You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday May 9, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: Texas Landlord Admits to Evicting Socialist Tenants
Herr Glessner Creel
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In this week's Appeal to Reason, a H. G. Creel continues his series on the investigation conducted by the
Commission on Industrial Relations into the conditions of the tenant farmers of Texas and Oklahoma. Hearings were held on the subject in Dallas in March, and from those hearings, Correspondent Creel introduces us to A. Tom Padgitt, a Texas landlord who so fears the Socialists that he causes them to be evicted from his land.
The preachers, with few exceptions, approve of the anti-Socialist campaign. From one such preacher was issued this statement of support:
It will give me great pleasure to speak for you against Socialism. I congratulate you and your people on your stand against this menace to God and humanity.
Apparently, the destitution of the tenant farmers under the sharecropper system concerns these preachers not at all. Extreme poverty, it seems, is neither a menace to God nor to humanity.
From the Appeal to Reason of May 8, 1915:
Texas Landlords Fear Socialists
BY H. G. CREEL,
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
Several years ago it was reported that a league of Texas landlords would rent no more land to Socialists.
That report grew out of the action of A. Tom Padgitt, a witness before the United States industrial relations commission at Dallas. When questioned by the commission he said that in 1912 a number of Socialists rented portions of his 12,000 acres and immediately began to "say things against landlords and poison the minds of other tenants." When asked if he, personally, had heard these remarks he admitted that he had not and that all his information came from his overseer, C. A. Rieves. It then developed that Padgitt does not live on his land, but maintains a residence in the city, turning to an overseer the job of getting enough rent from tenants to keep the Padgitt household bills paid.
"You gave the order to rent to no more Socialists, did you?" asked Chairman Walsh.
"Yes, sir, I certainly did."
"But you say you did not hear them making these remarks. Then you took that action on the word of your manager, Mr. Rieves."
"Partly on that and partly on what I know about Socialism. I don't want it talked around my property."
"Will you tell the commission, in your own words, just why you objected to these people and why you instructed your overseer to rent them no more land?"
"Well, the two factions, the Socialists and the anti-Socialists got to fighting. They broke 28 windows out of my gin house."
"Who? The Socialists?"
"Certainly, The So---. I don't know if the Socialists did it or not, but it was done after a meeting in the school house."
"Then you said these people should not use your land because 28 windows were broken out of your gin house?"
"No. I wouldn't rent to them because they were Socialists. They want things that are unlawful. They want to change the government and I won't have it."
The Landlord Dodges.
"But suppose these people think that the things they advocate are for the good of the people generally. Suppose they think it a better way to live."
"It wouldn't be for the good of the community and they'd have to get off my land."
"You say it wouldn't be for the good of the community. Who would be the judge?"
"The community itself."
"Then everybody in your community was convinced that what these Socialists advocated was wrong?"
"Well, then, the community could not have decided, as a community, that Socialism was wrong. Now then, Mr. Padgitt, in such a case, when the people of the community were divided, who would cast the deciding vote? In your own case, who was the judge?"
"There was no particular judge. The people themselves decided."
"Did the people tell the Socialists they could not rent your land the next year?"
"No, Mr. Rieves told them."
"At your direction?"
"Yes."
Cornered, Admits Dictatorship.
Texas Tenant Farmer and Family
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"Did anybody order you to refuse to rent to Socialists?"
"No."
"Then you acted entirely for your self?"
"Yes."
"Then in such a case, Mr. Padgitt, who would be the judge whether a particular theory of politics, religion, etc., would be for the good of mankind?"
"I would."
"And you think, do you, Mr. Padgitt, that you are capable of deciding for an entire community?"
"Yes, sir; I do."
"That is all, Mr. Padgitt."
The Landlord Retracts.
Reporters for the Dallas afternoon papers leaped from the press table the moment Padgitt stepped from the stand. Within half an hour papers were on the street telling of this Texas landlord who thought himself capable of doing the thinking for an entire community. Not even the capitalist papers could stomach such arrogance. It was one of the sensations of the hearing.
Padgitt's friends must have raised Cain with him during the night for next morning he appeared at the hearing and asked permission to explain his testimony of the day before. That granted, he denied that he wanted to control the community's thoughts and so completely went back on his previous testimony that he declared he did not care what a tenant thought, said or did about politics as long as he tended his land properly. The retraction went into the record and Padgitt left the room, presumably to square himself with his landlord friends.
C. A. Rieves, former overseer for Padgitt and now a real estate dealer of Hasting, Okla., was the next witness. He began his testimony with:
Overseer Gets Appeal.
Almost as soon as I went to work on the Padgitt place I was inveigled into subscribing for the APPEAL TO REASON. There were some tenants there who tried to make a Socialist of me. I never read the paper and told them I didn't believe in Socialism and considered it a trouble-making proposition.
That made some of the tenants mad at me. One of them, F. M. Johnson, took a plank off the barn and made a bee hive of it. I ordered him to put it back. He refused to do it and I told him to move off. That made matters worse. We organized an anti-Socialist league and held meetings. Finally a committee of Socialists waited on me, saying I discriminated against Socialists and unless I quit it they'd boycott the gin. I told them if they boycotted the gin I'd make every Socialist on the place move off.
"Did they put the threatened boycott into effect?
"No, sir. But the people of the community began to take sides. The Socialists wanted me fired and petitioned Mr. Padgitt to discharge me. He refused to do so."
Preachers And Socialism.
"You say the people took sides. Did the preachers take sides?"
"Yes, sir-well, now , in a way they did. Here's a letter from one of them, a preacher in the M. E. church, South.
He was written to, asking if he'd speak against Socialism. This is his reply:
Dear Sir and Brother-It will give me great pleasure to speak for you against Socialism. I congratulate you and your people on your stand against this menace to God and humanity.
Very truly,
GEO. F. CARNEGIE.
"Did any preachers take sides with the Socialists?"
One of them did. His name was McCarrol. He was told he'd have to quit his Socialism or quit his church, so he gave up talking Socialism.
Things went on from bad to worse until the people rose up and said something must be done to redeem the country from Socialism. They were making big inroads. So I made all of them leave. No Socialists were permitted to remain.
Never Understood Socialism.
Before he left the stand Rieves admitted that while on the Padgitt place he did not know-and does not know now-what Socialists advocate or propose. He is a typical Anti-Socialist baiter. Utterly ignorant of the thing he fights, vicious in his ignorance and fanatically unwilling to learn he was exactly the man to act as agent for another man who considered himself so superior that he could determine the political thought for a community better than the community could do for itself.
Following Rieves' statement came that of one of the Padgitt former tenants, a Socialist. His testimony will be given next week.
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[Paragraph breaks and photographs added.]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 8, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Herr Glessner Creel
https://books.google.com/...
Tenant Farmer Plucked By Parasites,
from The Tenant Farmer, Oct 1914
http://gateway.okhistory.org/...
Texas Tenant Farmer in California during
Great Depression, Dorothea Lange
(Dear Readers, I realize that this photo is from the '30s; it is
used here to represent the destitution of the tenant farmers
of Texas and Oklahoma at time of the CIR investigation.)
https://www.pinterest.com/...
Appeal to Reason, banner, May 8, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
Creel + JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Industrial relations: final report and testimony
-United States. Commission on Industrial
Relations,
-Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
Vol 9:
https://books.google.com/...
8949-The Land Question in the Southwest
https://books.google.com/...
Vol. 10
https://books.google.com/...
9057-9290-The Land Question in the Southwest-
Continued
https://books.google.com/...
9102-Testimony of Mr. J. Tom Padgitt.
https://books.google.com/...
9113-Testimony of Mr. C. A. Rives
https://books.google.com/...
Appeal Socialist Classics, No. 8
Socialism and the Farmer
-ed by W. J. Ghent
Girard, Kansas, 1916
https://archive.org/...
Tricks of the Press, A Lecture
-by H. G. Creel
National Rip-Saw Publishing Co, 1911
https://books.google.com/...
More Books by Herr Glessner Creel
https://www.google.com/...
A letter from Debs to Creel
https://books.google.com/...
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Hungry Ragged Blues - Aunt Molly Jackson
Although written for the coal miners and their families, this song fits every worker every where who labors for poverty wages.
I'm sad and weary, I've got the hungry, ragged blues.
Not one penny in the pocket to buy one thing I need to use.
I woke up this morning, with the worst blues I ever had in my life;
Not a bite to eat for breakfast, a poor coal miner's wife!
When my husband works in the coalmines, he loads a carload every trip;
Then he goes to the office at the evening to get denied of scrip.
Just because they took all he made that day to pay his mine expense,
A man that will work for just coal oil and carbide, he ain't got a stack of sense.
All the women in the coal camps are sitting with bowed down heads,
Ragged and bare-footed, and the children cryin' for bread.
No food, no clothes for our children, I'm sure this head don't lie;
If we can't get more for our labor we'll starve to death and die!
Don't go under the mountain, with a slate hangin' o'er your head;
And work for just coal oil and carbide, and your children cryin' for bread.
This mining town I live in is a sad and lonely place
Where pity and starvation is pictured on every face!
Some coal operators might tell you the hungry blues are not there.
They're the worst kind of blues this poor woman ever had.
-Aunt Molly Jackson
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