Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers (Princeton Legacy Library, 51) - Hardcover
Inhaltsangabe
"The strength of this book . . . encompasses a broad view of history from the bottom up and deals not only with biographical background of the nonelite in labor but with insights into black, immigrant, and grassroots working-class history as well."--Choice
Originally published in 1981.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
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Rank and File
Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers
By Alice Lynd, Staughton LyndPRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1981 Alice and Staughton Lynd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-09393-2All rights reserved.
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition, vii,
Introduction, 1,
CHRISTINE ELLIS, People Who Cannot Be Bought, 9,
JOHN W. ANDERSON, How I Became Part of the Labor Movement, 35,
STELLA NOWICKI, Back of the Yards, 67,
GEORGE PATTERSON, JESSE REESE AND JOHN SARGENT, Your Dog Don't Bark No More, 89,
SYLVIA WOODS, YOU Have to Fight for Freedom, 111,
MARIO MANZARDO, Liberi Cuori [Liberated Hearts], 131,
BURR MCCLOSKEY, I Appeal the Ruling of the Chair, 149,
NICK MIGAS, How the International Took Over, 163,
STAN WEIR, The Informal Work Group, 177,
GEORGE SULLIVAN, Working for Survival, 201,
KEN TUCKER, It Got My Back Up, 223,
WAYNE KENNEDY, An Absolute Majority, 233,
JORDAN SIMS, Going for Broke, 253,
JOHN BARBERO, ED MANN AND OTHERS, A Common Bond, 265,
BILL WORTHINGTON, LEE SMITH AND ED RYAN, Miners For Democracy, 285,
List of Abbreviations, 297,
CHAPTER 1
CHRISTINE ELLIS
Christine Ellis recalls in detail the experience of immigrants coming to America and the support the foreign born gave each other in political as well as economic and cultural ways.
She joined the Communist Party, served as an organizer of the unemployed in the early 1930s, and was active in the Party for many years. Later she became disillusioned with the Communist Party as a possible instrument for creating a more just society.
After the period described in this account, Christine Ellis lived in Gary, Indiana and married a steelworker. She opposed the Korean War for reasons similar to those of the Vietnam War protesters. This led to efforts of the Justice Department to have her deported under the McCarran Act. She was jailed without bail for ten months in 1952–53.
While in jail she began to write the story of her life on the backs of Christmas and Easter cards sent her by supporters. After we met her she added to these recollections, writing about some incidents and telling others to us personally or to the Labor History Workshop in Gary during the summer of 1971. What appears here are several highly condensed fragments from a mass of vividly-remembered material.
CHRISTINE ELLIS
People Who Cannot Be Bought
I
ALTHOUGH I WAS ONLY FIVE when we left what is now Jugoslavia, I remember the compound where we lived and the tiny village where many of the poor peasants lived in thatch-covered huts.
Both my mother and father came from ancient communal families. We lived in huge compounds, two stories high, built of thick stone walls. There was a common kitchen and dining room where all the members of the family ate together.
In order for a commune to exist in the twentieth century, it had to have good management. At one time our family had owned a lot of land, with vineyards, many sheep, olive trees, etc. With the death of my great-grandfather our fortunes began to suffer.
My father was a good-hearted soul but he wasn't exactly a hard worker. He served his time in the army of Emperor Franz Joseph where he learned to be an excellent marksman. His marriage to my mother was pre-arranged. They hadn't even met.
My mother came from the village of Nadim, walking distance from our village of Tinj. Her mother was the head of the family in their compound. She was a widow most of her life. But she was a good manager and was the undisputed head of the household.
My mother bore twelve children but only six survived. The first four, all male, either died at birth or in early infancy. Then she had three girls.
The land-holdings of the family had dwindled to a very low point and we lived in poverty. My father, perhaps in disgust that he had lost four sons and now had three daughters, decided to go to America. He left in 1911.
His first job was digging with pick and shovel the foundation for the St. Louis, Missouri, City Hall. When that was done he joined some other Croatian immigrants in building railroad tracks in Minnesota. The extreme cold weather there did not appeal to them. Some of the men said there were coal mining towns in southern Iowa where a large number of Croatians lived, and that is how Papa came to Jerome, Iowa. Between these various jobs he managed to save up enough money to send us the fare to come to the United States via steerage on a German steamship plus train fare from New York City to Jerome, Iowa.
I can never forget the misery and suffering we endured on the ship. We traveled steerage which means down in the hold where there are no portholes for air. The place was jammed tight with double and triple bunk beds, very thin mattresses so that if a child slept in the bunk bed above you there was every chance of the urine dropping down on you. Passengers who were seasick simply vomited all over the place and the stench is impossible to describe. Early every morning everyone in the hold had to go out on deck. If a passenger was too ill to walk up, stewards came and dragged the person up the steps and threw them on the deck floor. Then buckets of sulphur were burned in the hold so that the fumes of the burning sulphur would kill the stench. The passengers had to stay out on the deck all day, regardless of the weather or their physical condition. If a passenger was seasick and lay vomiting where he or she was the stewards would come along and spill a pail of water over their heads. Sometimes they added a kick in the ribs as well.
I was the least seasick of our family. Mama suffered the most. She spent almost every day just lying on the deck floor, too ill to move or do anything. There were sinks on deck where you could wash your face or your clothes. I felt quite well and decided to wash my stockings. I foolishly hung them to dry on the ship's railing. Naturally they were gone when I went to look for them. The sad part of it is that I had only that one pair of stockings and had to do without stockings the rest of the trip.
We arrived in New York in late September so it was already getting chilly. Some enterprising immigrant showed my mother how to take any kind of paper but especially newspapers, wrap my feet in one section and then wrap another section around my legs and tie it so it stayed up. I imagine Mama must have had some string or she tore something into strips so that she could tie the newspaper securely to keep my legs warm — so I arrived in America without even a pair of stockings and my feet and legs wrapped in newspaper.
The story of our wait for three days on Ellis Island and what we had to go through because I was lame is a story in itself. Since we spoke no English we all had identification tags, our names and our destination, etc. — my mother, two sisters and myself. Mama was terribly frightened of America. She had been told in the old country that in America men rape women on the streets, openly. There was another strange thing we noticed — so many men without mustaches. Where we came from all men had mustaches, only the priest was clean-shaven. Mama was puzzled — so many priests and yet so many sinful men.
We were herded like cattle — first we were stripped naked (males in one room, females in another room) and then we were forced to walk through a huge pool of water that had Lysol in it. That was our bath. Then we went to a de-lousing room where they sprayed something on our hair to kill the...
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