“Integration always implies that white culture is superior to Negro culture,” remonstrated a disgruntled Negro in Watts. “Whites are so damned generous in offering to share their society on their terms. I’d like to know just what’s so attractive about Caucasian society, with its ruthless economics and its Viet Nams. Why aren’t these white liberals willing to accept my people’s culture on our own terms?”

Black Power has different meanings for different segments of the Negro population. To the full-fledged Nationalist, it invites expectations of a Negro homeland founded in a separate political state on American soil. To other extremists, it means economic, political, and perhaps social domination of Caucasians within the old society. To settle old scores, say these Nationalists, the best jobs and the top political offices everywhere must go to Negroes.

SNCC leaders, on the other hand, appear to envision only an equitable balance of political power. Local and state areas with a Negro majority must be governed by this majority, they insist. And they don’t need part-time summer help from students to do the job, thank you. The active years since the Freedom Rides have matured Negroes to the point where they are capable of running their own affairs.

To paraphrase Marx, “The task of organizing the Negroes is the job of the Negroes themselves.”

Sympathetic Caucasians find much to commend in this brave spirit of Negro independence. Some of us wonder, however, in what way the new black politics would differ from older corrupt forms. We are skeptical that a history of abuse prepares a people for sound economic understanding or that the balancing of the scales of justice necessarily converts them into equitable men. We have listed long and attentively to the exponents of Black Power without enlightenment on how poverty and war would be wiped out under the new arrangement.

A fourth interpretation of Black Power merely reflects ill-defined pride in race, reinforced by a more or less aggressive determination to run one’s own life.

“Just because I’m pro-Negro doesn’t mean I’m anti-white,” one woman pointed out.

An angry young man exclaimed, “The white man dressed me in clothes, gave me religion and taught me to read. Then he wondered what’s the matter with me when I wasn’t satisfied. The trouble with me is that I want just what we wants, because I’m just as human as he is – Only, I demean the very best of what he’s got, at least until the score’s been evened between us.”

A literate, soft-spoken Negro added, “I did everything I could to make myself acceptable to the white man. I came up out of the South, put on middle-class clothes, got a white-collar job, sent my children to college, voted, joined all the ‘right’ organizations where I was allowed, was true to my wife, and took extra care never to get into trouble with the law. But the white man still didn’t like me. So after the big riot I joined the ‘Burn, Baby, Burn’ movement. I did so, not to get even with the white, not because I intended to take over. I just wanted to show him he no longer had his foot on my neck.”

The Negro movement is in the process of achieving maturity. Black men need no longer depend upon the good offices of white middle-class liberals. Negroes, as agitators for full equality, are standing on their own feet.

Unfortunately, the original aims of integration may be temporarily eclipsed. The new direction may be down a dark road, with some of their leaders demagogues. “Black Power” is a rallying cry for inchoate mass action, a dark prophecy without a soul.

Zealous white benefactors share the blame for the Black Nationalist rebellion. What hopefully commended as integration groups often bleached out into white-dominated cliques, with Negroes helping out.

In a movement so fraught with overtones of brotherhood, it would have been appropriate for a predominately Negro organization to encourage Caucasian participation. But too often these devoted but vociferous pale faces, set policies and dominated affairs. In repudiating demonstrations and committee meetings that were often eighty per cent white, many Negroes are sweeping away from any white cooperation.

However, as working-class slaves, the sons of Ham share a great deal in common with the rest of us. The role that white workers can play in presenting a united front against economic exploitation is at this point obscure. Brotherhood, civil rights, even equality are assuming new, perhaps distorted values.. But the old, concrete problems of dilapidated housing, sub-standard wages, driving foremen, and production-for-use remain. Black and white must work these problems out together.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

The recent emergence of a “New Left” on American campuses seems to offer the IWW a challenging opportunity to influence, if not recruit left-wing intellectuals. The most respected spokesmen for this New Left are already familiar with IWW history and principles. Staughton Lynd, professor of history at Yale, has included in his anthology Non-Violence in America Haywood’s testimony before the Commission on Industrial Relations. And articles examining “student syndicalism” have appeared in New Left Notes, the journal of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Although interested in syndicalism (which I would define as revolutionary trade or industrial unionism), New Leftists are reluctant to join the IWW for several reasons. Advertising agencies have conditioned most Americans, including the New Left, to regard anything over a decade old as archaic – thus, the New Left in politics, the “New Thing” in jazz, “Pop” and “Op” art, etc.

Since the IWW has been around 61 years, the New Left feels Wobblies have little to say. Furthermore, New Leftists like everyone else are impressed with success. Since the “Old Left” has not led a successful revolution, dissident intellectuals often ignorant of the errors as well as the victories of the Old Left, have abandoned established working-class movements and have begun to build new radical organizations. Finally, the most pedantic intellectuals contend that gaucheries in Wobbly rhetoric, logic and behavior preclude the IWW from advocating a practical or significant alternative to contemporary American society.

Despite the reluctance of intellectuals to join or listen to the IWW, Wobblies can still reach some New Leftists. In searching for a consistent ideology, the New Left probably will continue to explore syndicalism and, more specifically, revolutionary industrial unionism. The IWW will then serve as an example and source of inspiration for a new generation of revolutionaries. The ultimate test of the IWW’s success in dealing with the New Left will not be the number of students the union recruits, but the number of students Wobblies encourage to fight for a better world.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

Our dear friend and fellow worker, John Tarasuk, died in a Los Angeles hospital February 9, at 8 p.m. Friends were at his bedside when he passed away.

Born in Russia in 1898, John came to the United States in 1913 with an older brother. He worked in New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles - during most of his adult years as a painter and decorator.

In principle and practice he was a rank-and-filer, and a pillar of strength for democratic unionism, on the job and in business meetings, through many stormy years of labor history. Thoroughly class conscious, he have all he had to the IWW cause. This included service on the General Executive Board and on the management and editorial board of Golos Truzenika, IWW weekly paper in the Russian language. He attended Work Peoples College in Duluth, chiefly to increase his usefulness to the movement.

After the death of his brother and of his wife, John told us “I have no family left, except the IWW.” On the day he died, John’s dues were paid up a year in advance. Many of us will remember him best for his kindness to friends, which often went beyond the call of friendship.

-Carl Keller

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

Guest of the Swedish Workers Central Organization (SAC) and IWW representative at its Congress now in session, Fellow Worker Evert Anderson in a letter dated October 25th announced his arrival in Stockholm and promised some reports on the proceedings. Meanwhile, along with first impressions and some discussion of plans, he had one bit of sad news to report.

He wrote:

"Secretary Herbert Anckar of SAC passed away from a heart attack and is being buried today, here in Stockholm, by his fellow workers. He was only 63 years old. Sune Blom is taking care of his official duties until a new secretary can be installed.

"From talks I've had with those close to him, I must conclude that Herbert Anckar's duties were considerable. His international connections kept him busier than I am sure he wanted to be. Let's say that he will be missed, not only in Stockholm and throughout the whole of Sweden, but in many other lands as well."

Certainly the IWW and others in a world revolutionary labor-union movement will miss this man who has worked so hard to strengthen lines of communication that have worn thin in recent decades.

We had hoped that Fellow Worker Anderson would be able to spend some days in France to renew old contacts and establish new ones with friends of the IWW there. But this, he said, will not fit into his pre-arranged travel schedule. However, a meeting with the delegate of the Syndicalist Federation from London had already been arranged, and he expected also to meet Augustine Souchy of Germany, who, like himself, was invited to Stockholm as a guest of SAC.

Anderson will be back in New York November 12th. If possible on such short notice, a meeting for him will be arranged there. In any case he will visit old-timer Dick Brazier and GEB member Bill Goring. Also, he would be especially happy to meet the young Wobblies of the new Boston branch and to speak for them in Boston. Every effort will be made to put this plan into effect.

Of course, when Anderson gets to Chicago on his way back to Twenty-Nine Palms, California, he will have every opportunity to "tell it like it is" and to exercise his once well-known talent as a speaker.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

“We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW” by Melvyn Dubofsky, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1969; 484 pages plus 72 pages of footnotes and index; $12.50

This book is an ample, very readable, and well-documented history of the IWW up to 1918, and very sketchy, misinformed, crowded comment on the IWW since that year.

Up to and through the big trial of Wobblies in 1918, Dubofsky builds on the previous digging of Brissenden, Hoxie, Levine, Gambs, and such later books as Dowell’s 1939 account of criminal syndicalism laws, Preston’s 1963 exposure of how government subserved the corporations in attaching the IWW, Tyler’s 1967 “Rebels in the Woods”, Foner’s 1966 history, and Renshaw’s more journalistic 1967 book “The Wobblies”. He makes use of the scholarly articles by Ingham on our 1909 strike at McKees Rocks and Norman Clark on our battle for the right to speak and organize in Everett, Washington 1916 (both published in 1966), and of the extensive digging that other historical articles in the last 15-or-so years have recorded. He has looked into our periodicals, our convention minutes, and various as yet unpublished doctoral dissertations; explored the National Archives for Department of Labor and Department of Justice letters and reports; and found much new material in the papers of Frank P. Walsh of Industrial Commission fame and in the records of various lumber companies.

Dubofsky has organized this massive data into the most complete and readable account so far of the IWW up to the end of World War I. But even in that period there are some odd omissions. For 30 pages he elaborates on the already well-established fact that we didn’t win in Paterson in 1913, forgets that this was chiefly one can’t win where the industry is moving to more modern plants in other places, and emphasizes an alleged lack of IWW practicality in getting into such troubles. But he forgets to write about the places where the opposite would be shown. There is only one short and misinforming paragraph about our obviously practical although unsuccessful efforts in Akron that same year which he could find detailed in Robert’s history of the Rubber Workers, a book he doesn’t even mention – and only one sentence (Page 318) about IWW continuous job control on the docks of Philadelphia from 1913 to 1925 – plus a later cramped and inaccurate account (Page 448) of how that control ended. There is no mention of Solvay Process, a very practical victory in 1916, or of the host of practical actions that kept the IWW alive and that are at least mentioned for this period in Brissenden or my own too-cramped “First Fifty Years”. And of course eyes shut to much major evidence of IWW practicality and stability as steady representation of workers at various Cleveland metal working plants from 1934-1950. This does not seem to arise from any wish to harm, for his chapter on the Lawrence strike of 1912 outshines all previous accounts and treats our inability to hold the membership after the victory far more kindly than Wobblies themselves are likely to, for he has found documentary evidence to add to our own explanations: Employers shifted orders to mills in other places – evidence admittedly of the inadequacy of anything short of the One Big Industrial Union we haven’t built yet but are still trying to.

The book is enlivened with numerous biographical sketches that I hope are accurate that the almost complete mish-mash I find about myself. These include some odd errors. Herman Suhr (Page 298) was certainly not “mentally retarded” when I knew him. Haywood was not a lush (Page 460) here, nor pushed out of IWW activity prior to his flight to Russia; members simply felt he could do more good on the public platform than tied down to administrative detail. Dubofsky redeems himself somewhat by reference to items in D of J files showing that soon after WDH got to Russia he offered to return here if the Government would return the forfeited bond money, but got turned down. E.G. Flynn was not the only woman convicted under the Smith Act; so was Trotskyite Grace Carlson, and rather disgracefully with no protest from EGF. This book does disprove the Flynn account of how she escaped the Chicago indictment. Joe Hill was not buried at Waldheim or anywhere else, but was cremated at Graceland; and his ashes were scattered over the world. (And why the comment on Page 312 that Joe’s innocence was never established? Neither was the innocence of thousands of others who might have killed Morrison; that is why guilt, not innocence, needs to be proved.) The Non-Partisan League set out to reach in agreement with the Agricultural Workers in 1917, but were pressured by anti-NPL elevator “paytriots” in to voting the agreement down. And the IWW didn’t due in 1939 either, as indicated in the strangely-garbled note in Page 528, and did have industrial union representation at its conventions through 1950.

If this book cut off at 1918 and purported to be a history of the IWW only to 1918, then a little patching would make it a most commendable history for that period. It should correct the errors and omissions already noted, and surely give some fairly complete account of the still untold Philadelphia story, and say something about such women as Matilda Robbins in the 1913 Studebaker strike, or Jane Street organizing the Denver housemaids in 1916; and something about the girls who made the Pittsburgh stogies, and the workers in the Pittsburgh packing plants; and something about IWW efforts in the garment trades and the coal mines, completely omitted here; and something about IWW activities and influence in other countries, so far dealt with among our critics only Renshaw and something about the Duluth-Superior dock strikes – and this time giving credit to a newspaper reporter for rescuing the kidnapped Frank Little.

But why should the account end with the big trails of 1918? Yes, they were supposed to end us, but we had even more numerous arrests and trials under the criminal syndicalism laws from 1920 to 1923, and still we weren’t ended. Dubofsky almost overlooks all maritime IWW activity either before or after 1920, and his references do not include Taft’s piece on them in the June 1939 Political Science Quarterly. He overlooks the fact that from 1920 to 1924 we completed a major job of changing camp conditions in construction and lumber camps – something that had only gotten started during the war. He speaks of “the sterility of the IWW during the 1920s”, saying nothing of the 1922 strike at Hetch-Hetchy, making just a brief mention of the Colorado coal strike of 1927 and 1928, and forgetting that this was a decade in which the AFL was getting nowhere.

“With the depression the IWW foundered,” Dubofsky says. But by a battery of soapboxers and a million leaflets, the IWW reversed the previous pattern of union decline in a depression, getting the unemployed to assure those who still had jobs they would show up at a strike only to reinforce the picket line and not to scab. In those depression years we conducted organizing campaigns in Detroit and Cleveland and elsewhere that showed we had learned something from our own history; we really started something nationwide with those little cards at Hudson Body “Sit DOwn and Watch Your Pay Go Up” in 1934; achieved a hitherto-unmatched stability in the Cleveland shops; negotiated an agreement with US Vanadium; and fought Weyerhauser in the woods of Idaho – all, it might seem, to disprove a series of myths persistently served up by labor historians. Sure, we have not yet accomplished what we set out to do in 1905, and that is why we are still in there trying – for what we set out to do needs more urgently today than ever to be done.

Many of the shortcomings of this big book come from the tendency of historians to mirror previous accounts – and to hell with the facts. A document fits nicely into the process, much more readily than the safety devices that are still on the ore docks since they were put there after Frank Little’s fight in 1913, or wet mining drills, or standard accommodations in lumber camps, or the recurrent idea on job problems – “Let’s do it Wobbly style.” This account also shows a sort of death wish for the subject under study. In his preface Dubofsky speaks of the IWW’s “contemporary relevance”, but implies that we are unacquainted with the young dissidents of today (He should come to a Wobbly meeting or social!), and he winds up here, much as in his Nation article of September 8, with a foreboding that when I and a few of my contemporaries “pass away, the IWW will die, for unlike the neighborhood, it cannot be renewed” All opposed to this notion vote Nay by keeping their dues paid.

Another recurrent idea in the book is the argument that by imporving conditions we readicals undermine our efforts to radicalize our class. I want to express my hearty and well-established disagreement with this anti-labor argument in a sperate article one of these days. But despite all these horrendous errors, there is a lot of good reading in this book, and if you don’t feel like plunking down $12.50 for it, putsome pressure on your local library to buy a few copies. Non-members reading it are likely to decide they ought to help the IWW go ahead with its unfinished business.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz