Sabotage is a strike on the job.
It means a general slackening up, a withdrawal of product.
Where a man has to work 12 hours instead of eight it means perhaps
reducing the output to what eight hours would accomplish.
Where men are getting only a dollar a day it means
doing only a dollar's worth of work.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Friday June 25, 1915
The Pacific Northwest - The Pullman Herald Sounds the Alarm about "A New Microbe"
The
Pullman Herald of Pullman, Washington, is raising the alarm about "a new microbe" set to invade the wheat fields of the Pacific Northwest. The carrier of the this microbe is the Industrial Workers of the World. The
Herald warns:
The announced plan of the I. W. W. organization for infecting the harvest hands with this microbe is simple. One or more of its members will endeavor to secure jobs on every crew and incite the other members to join in the demand for higher wages, shorter hours and better food, or practice sabotage.
The
Herald fails to mention that the I. W. W. has recently founded a new branch of the One Big Union to put into effect this plan of infecting the harvest workers with the union spirit. This was accomplished at a conference of harvest workers held in Kansas City this past April, and there, the Agricultural Workers Organization became a real breeding ground for union infestation. We hope the "new microbe" will spread far and wide.
Most of the ire of the Herald is focused upon Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn who has been making a tour of the western states for the past few months. Readers of Hellraisers will remember that she stopped on her way out to California to visit with Fellow Worker Joe Hill in the Salt Lake County Jail. From there she went to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and up the coast to Portland, Oregon.
The Herald focuses specifically on the word "sabotage," which is the title of a pamphlet which was written by Gurley Flynn, and published in April by the I. W. W. Particularly horrifying to the Herald is the thought that workers might not work at the pace which employers would like to enforce, but might work at a rate justified by the wages paid to them. Of the sabotage done to the lives of the workers by the wages and conditions of labor imposed upon them, the Herald has not one word to say.
From the Pullman Herald of June 25, 1915:
A NEW MICROBE
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A new microbe threatens to invade the grain fields of the Pacific Northwest this fall. It is a microbe which preys on human beings and is called sabotage.
"Sabotage" according to the Standard dictionary, means "any poor work or other damage done by dissatisfied workmen; the act of producing it; plant wrecking."
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, international organizer of the I. W. W., explains the effects of this microbe as follows:
Sabotage is a strike on the job. It means a general slackening up, a withdrawal of product. Where a man has to work 12 hours instead of eight it means perhaps reducing the output to what eight hours would accomplish. Where men are getting only a dollar a day it means doing only a dollar's worth of work.
It means also withdrawing efficiency, doing a poorer quality of work. In the Patterson silk mills they practiced sabotage in such a way that the product was actually improved. The manufacturers have a system of adding zinc and other adulterants to the silk in the process of dying, so as to turn out several pounds of dyed silk for every pound that goes into the vats. The workers simply cut the amount of adulterants so that in some cases the silk was coming out absolutely pure. This, of course, cut down the employers' profits immensely, but it did the consumer an actual benefit.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1913, during the Paterson Silk Strike
with Pat Quinlan, Carlo Tresca, Adolph Lessig, and Big Bill Haywood.
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Over on the Coast in one of the canneries the workers practice sabotage by mixing the labels, putting the second-class label on the first-class product and first-class label on the second-class product.
The purpose of sabotage is coercion of the employer to meet the demands of the union, which is the same as the purpose of the strike. It is a strike carried on by a different method, a strike in a small way without the disadvantages of the strike. Whenever workmen turn out a less or poorer product because of dissatisfaction with the conditions, that is sabotage.
There is nothing new in the idea or the practice of it. The Scotch have a name for it. A man who practices it is called "ca'canny." It doesn't mean destroying machines. A workman who would do that would be cutting off his nose to spite his face.
The organization of the farm hands is only a part of the general plan to organize all migratory workers under the I. W. W. The harvest fields are a convenient place to make a start.
Our point of view is the point of view of the worker. The conditions under which the harvest hands work are abominable. The hours are intolerable, the food is poor and the pay inadequate. If he has to sleep with the chickens and eat rotten food it doesn't help the worker any to know that farmer may be in debt and struggling to make a living. But naturally the work of organization is likely to be started in the fields of the owners of the big bonanza ranches, where the condition of the workers is intolerable.
A definite scale of wages and definite conditions and hours have been prepared by the union organizers and they will be presented to employers when the men are organized. It was all decided upon at a meeting in Kansas City two months ago.
The announced plan of the I. W. W. organization for infecting the harvest hands with this microbe is simple. One or more of its members will endeavor to secure jobs on every crew and incite the other members to join in the demand for higher wages, shorter hours and better food, or practice sabotage.
Harvesting the Wheat Fields.
The potential evils of this microbe are self-evident and are adding a new worry to the many under which the farmers are laboring. The great majority of farmers have tried to treat their harvest hands squarely, to pay them fair wages and give them as good food and sleeping accommodations as circumstances will permit. They should now get together and co-operate in combatting the microbe of sabotage. The simplest method is to inoculate every harvest crew with an anti-sabotage vaccine. Let every farmer and thresherman see to it that he has one or more men in his crew upon whom he can absolutely depend and who will look out for his interests, and give them authority to discharge any hand who manifests any symptoms of sabotage in word or deed.
Blanket Bundles of the Harvest Workers.
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There are plenty of men in this country who are willing to work in the harvest fields and who have no taint of sabotage in their systems; who, having accepted a job at an agreed wage, will do their best to make good, or, if they are dissatisfied, will quit instead of trying to do as little work as possible. The federal government is developing a plan to bring these men and harvest jobs together, by instituting employment bureaus throughout the Inland Empire, and special efforts will be made by these agencies to furnish honest and reliable help. They should be patronized and encouraged by the farmers.
There is another safeguard against sabotage, which will appeal to some farmers, and that is to change their system of farming so that instead of having to employ a large crew of strange helpers for a few days, they can employ one or two or more reliable men the year round, or can provide themselves with harvesting machinery which will enable them to handle their crops without having to rely on transient labor.
The microbe of sabotage is worse than that of tuberculosis, for once infected with it, a man loses his ambition and self-respect and becomes a burden on and a menace to society. No farmer can afford to neglect to take every possible precaution to stamp out this microbe before it gains a foothold.
-----
[Photographs added.]
From the International Socialist Review of April 1909:
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Pullman Herald
(Pullman, Washington)
-June 25, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Searches: Newspapers.com
EGF in Chicago and Kansas in April 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
EGF in California and Oregon in May 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
EGF in Portland, OR, in June 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, formal portrait,
from Ft Scott (KS) newspaper of Apr 29, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, April 1915
http://babel.hathitrust.org/...
IWW organizers at Paterson, New Jersey 1913
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Harvesting the Wheat Fields
& Blanket Bundles of the workers
https://depts.washington.edu/...
Notes from link:
Organizing [of farm workers] began again after the Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO) was created in 1915. The IWW held an initial harvest workers’ conference in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 15, 1914 and soon launched the AWO as one of several industrial syndicates within the IWW. The AWO changed strategies and stirred a new burst of activism in the field. The goal was to shift away from the soap-boxing and revolutionary statements to which the IWW was prone. Instead, they concentrated on building a stable organization and improving actual work conditions for harvest workers....
Unlike the more conservative AFL, the IWW reached out to the thousands of unskilled transients who worked in the seasonal industries in the West. Without permanent homes, these men who rode the rails and tramped were known by many different names: harvest hands, bindle stiffs, hobos. For a mere two dollars, any worker, regardless of skill level, vocation, or race could join the IWW. This cartoon from the Industrial Worker celebrates the "Blanket Stiffs." [See above.] ...
Here are some of the men that the IWW hoped to win to their cause, working in a Washington or Idaho wheat field. Below, their blanket bundles. [See above.]
The Blanket Stiff
https://books.google.com/...
Blanket Stiff Cartoon from:
The International Socialist Review, Volume 9
-Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr & Company, July 1908-June, 1909
https://books.google.com/...
ISR of April 1909
https://books.google.com/...
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I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore - Woody Guthrie
Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
-Woody Guthrie
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