purposes. The capitalist press is starting to label me a “labor agitator.” So be it—though I wouldn’t like to lose my job at the paper.
May 4
I should set down some facts about the Workingmen’s Party. There are about 2,500 members in Illinois alone. Our basic aim is to appeal to all workers, no matter their national or religious backgrounds. In this, we’re like the Knights, but we’re more politically minded. Most of the WP ’s fifteen Chicago sections are German speaking, plus three Bohemian, two Polish, and one Scandinavian. We had an Irish club, too, but that disbanded. The Irish decided that the WP is godless. They prefer the Knights, with its mystical rituals and the secrecy that reduces the risk of getting fired. The Knights, unlike the WP , is almost wholly dominated by Irish-, British-, and American-born workers.
I suppose the Irish are right—most of us in the Workingmen’s Party are godless. I like the way Spies summarized our attitude the other day. “The church,” he said, “serves the oppressor. It keeps the masses in line with talk of a Natural Order and with the promise of a better life in the hereafter.” Sam Fielden confessed that as a young man in England he had been a Methodist preacher and prominent at revival meetings—“caught in the snares of superstition” is how he put it.
But I’m losing track of my point. Maybe that’s what diary-keeping is, letting oneself wander from thought to thought. It makes me uneasy, though, as if I’m not fulfilling my purpose.
To continue, the WP ’s leading paper is
Der Vorbote
. It does a fine job of gathering news about labor activities around the country and has a circulation of some 3,300. That’s pretty good considering that trade union membership—which just five years ago was at three hundred thousand—is now down to about fifty thousand. How can an unemployed man pay dues to help a union bargain for jobs that don’t exist?
Der Vorbote
’s office is a small second-story space on the west side of Market Street. It’s become a gathering place for many of us “labor agitators.” The mainstream press loves to portray it as a den of thieves and revolutionaries. I’m not exaggerating. The
Times
described it the other day as “a dingy little den, a narrow, dirty stairway leading to the hive, aconstant stream of idle drones buzzing and snarling in their various languages. Not one of them bore the marks of a decent workingman. Sallow Bohemians and Poles, dirty and ragged renegade Frenchmen, stupefied by idleness, and Germans, outcasts from the society of their own nation, mingled in a filthy, snarling crowd.” That is what they think of us, and what they want the world to think of us.
Der Vorbote
’s editor somehow heard that I’d worked as a reporter in Texas and asked me to write for them. Oh, how I’d love to! But right now I don’t have a moment to spare. On top of everything else, the
Times
is making its typesetters put in extra hours (at no extra pay) to learn the new point system of printing. Now that the Marder-Luse foundry has adopted it and patented the first type cast, it’s generally assumed that within a few years the point system will become universal. Well, at least the typesetting industry is undergoing a revolution even if society isn’t! Anyway, I need to master the new system, and quickly, to hold on to my job—already threatened by my politics.
May 5
I’m going to run for public office! I’m as surprised as anyone. It happened last night. I went to the WP meeting at Odd Fellows Hall to discuss the upcoming local election, and the idea somehow took hold that despite the lateness of the hour, we ought to test the political waters by running a few candidates of our own. I was one of three chosen to run for alderman. I’ll stand from the Fifteenth Ward, where Lucy and I live. I didn’t feel I could say no to the fellows, so great was their ardor. But the decision was made in such a rush of enthusiasm,
May 4
I should set down some facts about the Workingmen’s Party. There are about 2,500 members in Illinois alone. Our basic aim is to appeal to all workers, no matter their national or religious backgrounds. In this, we’re like the Knights, but we’re more politically minded. Most of the WP ’s fifteen Chicago sections are German speaking, plus three Bohemian, two Polish, and one Scandinavian. We had an Irish club, too, but that disbanded. The Irish decided that the WP is godless. They prefer the Knights, with its mystical rituals and the secrecy that reduces the risk of getting fired. The Knights, unlike the WP , is almost wholly dominated by Irish-, British-, and American-born workers.
I suppose the Irish are right—most of us in the Workingmen’s Party are godless. I like the way Spies summarized our attitude the other day. “The church,” he said, “serves the oppressor. It keeps the masses in line with talk of a Natural Order and with the promise of a better life in the hereafter.” Sam Fielden confessed that as a young man in England he had been a Methodist preacher and prominent at revival meetings—“caught in the snares of superstition” is how he put it.
But I’m losing track of my point. Maybe that’s what diary-keeping is, letting oneself wander from thought to thought. It makes me uneasy, though, as if I’m not fulfilling my purpose.
To continue, the WP ’s leading paper is
Der Vorbote
. It does a fine job of gathering news about labor activities around the country and has a circulation of some 3,300. That’s pretty good considering that trade union membership—which just five years ago was at three hundred thousand—is now down to about fifty thousand. How can an unemployed man pay dues to help a union bargain for jobs that don’t exist?
Der Vorbote
’s office is a small second-story space on the west side of Market Street. It’s become a gathering place for many of us “labor agitators.” The mainstream press loves to portray it as a den of thieves and revolutionaries. I’m not exaggerating. The
Times
described it the other day as “a dingy little den, a narrow, dirty stairway leading to the hive, aconstant stream of idle drones buzzing and snarling in their various languages. Not one of them bore the marks of a decent workingman. Sallow Bohemians and Poles, dirty and ragged renegade Frenchmen, stupefied by idleness, and Germans, outcasts from the society of their own nation, mingled in a filthy, snarling crowd.” That is what they think of us, and what they want the world to think of us.
Der Vorbote
’s editor somehow heard that I’d worked as a reporter in Texas and asked me to write for them. Oh, how I’d love to! But right now I don’t have a moment to spare. On top of everything else, the
Times
is making its typesetters put in extra hours (at no extra pay) to learn the new point system of printing. Now that the Marder-Luse foundry has adopted it and patented the first type cast, it’s generally assumed that within a few years the point system will become universal. Well, at least the typesetting industry is undergoing a revolution even if society isn’t! Anyway, I need to master the new system, and quickly, to hold on to my job—already threatened by my politics.
May 5
I’m going to run for public office! I’m as surprised as anyone. It happened last night. I went to the WP meeting at Odd Fellows Hall to discuss the upcoming local election, and the idea somehow took hold that despite the lateness of the hour, we ought to test the political waters by running a few candidates of our own. I was one of three chosen to run for alderman. I’ll stand from the Fifteenth Ward, where Lucy and I live. I didn’t feel I could say no to the fellows, so great was their ardor. But the decision was made in such a rush of enthusiasm,
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