An American Idyll Part 5

"The position taken by the defense and their sympathizers in the course of the trial has not only an economic and social bearing, but many arguments made before the court are distinct efforts to introduce sociological modifications of the law which will have a far-reaching effect on the industrial relations of capital and labor. It is a.s.serted that the common law, on which American jurisprudence is founded, is known as an ever-developing law, which must adapt itself to changing economic and social conditions; and, in this connection, it is claimed that the established theories of legal causation must be enlarged to include economic and social factors in the chain of causes leading to a result. Concretely, it is argued:--

"First, That, when unsanitary conditions lead to discontent so intense that the crowd can be incited to bloodshed, those responsible for the unsanitary conditions are to be held legally responsible for the bloodshed, as well as the actual inciters of the riot.

"Second, That, if the law will not reach out so far as to hold the creator of unsanitary, unlivable conditions guilty of bloodshed, at any rate such conditions excuse the inciters from liability, because inciters are the involuntary transmitting agents of an uncontrollable force set in motion by those who created the unlivable conditions... .

"Furthermore, on the legal side, modifications of the law of property are urged. It is argued that modern law no longer holds the rights of private property sacred, that these rights are being constantly regulated and limited, and that in the Wheatland case the owner's traditional rights in relation to his own lands are to be held subject to the right of the laborers to organize thereon. It is urged that a worker on land has a 'property right in his job,' and that he cannot be made to leave the job, or the land, merely because he is trying to organize his fellow workers to make a protest as to living and economic conditions. It is urged that the organizing worker cannot be made to leave the job because the job is _his_ property and it is all that he has."

As to "The Remedy":--

"It is obvious that the violent strike methods adopted by the I.W.W.

type agitators, which only incidentally, although effectively, tend to improve camp conditions, are not to be accepted as a solution of the problem. It is also obvious that the conviction of the agitators, such as Ford and Suhr, of murder, is not a solution, but is only the punishment or revenge inflicted by organized society for a past deed.

The Remedy lies in prevention.

"It is the opinion of your investigator that the improvement of living conditions in the labor camps will have the immediate effect of making the recurrence of impa.s.sioned, violent strikes and riots not only improbable, but impossible; and furthermore, such improvement will go far towards eradicating the hatred and bitterness in the minds of the employers and in the minds of the roving, migratory laborers. This accomplished, the two conflicting parties will be in a position to meet on a saner, more constructive basis, in solving the further industrial problems arising between them... .

"They must come to realize that their own laxity in allowing the existence of unsanitary and filthy conditions gives a much-desired foothold to the very agitators of the revolutionary I.W.W. doctrines whom they so dread; they must learn that unbearable, aggravating living conditions inoculate the minds of the otherwise peaceful workers with the germs of bitterness and violence, as so well exemplified at the Wheatland riot, giving the agitators a fruitful field wherein to sow the seeds of revolt and preach the doctrine of direct action and sabotage.

"On the other hand, the migratory laborers must be shown that revolts accompanied by force in scattered and isolated localities not only involve serious breaches of law and lead to crime, but that they accomplish no lasting constructive results in advancing their cause.

"The Commission intends to furnish a clearinghouse to hear complaints of grievances, of both sides, and act as a mediator or safety-valve."

In the report to the Governor appear Carl's first writings on the I.W.W.

"Of this entire labor force at the ---- ranch, it appears that some 100 had been I.W.W. 'card men,' or had had affiliations with that organization. There is evidence that there was in this camp a loosely caught together camp local of the I.W.W., with about 30 active members.

It is suggestive that these 30 men, through a spasmodic action, and with the aid of the deplorable camp conditions, dominated a heterogeneous ma.s.s of 2800 unskilled laborers in 3 days. Some 700 or 800 of the force were of the 'hobo' cla.s.s, in every sense potential I.W.W.

strikers. At least 400 knew in a rough way the--for them curiously attractive--philosophy of the I.W.W., and could also sing some of its songs.

"Of the 100-odd 'card men' of the I.W.W., some had been through the San Diego affair, some had been soap-boxers in Fresno, a dozen had been in the Free Speech fight in Spokane. They sized up the hop-field as a ripe opportunity, as the princ.i.p.al defendant, 'Blackie' Ford, puts it, 'to start something.' On Friday, two days after picking began, the practical agitators began working through the camp. Whether or not Ford came to the ---- ranch to foment trouble seems immaterial. There are five Fords in every camp of seasonal laborers in California. We have devoted ourselves in these weeks to such questions as this: 'How big a per cent of California's migratory seasonal labor force know the technique of an I.W.W. strike?' 'How many of the migratory laborers know when conditions are ripe to "start something"?' We are convinced that among the individuals of every fruit-farm labor group are many potential strikers.

Where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a railroad bridge, many of the group can sing I.W.W. songs without the book. This was not so three years ago. The I.W.W. in California is not a closely organized body, with a steady membership. The rank and file know little of the technical organization of industrial life which their written const.i.tution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the 'solidarity' of their cla.s.s. In the dignifying of vagabondage through their crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of the jail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church and its formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo status which they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless they have a strike or free-speech fight to stimulate their spirit. It is in their methods of warfare, not in their abstract philosophy or even hatred of law and judges, that danger lies for organized society. Since every one of the 5000 laborers in California who have been at some time connected with the I.W.W. considers himself a 'camp delegate' with walking papers to organize a camp local, this small army is watching, as Ford did, for an unsanitary camp or low wage-scale, to start the strike which will not only create a new I.W.W. local, but bring fame to the organizer. This common acceptance of direct action and sabotage as the rule of operation, the songs and the common vocabulary are, we feel convinced, the first stirring of a cla.s.s expression.

"Cla.s.s solidarity they have not. That may never come, for the migratory laborer has neither the force nor the vision nor tenacity to hold long enough to the ideal to attain it. But the I.W.W. is teaching a method of action which will give this cla.s.s in violent flare-ups, such as that at Wheatland, expression.

"The dying away of the organization after the outburst is, therefore, to be expected. Their social condition is a miserable one. Their work, even at the best, must be irregular. They have nothing to lose in a strike, and, as a leader put it, 'A riot and a chance to blackguard a jailer is about the only intellectual fun we have.'

"Taking into consideration the misery and physical privation and the barren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I.W.W. movement, with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes in reality a cla.s.s-protest, and the dignity which this characteristic gives it perhaps alone explains the persistence of the organization in the field.

"Those attending the protest ma.s.s-meeting of the Wheatland hop-pickers were singing the I.W.W. song 'Mr. Block,' when the sheriff's posse came up in its automobiles. The crowd had been harangued by an experienced I.W.W. orator--'Blackie' Ford. They had been told, according to evidence, to 'knock the blocks off the scissor-bills.' Ford had taken a sick baby from its mother's arms and, holding it before the eyes of the 1500 people, had cried out: 'It's for the life of the kids we're doing this.' Not a quarter of the crowd was of a type normally venturesome enough to strike, and yet, when the sheriff went after Ford, he was knocked down and kicked senseless by infuriated men. In the b.l.o.o.d.y riot which then ensued, District Attorney Manwell, Deputy Sheriff Riordan, a negro Porto Rican and the English boy were shot and killed. Many were wounded. The posse literally fled, and the camp remained practically unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn the next day.

"The question of social responsibility is one of the deepest significance. The posse was, I am convinced, over-nervous and, unfortunately, over-rigorous. This can be explained in part by the state-wide apprehension over the I.W.W.; in part by the normal California country posse's att.i.tude toward a labor trouble. A deputy sheriff, at the most critical moment, fired a shot in the air, as he stated, 'to sober the crowd.' There were armed men in the crowd, for every crowd of 2000 casual laborers includes a score of gunmen. Evidence goes to show that even the gentler mountainfolk in the crowd had been aroused to a sense of personal injury. ----'s automobile had brought part of the posse. Numberless pickers cling to the belief that the posse was '----'s police.' When Deputy Sheriff Dakin shot into the air, a fusillade took place; and when he had fired his last sh.e.l.l, an infuriated crowd of men and women chased him to the ranch store, where he was forced to barricade himself. The crowd was dangerous and struck the first blow. The murderous temper which turned the crowd into a mob is incompatible with social existence, let alone social progress. The crowd at the moment of the shooting was a wild and lawless animal. But to your investigator the important subject to a.n.a.lyze is not the guilt or innocence of Ford or Suhr, as the direct stimulators of the mob in action, but to name and standardize the early and equally important contributors to a psychological situation which resulted in an unlawful killing. If this is done, how can we omit either the filth of the hop-ranch, the cheap gun-talk of the ordinary deputy sheriff, or the unbridled, irresponsible speech of the soap-box orator?

"Without doubt the propaganda which the I.W.W. had actually adopted for the California seasonal worker can be, in its fairly normal working out in law, a criminal conspiracy, and under that charge, Ford and Suhr have been found guilty of the Wheatland murder. But the important fact is, that this propaganda will be carried out, whether unlawful or not. We have talked hours with the I.W.W. leaders, and they are absolutely conscious of their position in the eyes of the law. Their only comment is that they are glad, if it must be a conspiracy, that it is a criminal conspiracy. They have volunteered the beginning of a cure; it is to clean up the housing and wage problem of the seasonal worker. The shrewdest I.W.W. leader we found said: 'We can't agitate in the country unless things are rotten enough to bring the crowd along.' They evidently were in Wheatland."

He was high ace with the Wobbly for a while. They invited him to their Jungles, they carved him presents in jail. I remember a talk he gave on some phase of the California labor-problem one Sunday night, at the Congregational church in Oakland. The last three rows were filled with unshaven hoboes, who filed up afterwards, to the evident distress of the clean regular church-goers, to clasp his hand. They withdrew their allegiance after a time, which naturally in no way phased Carl's scientific interest in them. A paper hostile to Carl's att.i.tude on the I.W.W. and his insistence on the clean-up of camps published an article portraying him as a double-faced individual who feigned an interest in the under-dog really to undo him, as he was at heart and pocket-book a capitalist, being the possessor of an independent income of $150,000 a year. Some I.W.W.'s took this up, and convinced a large meeting that he was really trying to sell them out. It is not only the rich who are fickle. Some of them remained his firm friends always, however. That summer two of his students hoboed it till they came down with malaria, in the meantime turning in a fund of invaluable facts regarding the migratory and his life.

A year later, in his article in the "Quarterly Journal," and, be it remembered, after his study of psychology had begun, Carl wrote:--

"There is here, beyond a doubt, a great laboring population experiencing a high suppression of normal instincts and traditions. There can be no greater perversion of a desirable existence than this insecure, under-nourished, wandering life, with its sordid s.e.x-expression and reckless and rare pleasures. Such a life leads to one of two consequences: either a sinking of the cla.s.s to a low and hopeless level, where they become, through irresponsible conduct and economic inefficiency, a charge upon society; or revolt and guerrilla labor warfare.

"The migratory laborers, as a cla.s.s, are the finished product of an environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out beings moulded after all the standards society abhors. Fortunately the psychologists have made it unnecessary to explain that there is nothing willful or personally reprehensible in the vagrancy of these vagrants. Their histories show that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters of the farms they ran away from, through their character-debasing experience with irregular industrial labor, on to the vicious economic life of the winter unemployed, their training predetermined but one outcome. Nurture has triumphed over nature; the environment has produced its type. Difficult though the organization of these people may be, a coincidence of favoring conditions may place an opportunity in the hands of a super-leader. If this comes, one can be sure that California will be both very astonished and very misused."

I was told only recently of a Belgian economics professor, out here in California during the war, on official business connected with aviation.

He asked at once to see Carl, but was told we had moved to Seattle. "My colleagues in Belgium asked me to be sure and see Professor Parker," he said, "as we consider him the one man in America who understands the problem of the migratory laborer."

That winter Carl got the city of San Jose to stand behind a model unemployed lodging-house, one of the two students who had "hoboed"

during the summer taking charge of it. The unemployed problem, as he ran into it at every turn, stirred Carl to his depths. At one time he felt it so strongly that he wanted to start a lodging-house in Berkeley, himself, just to be helping out somehow, even though it would be only surface help.

It was also about this time that California was treated to the spectacle of an Unemployed Army, which was driven from pillar to post,--or, in this case, from town to town,--each trying to outdo the last in protestations of unhospitality. Finally, in Sacramento the fire-hoses were turned on the army. At that Carl flamed with indignation, and expressed himself in no mincing terms, both to the public and to the reporter who sought his views. He was no hand to keep clippings, but I did come across one of his milder interviews in the San Francisco "Bulletin" of March 11, 1914.

"That California's method of handling the unemployed problem is in accord with the 'careless, cruel and unscientific att.i.tude of society on the labor question,' is the statement made to-day by Professor Carleton H. Parker, a.s.sistant Professor of Industrial economy, and secretary of the State Immigration Committee.

"'There are two ways of looking at this winter's unemployed problem,'

said Dr. Parker; 'one is fatally bad and the other promises good. One way is shallow and biased; the other strives to use the simple rules of science for the a.n.a.lysis of any problem. One way is to d.a.m.n the army of the unemployed and the irresponsible, irritating vagrants who will not work. The other way is to admit that any such social phenomenon as this army is just as normal a product of our social organization as our own university.

"'Much street-car and ferry a.n.a.lysis of this problem that I have overheard seems to believe that this army created its own degraded self, that a vagrant is a vagrant from personal desire and perversion. This a.n.a.lysis is as shallow as it is untrue. If unemployment and vagrancy are the product of our careless, indifferent society over the half-century, then its cure will come only by a half-century's careful regretful social labor by this same tardy society.

"'The riot at Sacramento is merely the appearance of the problem from the back streets into the strong light. The handling of the problem there is unhappily in accord with the careless, cruel att.i.tude of society on this question. We are willing to respect the anxiety of Sacramento, threatened in the night with this irresponsible, reckless invasion; but how can the city demand of vagrants observance of the law, when they drop into mob-a.s.sertion the minute the problem comes up to them?'"

The ill.u.s.tration he always used to express his opinion of the average solution of unemployment, I quote from a paper of his on that subject, written in the spring of 1915.

"There is an old test for insanity which is made as follows: the suspect is given a cup, and is told to empty a bucket into which water is running from a faucet. If the suspect turns off the water before he begins to bail out the bucket, he is sane. Nearly all the current solutions of unemployment leave the faucet running... .

"The heart of the problem, the cause, one might well say, of unemployment, is that the employment of men regularly or irregularly is at no time an important consideration of those minds which control industry. Social organization has ordered it that these minds shall be interested only in achieving a reasonable profit in the manufacture and the sale of goods. Society has never demanded that industries be run even in part to give men employment. Rewards are not held out for such a policy, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect such a performance.

Though a favorite popular belief is that we must 'work to live,' we have no current adage of a 'right to work.' This winter there are shoeless men and women, closed shoe-factories, and dest.i.tute shoemakers; children in New England with no woolen clothing, half-time woolen mills, and unemployed spinners and weavers. Why? Simply because the mills cannot turn out the reasonable business profit; and since that is the only promise that can galvanize them into activity, they stand idle, no matter how much humanity finds of misery and death in this decision.

This statement is not a peroration to a declaration for Socialism. It seems a fair rendering of the matter-of-fact logic of the a.n.a.lysis.

"It seems hopeless, and also unfair, to expect out-of-work insurance, employment bureaus, or philanthropy, to counteract the controlling force of profit-seeking. There is every reason to believe that profit-seeking has been a tremendous stimulus to economic activity in the past. It is doubtful if the present great acc.u.mulation of capital would have come into existence without it. But to-day it seems as it were to be caught up by its own social consequences. It is hard to escape from the insistence of a situation in which the money a workman makes in a year fails to cover the upkeep of his family; and this impairment of the father's income through unemployment has largely to be met by child-and woman-labor. The Federal Immigration Commission's report shows that in not a single great American industry can the average yearly income of the father keep his family. Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the bare minimum for the maintenance of the average-sized American industrial family. The average yearly earnings of the heads of families working in the United States in the iron and steel industry is $409; in bituminous coal-mining $451; in the woolen industry $400; in silk $448; in cotton $470; in clothing $530; in boots and shoes $573; in leather $511; in sugar-refining $549; in the meat industry $578; in furniture $598, etc.

"He who decries created work, munic.i.p.al lodging-houses, bread-lines, or even sentimental charity, in the face of the winter's dest.i.tution, has an unsocial soul. The most despicable thing to-day is the whine of our cities lest their inadequate catering to their own homeless draw a few vagrants from afar. But when the agony of our winter makeshifting is by, will a sufficient minority of our citizens rise and demand that the best technical, economic, and sociological brains in our wealthy nation devote themselves with all courage and honesty to the problem of unemployment?"

Carl was no diplomat, in any sense of the word--above all, no political diplomat. It is a wonder that the Immigration and Housing Commission stood behind him as long as it did. He grew rabid at every political appointment which, in his eyes, hampered his work. It was evident, so they felt, that he was not tactful in his relations with various members of the Commission. It all galled him terribly, and after much consultation at home, he handed in his resignation. During the first term of his secretaryship, from October to December, he carried his full-time University work. From January to May he had a seminar only, as I remember. From August on he gave no University work at all; so, after asking to have his resignation from the Commission take effect at once, he had at once to find something to do to support his family.

This was in October, 1914, after just one year as Executive Secretary.

We were over in Contra Costa County then, on a little ranch of my father's. Berkeley socially had come to be too much of a strain, and, too, we wanted the blessed sons to have a real country experience. Ten months we were there. Three days after Carl resigned, he was on his way to Phoenix, Arizona,--where there was a threatened union tie-up,--as United States Government investigator of the labor situation. He added thereby to his first-hand stock of labor-knowledge, made a firm friend of Governor Hunt,--he was especially interested in his prison policy,--and in those few weeks was the richer by one more of the really intimate friendships one counts on to the last--Will Scarlett.

He wrote, on Carl's death, "What a horrible, hideous loss! Any of us could so easily have been spared; that he, who was of such value, had to go seems such an utter waste... . He was one of that very, very small circle of men, whom, in the course of our lives, we come _really_ to love. His friendship meant so much--though I heard but infrequently from him, there was the satisfaction of a deep friendship that was _always there_ and _always the same_. He would have gone so far! I have looked forward to a great career for him, and had such pride in him. It's too hideous!"

CHAPTER X

In January, 1915, Carl took up his teaching again in real earnest, commuting to Alamo every night. I would have the boys in bed and the little supper all ready by the fire; then I would prowl down the road with my electric torch, to meet him coming home; he would signal in the distance with his torch, and I with mine. Then the walk back together, sometimes ankle-deep in mud; then supper, making the toast over the coals, and an evening absolutely to ourselves. And never in all our lives did we ask for more joy than that.

That spring we began building our very own home in Berkeley. The months in Alamo had made us feel that we could never bear to be in the centre of things again, nor, for that matter, could we afford a lot in the centre of things; so we bought high up on the Berkeley hills, where we could realize as much privacy as was possible, and yet where our friends could reach us--if they could stand the climb. The love of a nest we built! We were longer in that house than anywhere else: two years almost to the day--two years of such happiness as no other home has ever seen.

There, around the redwood table in the living-room, by the window overlooking the Golden Gate, we had the suppers that meant much joy to us and I hope to the friends we gathered around us. There, on the porches overhanging the very Canyon itself we had our Sunday tea-parties. (Each time Carl would plead, "I don't have to wear a stiff collar, do I?" and he knew that I would answer, "You wear anything you want," which usually meant a blue soft shirt.)

We had a little swimming-tank in back, for the boys.