You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday October 23, 1904
From The Labor World: Senator Tillman Attempts to Fan Race Hatred in Chicago
Democratic Senator Tillman recently came to Chicago and attempted to fan the flames of racial hatred in regards to the importation of black workers to scab on the white strikers in the recent stockyard strike in that city. The
Labor World quotes a long article published by the Socialist of Chicago which decries Tillman's attempt to promote racial prejudice amongst the workers of their city. While we applaud the Socialist for standing for the unity of all workers of every race, we would like to point out that a scab is a scab, and that black scabs are no more "debased," "beastialized" nor given to "debauchery" then are the white scabs. One has only to recall the brutal conduct of the
mine guards and detectives employed by the mine owners of Colorado to realize that that is the truth.
Furthermore, the strike is over now and the work of uniting all stockyards workers must begin anew. Organizing efforts must begin at once with every possible peaceful method used to turn the former scabs into good union men. That is the only way forward for the union movement of Chicago.
From The Labor World of October 22, 1904:
SENATOR TILLMAN AT STOCKYARDS FAILS
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Socialist Papers Discuss Action of National Democratic Committee
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Senator Tillman
That the National Democratic committee was impolitic in sending Senator Tillman to the Stock yards to pray upon the prejudiced minds of the late strikers against the negroes who helped to break their strike is now admitted by the party managers.
Chicago labor papers have commented at length on the matter. The most bitter is from the Socialist, which is in part as follows:
During the strike a horde of debased, beastialized blacks had been bought in the labor market and shipped into the yards as hogs are shipped for the killing floors. The story of their brutal debauchery has already been told in these columns. Naturally the laborers whom these disgusting products of capitalism had been used to displace felt a bitter hatred against the negro scab.
But those who dammed the "nigger" are beginning to look behind the black weapon with which they are struck to see the men that wielded, the brain that planned and the class that profited by this use of the negro. The Socialist had been pointing out the fact that it was the class struggle and not the race struggle which must be waged if labor would be free. The workers of the yards are grasping this fact and by thousands are preparing to strike both Republican and Democratic oppressors at the point where the strike is sure to win, the ballot box.
But it did not suit the political and industrial rulers of this country that race hatred should die out. Every division in the ranks of the toilers weakens their resistance to oppression extends the term of their slavery, increases the profits for their exploiters. So it is that extreme efforts are being made to fan the dying embers of race hatred. The better to do this they have imported that precious product of little capitalist domination in South Carolina,-that cross between Southern chattel slave owner and Northern wage slave exploiter, Ben Tillman.
In 1896 Tillman came to Chicago eager to speak for the Democratic party, but his crudeness and ignorance were so notorious that the Democratic managers feared to use him, and he found every hall closed to his efforts. Now he is welcomed back. Now he can be used. Now it is hoped that the workers of the yards are such crude fools that they can be deceived by this buffoon whose every speech has for its text "damn the nigger," whose solution of the labor problem is the whip, the noose and the stake, and the height of whose brilliant intellectual repartee is the question, "Would you let your daughter marry a nigger?"
This is the man who is now to appeal to the stock yards workers in the hope that he may deceive and divide them and set them once more to fighting among themselves,. If they will but fight over the question of color of their skins the capitalists may skin both alike. If negro worker and white worker can be turned loose upon each other there is no danger of either securing freedom.
WHY DOES TILLMAN COME?
A few weeks ago the laborers of the stock yards were in desperate need of every particle of assistance and sympathy they could secure. They were fighting for life, for themselves, their families and generations yet to come. Where was Tillman then? He should be asked by thousand voices at every meeting he addresses where he was when the strike was on, and why he did not speak to or for the stock yards workers then.
Ask him whose money is paying him now, that he should come here to raise the race question and set white worker against black. Ask him what interest August Belmont, McCurren, Clark, and the money lords who are contributing to the democratic party campaign fund, from which his salary is paid, have in sending him to the yards at this time, other than to divide and enslave the workers to whom he talks. These men who own both Republicans and Democratic parties have seen the rising wave of intelligent discontent that is starting in the stock yards, and which threatens to sweep them with their ill-gotten gains out of our social system.
That is why Tillman is sent here. That is the sort of dirty work in which he is engaged.
Are there any of the workers of this city who cannot see through this trap? Are there any so foolish as to bite at such a miserable bait? Let the workers of Chicago attend his meeting and send him back with the word that our eyes are opened to our slavery-that we know him for the tool that he is. Tell him to go back with his negro-hating gospel to the State from which he came. Tell him that even there his reign will be short, for the rising tide of Socialism is sweeping on even toward the "black belt."
Tell him that the workers of the stock yards have joined hands across all lines of nationality, and creed, and race and color, in common battle for freedom. Tell him that in our social warfare of to-day we recognize but one dividing line, and that is the line that divides the workers from the shirkers, the makers from the takers, and that we propose to wage the battle along that line until those who create the wealth of the world shall own the things with which they work and enjoy the product of their toil.
[photograph and paragraph breaks added]
SOURCE
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota & Superior, Wisconsin)
-of Oct 22, 1904
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
BETWEEN TWO FIRES: RACE AND
THE CHICAGO FEDERATION OF LABOR, 1904-1922
-by David H. Bates
"The Stockyards Strike of 1904" p.33
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/...
IMAGES
African-American Meatpackers
http://www.chicagohs.org/...
Senator Tillman
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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The Workers' Song-Dropkick Murphys
We're the first ones to starve the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
-Ed Pickford
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