The Green Corn Rebellion of August 1917

 by Chris Mahin

 

Some would have us believe that the South, the West, and the rural areas of the United States have always been conservative. The month of August contains the anniversary of an event which disproves that claim.

 On 2^nd August 1917, the Green Corn Rebellion began in Oklahoma. This little-known chapter of US history was an armed rebellion led by impoverished tenant farmers and former railroad workers.

            The rebellion took place just weeks after the federal government began military conscription. (The United States entered the First World War on 6^th April 1917) While the Green Corn Rebellion included African-Americans and Native Americans, the overwhelming majority of the insurgents were white Southern rural people.

Times were hard in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. After the Civil War ended the “robber barons” made huge fortunes. The expansion of the railroads drove many small farmers into poverty.  Farming in Oklahoma was commercial; tenant farmers were wage labourers. Cotton production doubled between 1909 and 1919, making Oklahoma the fourth-largest cotton producer among the states of the United States. 

            Over 60 per cent of mortgaged farms were lost to foreclosure during the two years before the Green Corn Rebellion. More than half the farms were worked by tenants. The rates were even higher in the south-eastern Oklahoma counties where the rebellion took place.

            Conditions were harsh. Even a grade-school education was rare. People were very poor and always in debt.

            Far from being conservatives, the tenant farmers and rural workers of Oklahoma of that time were often very radical. Between 1906 and 1917, the ‘Wobblies’ – the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the Socialist Party recruited many people. In 1914, the Socialist Party had more dues-paying members in Oklahoma than in any other state. (It had 57,000 members in Oklahoma who were organised in 1,500 locals) That year, Oklahoma elected over 100 Socialists to office. In 1914, the Socialist Party candidate for governor won 21 per cent of the vote.

            The Green Corn Rebellion was organised by the Working Class Union (WCU). The group’s constitution said that all members of the working class over the age of 18, “regardless of race, sex, colour, or occupation” could join, and that “any means necessary” would be used to better the conditions of the working people. The group’s first demand was for the “total abolition of the crime, disease, and death-producing practice of rent, interest, and profit-taking.”

            Even after two of its leaders – “Rube” Munson and Homer Spence – had been indicted for obstructing the draft, the Working Class Union continued to organise in eastern Oklahoma. By midsummer 1917, it had recruited a membership of between 18,000 to 35,000 people. On August 2, the Seminole County sheriff and some deputies set out to investigate alleged radical activities in an area known for its WCU sympathies. The lawmen were ambushed and forced to flee by five black men who were part of the WCU. That evening, the WCU called a secret meeting on a sandbar in the Canadian River.

            Munson and Spence – who were free on bail – urged resisters to arm themselves and prepare for a fight. Opposition to the war and the draft had been on the rise since the spring.

            On the morning of 3^rd August, resisters gathered on a bluff near a farm. (The owner had hoisted the red flag of rebellion above his barn a few days before.) During the night, raiding parties went out to cut telegraph and telephone wires and burn railroad bridges in the area. They also blew up some oil pipelines. Other rebels moved into the poor cotton country south of the Canadian River where they called for armed action against the draft.

            The main group of militants on Spears’ Bluff assembled more supporters from the surrounding tenant country. This support included a group of black sharecroppers who were members of the WCU and several Native Americans.

            At Spears’ Bluff, “Rube” Munson told the group that other uprisings were taking place and that a large army of Wobblies would march on Washington and put an end to the war and the draft. The Working Class Union should start its own march to Washington and link up with thousands of other farmers and workers.

            However, the rebels never started for Washington. After hearing about the insurgents’ activities, a posse of 70 men mobilised and headed for the rebels’ encampment. When the insurgents saw the armed posse moving toward them, they dispersed. “The papers said we were cowards, but we weren’t,” one rebel explained. “Some of the men in the posse were neighbours of ours and we couldn’t shoot ’em down in cold blood. That’s the way we felt ’bout the Germans too. … We didn’t have no quarrel with them at all.”

            For the next week, posses hunted down hundreds. They fought several bloody engagements with hold-outs but within days the authorities had crushed the rebellion. Of the 450 men arrested, 150 were convicted.

            The rebellion’s leaders were given stiff sentences. Some were not released until a presidential pardon in 1921. The supporters of the war and the enemies of labour blamed the Socialist Party for the rebellion. There were cross-burnings all over the state as the Ku Klux Klan grew.

            The attacks on civil liberties in Oklahoma coincided with a nationwide assault on free speech and the labour movement. These attacks destroyed the Socialist Party in Oklahoma and the Industrial Workers of the World throughout the country.

            The Green Corn Rebellion has much to teach us. In a time of great turmoil, when the wealth of the country was concentrated in the hands of a tiny group of robber barons, the poor of the South took a stand against economic injustice and a war they felt their country had no business being involved in.

            The wisdom of the Green Corn rebels can be seen in the words on one of their posters, found along the country roads in Marshall and Bryan counties: “Now is the time to rebel against the war with Germany, boys. Get together, boys, and don’t go. Rich man’s war. Poor man’s fight. If you don’t go, J P Morgan & Co is lost. Speculation is the only cause of war. Rebel now.”

 While the world is very different today than it was in 1917, one thing hasn’t changed: When the United States goes to war, it is still the rich who benefit, and the poor who do the fighting and dying.

The Battle of Lawrence, 1912: Textile workers’ victory contains lessons for today

By Chris Mahin

"We want bread – and roses!”

“Bayonets cannot weave cloth!”

“Better to starve fighting than to starve working!”

More than a century ago, thousands of men, women and children shouted those slogans – in many different languages – in the bitter cold of a Massachusetts winter.

strikers defy the militia

On 12^th January 1912, thousands of workers walked out of the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts and began a strike that lasted until 24^th March 1912. At its height, the strike involved 23,000 workers.

Located in the Merrimack River Valley, about 30 miles north of Boston, Lawrence was a city of 86,000 people in 1912, and a great textile centre. It outranked all other cities in the production of woollen and worsted goods. The woollen and cotton mills of the city employed over 40,000 workers – about one-half of Lawrence’s population over the age of 14.

Most of the Lawrence textile workers were unskilled. Within a one-mile radius of the mill district there lived 25 different nationalities, speaking 50 languages. By 1912, Italians, Poles, Russians, Syrians and Lithuanians had replaced native-born Americans and western Europeans as the predominant groups in the mills. The largest single ethnic group in the city was Italian.

At the time of the strike, 44.6 per cent of the textile workers in Lawrence were women. More than 10 per cent of the mill workers were under the age of 18.

Despite a heavy tariff protecting the woollen industry, the wages and living standards of textile workers had declined steadily since 1905. The introduction of a two-loom system in the woollen industry and a corresponding speed-up in the cotton industry led to lay-offs, unemployment and wage reductions. A federal government report showed that for a week in late November 1911, some 22,000 textile employees, including foremen, supervisors and office workers, averaged about $8.76 for a full week’s work. This wage was totally inadequate, despite the fact that the average work week was 56 hours and 21.6 per cent of the workers worked more hours than that.

To make things worse, the cost of living was higher in Lawrence than in the rest of New England. The city was also one of the most congested in the USA, with many workers crowded into foul tenements.

The daily diet of most of the mill workers consisted of bread, molasses and beans. Serving meat with a meal was very rare, often reserved for holidays. The inevitable result of all this was an unhealthy work force. Dr Elizabeth Shapleigh, a Lawrence physician, wrote: “A considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years after beginning work. … Thirty-six out of every 100 of all the men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are 25.”

The immediate cause of the strike was a cut in pay for all workers that took place after a new state law went into effect on 1^st January 1912. The law reduced the number of hours that women and children could work from 56 to 54. The mill owners simply sped up the machines to guarantee they would get the same amount of production as before, and then cut the workers’ hours and wages.

On Thursday 11^th January 1912, some 1,750 weavers left their looms in the Everett Cotton Mill when they learned that they had received less money. They were joined by 100 spinners from the Arlington Mills. When the Italian workers of the Washington Mill left their jobs on the morning of Friday 12^th January, the Battle of Lawrence was in full swing. By Saturday night, 13^th January, some 20,000 textile workers had left their machines. By Monday night, 15^th January, Lawrence had been transformed into an armed camp, with the police and militia guarding the mills through the night.

The Lawrence strike began as a spontaneous outburst but the strikers quickly realised that they needed to organise themselves. At a mass meeting held on the afternoon of the strike’s first day, they voted to send a telegram to Joe Ettor, a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), asking him to come to Lawrence to aid the strike. Ettor arrived in Lawrence the very next day, accompanied by his friend Arturo Giovannitti, the editor of Il Proletario and secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation.

Although only 27 years old, Joseph J (‘Smiling Joe’) Ettor was an experienced, militant leader of the IWW. He had worked with Western miners and migrant workers, and with the immigrant workers of the Eastern steel mills and shoe factories. Ettor could speak English, Italian and Polish fluently, and could understand Hungarian and Yiddish.

Under Ettor’s leadership, the strikers set up a highly structured but democratic form of organisation in which every nationality of worker involved in the strike was represented. This structure played a decisive role in guaranteeing the strike’s outcome. A general strike committee was organised, and a network of soup kitchens and food distribution stations was set up. The strikers voted to demand a 15 per cent increase in wages, a 54-hour week, double time for overtime, and the abolition of the premium and bonus systems.

Despite the fact that the city and state authorities imposed a virtual state of martial law on Lawrence, the strikers remained undaunted. They pioneered innovative tactics, such as moving picket lines (in which thousands of workers marched through the mill district in an endless chain with signs or armbands reading “Don’t be a scab!”); mass marches on sidewalks [pavements]; and sending thousands of people to browse in stores without buying anything. They organised numerous parades to keep their own spirits up and to keep their cause in the public eye.

The agents of the mill owners struck back. When the police and militia tried to halt a parade of about 1,000 strikers on 29^th January, a bystander, Annie LoPezzo, was shot dead. Despite the fact that neither Ettor nor Giovannitti had been present at the demonstration, they were both arrested the next day. They were charged with being accessories before the fact to the murder because they had supposedly incited the “riot” that led to the shooting. That same day, an 18-year-old Syrian striker, John Ramy, was killed by a bayonet thrust into his back as he attempted to flee from advancing soldiers.

In early February, the strikers began sending their children out of the city to live temporarily with strike supporters. The city authorities vowed to stop this practice, and on 24^th February, a group of mothers and their children were clubbed and beaten at the train station by cops. This act horrified the country and swung the general public over to the side of the strikers.

Concerned that the growing outrage over the conditions in Lawrence might lead to public support for lowering the wool tariff, the mill owners began to look for a way to end the strike. First the largest employer, the American Woolen Company, came to an agreement. Then the others followed. The workers won most of their demands. By 24^th March 1912, the strike was officially declared over and the general strike committee disbanded. It was a tremendous victory – but not the end of the battle.

On 30^th September 1912, the murder trial of Ettor and Giovannitti began; it lasted 58 days. The defendants were kept in metal cages in the courtroom whilst the trial was in session. The prosecution accused Ettor and Giovannitti of inciting the strikers to violence and murder. Witnesses proved that the two were speaking to a meeting of workers several miles from the place where Annie LoPezzo was shot. Across the USA and the world, concerned people expressed outrage at the prosecution’s attempt to punish two leaders for their ideas.

Before the end of the trial, Ettor and Giovannitti asked for permission to address the court. Ettor challenged the jurors, declaring that if they were going to sentence Giovannitti and himself to death, the verdict should find them guilty of their real offence – their beliefs.

He said: “What are my social views? I may be wrong but I contend that all the wealth in this country is the product of labour and that it belongs to labour. My views are the same as Giovannitti’s. We will give all that there is in us that the workers may organise and in due time emancipate themselves, that the mills and workshops may become their property and for their benefit. If we are set at liberty these shall be our views. If you believe that we should not go out, and that view will place the responsibility full upon us, I ask you one favour, that Ettor and Giovannitti because of their ideas became murderers, and that in your verdict you will say plainly, we shall die for it. … I neither offer apology nor ask for a favour. I ask for justice.”

Giovannitti made an impassioned speech to the jury, the first time he had ever spoken publicly in English. His eloquence drew tears from the most jaded reporters present.

On 25^th November, the jury found the defendants not guilty. Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom.

There is something especially poignant about the Battle of Lawrence – and something especially important about learning its lessons. The Lawrence textile strike took place at a time when the mill owners lacked manoeuvring room because they had to maintain public support for a high tariff on woollens. That was certainly a factor in the workers’ victory. So was the fact that the textile workers comprised such a large percentage of the population of Lawrence. But those factors do not change the reality that the victory at Lawrence was won by the bravery and intelligence of the workers themselves.

The victory at Lawrence disproved the vicious lie being circulated at the time by the leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that immigrant workers could not be organised. It showed that immigrant workers and women workers would not only support strikes – if given the chance, they would gladly lead them, and lead them well. The strikers in Lawrence won their demands because they never let themselves be divided on ethnic or gender lines, because they were militant (and creative) in their tactics, and because they found a way to appeal to the conscience of the general public.

One other feature of the Battle of Lawrence made it especially significant. It’s summed up in the famous slogan of the strike – “We want bread – and roses!” The textile workers who braved the Massachusetts winter in 1912 wanted more than a wage increase. They were inspired by a vision of a new society, one where the workers themselves ruled. In this society, every human being would have “bread” – a decent standard of living. They would also have “roses” – the chance to learn, to have access to art, music and culture; a society which would allow the flowering of everyone’s talents, the full development of every human being.

On this anniversary of the Lawrence textile strike, we should take courage from the bravery of the strikers, learn from their clever tactics and dare to think as far ahead as they did. The Lawrence strikers believed deeply in the idea expressed so well in one of the verses in the labour song Solidarity Forever. That verse confidently proclaims: “We can build a new world from the ashes of the old.” Despite all the misery we see in the present, a new world is possible. The cynics of today are as wrong to deny the possibility of qualitative change as the AFL leaders in 1912 were to deny the possibility of organising immigrant workers. If all of us act with as much foresight and courage as did those who fought so well in Lawrence in 1912, the vision of those strikers can become reality, and we can win a world with both bread and roses for everyone.