Haywood quote

Buhle also seems to have put the footnote in the wrong place for when he quotes what Haywood "reputedly" said; it's not clear whether the footnote is for the Haywood quote or for the other stuff Buhle was talking about in the paragraph, but I'm guessing it's the latter case. The footnote also references two sources. The first source is a page in Paul Sweezy's chapter "The Influence of Marxian Economics on American Thought and Practice" in the anthology Socialism and American Life, Vol. 1. I checked this source and there is no mention of Haywood, leading me to believe that the footnote is in the wrong place and is in reference to other stuff in that paragraph. The other source in the footnote is a letter from the American publisher/socialist Charles Kerr to the American Marxist Louis Boudin. I believe this source is in a physical archive somewhere and is not available online, but I'm guessing it's also in reference to the other stuff Buhle was talking about in that paragraph and has nothing to do with the Haywood quote. I'm assuming it's a source for how Kerr "pleaded with Boudin" to change the title of a book he was publishing through him. Here's the relevant part of that paragraph:

Buhle wrote: In the USA, Kerr had pleaded with Boudin to remove the word "theoretical" from the title so as to encourage more sales which, indeed, remained very low. As Big Bill Haywood once reputedly said, "I've never read Marx's Capital, but I have the marks of capital all over me."12

After reading a bit more, it seems like something he might have just often said in response to being asked if he was a Marxist or had ever read Marx. I'm still going to try and find the earliest attribution of the quote to him though.

The earliest reference I can find explicitly linking the quote to Haywood is in the Vol. 1 No. 10 issue of the Industrial Pioneer (February 1924), specifically as part of the dialogue in a "play" by Phil Engle:

Engle wrote: The Marxian: An IWW branch secretary should be ashamed to be reading a pamphlet written for the A-B-C class. You should know Karl Marx's Capital by heart.

Secretary: I know nothing of Marx's Capital, but I have the marks of capital all over me.

The Marxian: So, you are repeating Bill Haywood's old joke. Well, if you want to remain an ignoramus that's your business. As for me, I just got through with Marx and am starting on Engel's [sic].

Secretary: I hope you get the best of him.

(Enter, a Friendly Drunk.)

Quite the play...

Interestingly there's also an earlier reference in the Vol. 1 No. 1 (July 1919) issue of The Communist, which was the paper of the Communist Party of America. However, the paper does not attribute the quote to Haywood; it just appears as an isolated quote under a "Communiques" column:

The workers may not have read the Capital of Marx but they sure do bear the marks of capital.

There may be an earlier reference to the quote that connects it to Haywood, but I haven't found it yet. In any case, I'm pretty sure Haywood also read Marx (and Engels)... considering how he co-authored a book with Frank Bohn, i.e. Industrial Socialism, in which they present Marx's and Engels' writings on surplus value, class struggle, and historical materialism in a condensed and simplified form.

I think, though of course could be wrong (please correct me if I am!), that Buhle is one of the first scholars to attribute the quote to Haywood, specifically in the above 1987 work Marxism in the United States. There are no references to this quote in the "classic histories" of the IWW by authors like Melvyn Dubofsky (We Shall Be All, 1969) and Fred Thompson (The IWW: Its First Fifty Years, 1955). Similarly there are no references to the quote in biographies like Roughnecks: The Life and Times of Bill Haywood (1983) and Haywood's own autobiography The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood (posthumously published in 1929). And then of course you have a bunch of contemporary writers who are just citing one another or Buhle's work, which again never provided a source, as evidence of the quote.

It's just speculation, but I'm curious whether Buhle came across Phil Engle's play in the Industrial Pioneer (Vol. 1 No. 10, February 1924) and attributed the quote to Haywood on the basis of that. It's strange, however, because as mentioned above The Communist newspaper (Vol. 1 No. 1, July 1919) seems to have been the first source to print the quote, and it never attributed it to Haywood. It could be worth reaching out to Buhle to see what he was basing the quote on.

As far as primary sources are concerned, the closest thing I could find in terms of the quote, besides the two sources mentioned above, is an account of a Haywood speech in the International Socialist Review (Vol. 11 No. 10, April 1911):

Comrade Haywood received a great ovation when he appeared on the platform of new Turner Hall in Detroit. Over 1,000 people were packed in the hall and the "Big Fellow" kept them interested every minute. In speaking of the Class Struggle, he at once demonstrated that he was not merely a doctrinaire and had [not?] learned the class struggle from reading Marx, but that he had lived the class struggle and was still living it in a very strenuous manner. He was entirely free from the prevailing type of "school oratory" and spoke in the language of the proletarian. Every man and woman in the vast audience understood both the man and his message. The meeting in Detroit will long be remembered as one of the greatest and most instructive meetings ever held within its limits.

It certainly sounds like this speech could have been one in which Haywood used the quote, but I haven't had any luck finding a transcription of it. Other speeches, like his "Socialism: The Hope of the Working Class," were transcribed in newspapers like the International Socialist Review, but it doesn't seem like there's a transcription for this particular speech.

There is also another quote attributed to Haywood, also appearing in the International Socialist Review (Vol. 12 No. 3, September 1911), that is similar in meaning to the original quote but which never mentions Marx:

[...] Society can get along without its intellectual hoboes—its judges, lawyers, statesmen, politicians, detectives, cadets, soldiers, and—in a pinch—without the preachers. But the worker is indispensible.

Book knowledge is no knowledge when it comes to making the wheels of industry go round. Real education needs callouses on its hands.

William D. Haywood.

That's all I could find. I bulk searched the Industrial Worker (from dates 1909 to 1927; using issues from the Marxist Internet Archive and the IWW's official website), the Industrial Union Bulletin (from dates 1907 to 1909; MIA), International Socialist Review (from dates 1900 to 1918; MIA), Revolt: The Voice of the Militant Worker (from dates 1911 to 1912; MIA), Solidarity (from dates 1909 to 1917; MIA), and Industrial Pioneer (from dates 1921 to 1926; Internet Archive; the only occurrence was the one source mentioned above). It's probably more info than we need to know, but I downloaded the above archives (except for the Industrial Pioneer) in their entirety using wget (I'm thankful the MIA hasn't blocked my IP...), performed bulk ocr recognition on them using ocrmypdf, and then bulk searched them using pdfgrep. For the search terms, I used expressions like "marks of," "Marx's Capital," "never read" and other similar phrases. There are some other IWW newspapers from this time, but I didn't search those and I doubt the quote appears in them.

It wouldn't surprise me if Haywood used the quote; the above-mentioned speech in Detroit seems like the most promising lead. It could also be the case, as already alluded to, that it was just a quote that he often used when asked about reading Marx or theory, and for which there is not really much of a written record of.

Yeah, that would be great. Hopefully I'm not overlooking something super obvious.

Charles M. O'Brien's unpublished autobiography (which is in a physical archive) might also be a source for the quote. Here's Rosemont in his book Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture:

Rosemont wrote: Charles M. O'Brien, a Canadian member of the Western Federation of Miners who later became a prominent figure in the Proletarian Party, recalls in an unpublished autobiography that his old friend Bill Haywood was fond of saying "I do not know much about Marx's Capital, but I carry with me the marks of Capital"—referring to the loss of his right eye in an accident.

Yeah, that's certainly a credible source for the existence of the Haywood quote. I guess we don't have to bother with it now, though I am still sort of curious what source Buhle was referring to in his text, whether it was O'Brien's unpublished autobiography, the Phil Engle play, or something else. Buhle was also writing before Rosemont, who originally published the above book in 2003.

Thanks for the update. It's a shame that the unpublished autobiography doesn't seem to be available online anywhere.

Franklin Rosemont has unfortunately passed away. I'll keep searching around though. We could possibly contact the University of Michigan archive where the source is held and request a scan, but I'm not sure if they would even allow that. I also don't know anything about what page number to ask for, assuming the document even has page numbers. I'm still not convinced that the quote doesn't appear in some IWW newspaper somewhere (before the 1924 Industrial Pioneer reference), so I might continue looking there.