
“Flathead Joe” and “Chuck” Peterson, he could not deny that he had
been, however unintentionally, helping the Kaiser to win the war. In
his arguments with others, Jimmie dared not tell all he knew about
such matters; so, when he argued with himself, his conscience was
troubled, and doubt gnawed at his soul. Suppose it were true, as
Comrade Dr. Service had tried to prove to him, that a victory for
the Kaiser would mean that America would have to spend the next
twenty or thirty years getting ready for the next war? Might it not
then be better to forego revolutionary agitation for a while, until
the Kaiser had been put out of business?
There were not a few Socialists who argued this way--men who had
been active in the movement and had possessed Jimmie's regard before
the war. Now they denounced the St. Louis resolution--the “majority
report” as it was called. When this report was carried in referendum
by a vote of something like eight to one, these comrades withdrew
from the party, and some of them bitterly attacked their former
friends. Such utterances were taken up by the capitalist press; and
this made Jimmie Higgins indignant. A fine lot of Socialists, to
quit the ship in the hour of peril! Renegades, Jimmie called them,
and compared them with Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold and
such-like celebrities of past ages. They, being exactly the same
sort of folk as Jimmie, answered by calling Jimmie a pro-German and
a traitor; which did not make it easier to persuade Jimmie to listen
to their arguments. So both sides became blinded with anger,
forgetting about the facts in the case, and thinking only of
punishing a hated antagonist.
VI
All over the country now men were sending their sons to the
training-camps, and putting their money into “liberty-bonds”. So
they were in no mood to listen to argument--they would fly into a
rage at the least hint that the cause in which they were making
sacrifices was not a perfectly just and righteous cause. There was
an organization called the “People's Council for Peace and
Democracy”, which attempted to hold a national convention; the
gathering was broken up by mobs, and the delegates went wandering
over the country, trying in vain to get together. The mayor of
Chicago gave them permission to meet in that city, but the governor
of the state sent troops to prevent it! You see, the people of the
country had learned all about the organization for which Jerry
Coleman had been working--“Labour's National Peace Council”; and
here was another organization, bearing practically the same name,
and carrying on an agitation which seemed the same to the average
man. The distinction between hired treason and super-idealism was
far too subtle for the people to draw in a time of such peril.
It was becoming more and more the fashion to arrest Socialists and
to suppress their papers; the government authorities in many places
declared the “majority report” unmailable, and indicted state and
national secretaries for having sent it out in the ordinary routine
of their business. Jimmie received a letter from Comrade Meissner in
Leesville, telling him that Comrade “Jack” Smith had been given two
years in the penitentiary for his speech in the Opera-house, and the
other would-be speakers had been fined five hundred dollars each.
Several issues of the Worker had been barred from the mails, and now
the police had raided the offices and forced the suspension of the
publication. All over the country that sort of thing was happening,
so now if you argued with Jimmie in favour of the war, his answer
was that America was more Prussian than Prussia, and what was the
use of fighting for Democracy abroad, if you had to sacrifice every
particle of Democracy at home in order to win the fight?
Jimmie really believed this--he believed it with most desperate and
passionate intensity. He looked forward to a war won for the benefit
of oppression at home; he foresaw the system of militarism and
suppession riveted for ever on the people of America. Jimmie would
admit that the President himself might be sincere in the fine words
he used about democracy; but the great Wall Street interests which
had run the country for so many decades--they had their secret
purposes, for which the war-frenzy served as a convenient cloak.
They were going to make universal military service the rule in
America; they were going to see to it that every school-child
learned the military lessons of obedience and subordination. Also
they were going to put the radical papers out of business and put a
stop to all radical propaganda. Those Socialists who had been
trapped into supporting the President's war-programme would wake up
some morning with a fearful dark-brown taste in their mouths!
No, said Jimmie Higgins, the way to fight war was to resist the
subterfuges, however cunning and plausible, by which men sought to
persuade you to support war. The way to fight war was the way of the
Russians. The propaganda of proletarian revolt, the glorious example
which the Russian workers had set, would do more to break down the
power of the Kaiser than all the guns and shells in the world. But
the militarists did not want it broken that way--Jimmie suspected
that many of them would rather have the war won by the Kaiser than
have it won by the Socialists. The governments refused to give
passports to Socialists who wanted to meet in some neutral country
and work out the basis of a settlement upon which all the peoples of
the world might get together; and Jimmie took the banning of this
Socialist conference as the supreme crime of the world-capitalism,
it was evidence that world-capitalism knew its true enemy, and meant
to use the war as an excuse to hold that enemy down.
VII
Day by day Jimmie was coming to place more of his hopes in Russia.
His little friend Rabin, the tailor, took a Russian paper published
in New York, the Novy Mir, and would translate its news and
editorials. Local Hopeland, thus inspired, voted a message of
fraternal sympathy to the Russian workers. In Petrograd and Moscow
there was going on, it appeared, a struggle between the pro-ally
Socialists and the Internationalists, the true, out-and-out,
middle-of-the-road, thick-and-thin proletarians. The former were
called Mensheviki, the latter were called Bolsheviki, and, of
course, Jimmie was all for the latter. Did he not know the
“stool-pigeon Socialists” at home, who were letting themselves be
used by capitalism?
The big issues were two--first, the land, which the peasants wanted
to take from the landlords; and second, the foreign debt. The
Russian Tsar had borrowed four billion dollars from France and a
billion or two from England, to be used in enslaving the Russian
workers and driving several millions of them to death on the
battlefield. Now should the Russian workers consider themselves
bound by this debt? When anybody asked Jimmie Higgins that question,
he responded with a thunderous “No”, and he regarded as hirelings or
dupes of Wall Street all those Socialists who supported Kerensky in
Russia.
When the American government, wishing to appeal to the Russian
people for loyalty in the war, sent over a commission to them, and
placed at its head one of the most notorious corporation lawyers in
America, a man whose life, the Jimmies said, had been sold to
service in the anti-liberal cause, Jimmie Higgins's shrill voice
became a yell of ridicule and rage. Of course, Jimmie's organization
saw to it that the Bolsheviki were informed in advance as to the
character of this commission--something which was unnecessary, as it
happened, because immediately after the overthrow of the Tsar there
had begun a pilgrimage of Russian Socialists from New York and San
Francisco, men who had seen the seamy side of American capitalism in
the slums of the great cities, and who lost no time in providing the
Russian radicals with full information concerning Wall Street!
It chanced that in San Francisco a well-known labour leader had been
charged with planting a bomb to break up a “preparedness” parade. He
had been convicted upon that which was proven to be perjured
testimony, and the labour unions of the country had been conducting
a campaign to save his life--which campaign the capitalist
newspapers had been carefully overlooking, according to their
invariable custom. But now the returned exiles in Petrograd took up
the matter, and organized a parade to the American embassy, with a
demand for the freeing of this “Muni”. The report, of course, came
back to America--to the immense bewilderment of the American people,
who had never heard of this “Muni” before. To Jimmie Higgins it
seemed just the funniest joke on earth that a big labour-struggle
should be on in San Francisco, and Americans should get their first
news about it from Petrograd! Look! he would cry--how much real
democracy there is in America, how much care for the working
classes!
So all that summer and autumn, while Jimmie Higgins slaved in the
fields, getting in his country's wheat-crop, and then his country's
corn crop, there was a song of joy and awakening excitement in his
soul. Far over the seas men of his own kind were getting the reins
of power into their hands, for the first time in the history of the
world. It could not be long before here in America the workers would
learn this wonderful lesson, would thrill to the idea that freedom
and plenty might really be their portion.