V

It did not occur to Capuchin to wonder why at 2:30 A.M., with nothing more to do for the paper, seven men continued to sit at their desks, silently reading. He would have been astonished to see what they did as soon as he was gone. They gathered about Semicorn, all with one shrewd expression of triumph. One placed his two hands on Semicorn’s shoulders from behind. It was a gesture they all understood. Another placed his hands in the same way on the shoulders of that one, then another upon his, and so on until they were in line, very close together. A word was uttered, and they began to march in the prison lockstep. They marched round and round between the desks, intoning in deep grisly voices the following impishness:

Bull of the woods
Bull of the woods
Pull the big prayer
(Shout) OH!
Bull of the woods
S-s-s! S-s-s! S-s-s!
(Soft, ironic steps to the three hisses.)

Bull of the woods
Bull of the woods
Step on the air
(Shout) OH!
Bull of the woods
Hi! Hi! Hi!
(Loud feet to this line.)

Bull of the woods
Bull of the woods
Hat in the sky
(Shout) OH!
Bull of the woods
G-n-u! G-n-u! G-n-u!
(Dead feet to three hollow groans.)

Bull of the woods
Bull of the woods
Tree is found tied
(Shout) TO!
Bull of the woods
S-h-h! S-h-h! S-h-h!
(Furtive feet.)

A scene more weird than sinister, representing the humor of wobblies. A wobbly is a member of the I. W. W. Those letters stand for International Workers of the World.

They stand also for adventure, vagabondage, the truant life, combat, the stone of David, ganghood, sharing, love of destruction, outlawry, secret power, signs and cabals.

These are values and attitudes that lie close to the wayward spirit and belong naturally to youth. Imagine a fraternity of men in whom the spirit of youth has not been over-thrown by self-discipline and wisdom and who for that reason are unable to make the commonplace adjustments to reality; imagine again that they are conscious of their maladjustments and propose to make society over in accord with those values and attitudes of youth. There you have an engaging picture of the I. W. W. In that aspect it is or was a romantic order, peculiar to this country notwithstanding its grand big name, and one that could not have come to exist anywhere else in the world.

Presently of course it becomes complicated in many ugly ways.

In youth, where it is a measure of years, the love of destruction, the lust for combat, the impulse to lawlessness, all those memories of an immature race time, seldom produce any serious consequences. Knowledge and experience are lacking. Men in the same case of spirit, with the knowledge of adult experience, may and often do become dangerous. Infantile minds with full brute power. They translate the phantasy into facts of violence inimical to the peace and comfort of others. Then forcible repressions, reprisals, fear, hatred and crime.

The first intention of the I. W. W. was to organize the unskilled labor of the country. Workers in construction gangs, gandy dancers, riggers-up, lumberjacks and harvesters—industrial nomads who sleep in bunks and carry their belongings. This kind of labor had been neglected by the craft unions. Or it was that the great labor organizations consisting of federated craft unions had been unable to get hold of the unskilled workers. Naturally so. Men do not wish to be organized with the stigma of an unskilled status. This is contrary to the American spirit. They want to rise in the world. But it cannot be said to them that their hope is in rising, for that is to say they are low in the scale to begin with. It is difficult, you see. The craft unions, jealous of their own advantages, had nothing worth while to say to these people. What the I. W. W. leaders said to them was:

“All labor is alike. All wage earning is slavery. Let us organize as slaves, rise, destroy the boss and be free. This is war! Class war! The employer and the wage slave have nothing in common. They are enemies forever. In one big union of all wage slaves we shall have the power to ruin capital simply by withholding our hands, by giving the least for the most, by secret acts of sabotage. Thereby we destroy private profit. When we have destroyed private profit we have destroyed the wage system. When we have done that we may take the means of production into our own hands and the world is set free.”

This creed gave the unskilled a sense of union, a vision of power and a wild crusading errand. One thing more. It gave them a feeling of pride in their status of inferiority, which under this doctrine was an artificial status, a condition wickedly imposed upon them by the capitalist class. This feeling came through in their songs, one of which was “Hallelujah! I’m a Bum,” and in the names by which they were pleased to admire themselves, for example, Wobblies. It amused them to be undignified. All the greater was the offence they gave to the oppressor; so much the keener was their fancy of power.

The I. W. W. creed spread very fast in the lumber camps. First there. That explains many of its metaphors. The boss of a lumber camp is called bull of the woods. Later, of course, bull of the woods comes to have a general meaning. It means any boss whatever, anyone possessing the authority to allot tasks and direct men at labor.

It spread rapidly throughout the west. Its appeal to the self-conscious unskilled worker was very strong. That was not all. Because of its romantic basis in the rebel spirit it attracted irreconcilables of every type. The true hobo who had never had anything to affiliate with before and was thrilled by this loose garment of importance. The tramp printer, or, that is to say, surviving examples of that historic species, he whom words and words hath made a little mad. Newspaper men in a state of must. The restless, the failures, the defiant of whatever kind, cast off by society’s centrifugal process of riddance. Stray geese. Wild geese. Men half-solitary and half-gregarious. Unable to live either within the conventional frame of society or altogether outside of it.

In this distress they invent a theory. They are not wrong. Society is wrong. They will make it over. This vague notion of purpose saves them from the utter loneliness of the outcast, and their feud with what is becomes their bond with one another.

The token of this is a red card, representing membership in the one big union that shall overturn the wage system, abolish the slavery of unwilling toil, make all men equal and set the world free. A little more. There must be some revenge. This is human. The boss shall not get off so easily. No. They will put the boss to work. Another song: “When the Whistle Blows for the Boss to Go to Work.”

The red card went far and thin. The order was never important in point of numbers. But as you might suppose, it was militant and vocal. It devoted more of its resources to propaganda than any other labor organization ever did. It had members who could write and talk. Well, all fanatics can write and talk, even the illiterate, and often with surprising effect.

What was the good of all this feeling that was in them of inferiority exalted and become mighty if they could not express it? They expressed it in newspapers of their own and in violent speech-making. True, men going about with a credo like that, propagating it with intent to be offensive, would get into trouble with the authorities. All the better. That was what they liked most.

When their evangels were seized on the streets of a capitalist town and clapped into jail or when one of their newspapers was suppressed, they organized what they called a free speech fight. Word would go out to all the I. W. W. offices, “Here is a fight. If you have any loose Wobblies send them to it.” There were always Wobblies loose, and at this call they would rush to the scene and talk their wildest, on purpose to get themselves put into jail. The idea was to overwhelm the jails, which in many instances they did. It was something to be doing, it was advertising, modern style, and it was fun. Such fun! and taken always so seriously by the intellectual radicals of the east, as for instance by the company in Jones street, that it became their foremost activity; and continued until the western municipalities became at length as wise they ought to have been at first, so that instead of putting the Wobblies in jail, there to be entertained at the taxpayer’s expense, they fanned them out of town. That was much less fun. Often the tramping was rough.

Well, Semicorn and his seven, doing the lockstep at 2:30 A.M. in the editorial room of “The Northwestern Herald,” were all red card men. They were vocal organs of that fraternity. All of them had been in prison for free speech, and all of them were more or less trained in newspaper work. Three, including Semicorn, had served as editors of I. W. W. papers; the others had sometime worked on regular papers as reporters, sub-editors and editorial writers. All of them could write in a coarse, salty style, best of course when their emotions were acting, that is, when they were attacking something by the name of system. Semicorn himself wrote very well. Like most of the others he had two languages. One was the language he talked, especially when excited. It was full of strange idioms, vulgar, ungrammatical. The other was the one he could write.

It was by no means an incompetent crew in the craft sense. Semicorn’s account of how he had got it together was mostly true.

It will be recalled that Capuchin, on meeting Semicorn for the first time at Jael’s house in Jones street, was moved suddenly to invite him out to New Freedom and suggested an editorial job for him there. Several hours later when Semicorn said he accepted the invitation Capuchin had almost forgotten it. This was notice to Semicorn of Capuchin’s character. He understood him perfectly. Always to be taken provisionally. Nevertheless he felt sure that an editorial job would develop and that was what he wanted; he was so sure of it that he persuaded two red card men to go with him to New Freedom. They were on the same train. Two more appeared, as he said, in the crowd at the station. That was luck, but it was not strange, since New Freedom, hitherto very hostile to the Wobblies, now became a warm sanctuary for them.

On arriving that evening at the “Northwestern Herald” office to take charge until Capuchin should come, the first thing he did was to look to the situation in the composing-room. There, among the printers, two more red card men revealed themselves. These he transferred to the editorial side. Then they were seven.

And at this moment they were exulting at having entrenched themselves. What would come of it? Not one of them had the faintest idea. They might find themselves in the street tomorrow. But whatever came of it, it was fun. So, in that humor, they were hanging the bull of the woods before going to bed.

Semicorn took three of them with him to one room in the hotel. They won it by lot. The others slept in the “Herald” office.