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WAR_IN_PATERSON
January 17, 2009
The history of the early years of the
labor movement are filled with acts of
heavy-handed suppression which were
nasty to a degree barely remembered
today-- and barely reported on at the
time.
PROPAGANDA_AND_EXPECTATIONS
If you ever wonder how some of those old
lefties became such fanatics about communism,
this is an important part of the equation: REDS
they were reacting to a huge over-reaction
on the part of the reactionaries. Was this one of the
points of the 1981 film
"Reds"? I only saw it
Consider the "Paterson once when it first came
silk strike of 1913"... out, and I probably
missed some angles.
Here I'm summarizing the version I wouldn't say I
of the story presented in was a complete
"The Improper Bohemians" (1959). fool at that age,
but I do remember
IMPROPER_BOHEMIANS being embarrassed
about not being
sure if the story
was set during
WWI or WWII.
Thank you,
"Social Studies"...
WWI
"All the newspapers in New York and
New Jersey were arrayed on the side
of the industrialists opposing the
strike, [Bill Haywood] thundered.
As a result, almost no one knew of Much of their demands
the strike, its purpose, the are now required by law:
grievances of the strikers, or the 8-hour workday, no child
suffering involved. ... The funeral labor, better working
of one of the workers brutally conditions.
killed by the police had been one of
the most moving sights of Haywood's
life. Still, no one except those
involved and the readers of a few
radical publications, was aware the
strike was on.'"
Then they hit on the idea for the
"Paegent of the Paterson Strike",
produced by Greenwich village
bohemians in Madison Square As Churchill tells the
Garden to give the strikers a story, this was the
voice, and to attempt to raise idea of Mabel Dodge,
funds for them. supported by Bill
Haywood -- with John
Reed volunteering to
carry it out.
"... Reed set out at five the next
morning for strife-torn Paterson.
There, with a clumsiness typical
of contemporary officialdom, he
was promptly arrested for standing
with a group of strikers on a
porch to escape a drenching rain."
-- p. 78
Churchill credits this maneuver with
converting John Reed "from a parlor
radical into a furiously fighting one".
"Reed was sentenced to twenty days in a filthy
Paterson jail jammed to bursting with male
and female strikers." -- p. 78
Reed's release was secured after five days,
and he wrote the "War in Paterson" story:
"There's a war in Paterson! But it's a
curious kind of war. All the violence
is the work of one side--the Mill
Owners. Their servant, the police,
club unresisting men and women and rid
down law-abiding crowds on horseback.
Their paid mercenaries, the armed
detectives, shoot and kill innocent
people. Their newspapers, the
Paterson _Press_ and the Paterson
_Call_, publish incendiary and Two people were killed
crime-inciting appeals to mob-violence by "private detectives"
against the strike-leaders. Their who were arrested but
tool, Recorder Carroll, deals out never brought to trial.
heavy sentences to peaceful pickets
that the police-net gathers up." [ref]
-- John Reed, quoted by Churchil, p. 79
published in "The Masses", June 1913
Then Reed and Dodge went to work on the Paegent:
"... together with John Reed she had rented old Madison
Square Garden at 26th street for a single night. In an
office in it's Tower, and in its many rehearsal halls,
the two were preparing a mighty pageant which would
feature no less than two thousand Paterson strikers and
families. Reed had been a cheerleader and director of
choral singing at Harvard. He now began training the
Paterson men, women, and children, many of whom spoke
only a foreign tongue, to sing rousing strike songs."
"[Edmund Jones] conceived the idea of a long "street"
through the audience by wihich the strikers could
march lustily through the audience. The Pageant's
funeral procession, especially, gained unusual
emotional impact by progressing slowly through the
audience. At the rear of the stage Jones created a
huge mill with smaller ones clustered around it ... "
-- p. 80
According to Churchill, they had the idea to:
"... bedeck the tall Tower of the Garden with the
mighty electric letters IWW, for International
electric letters IWW, for International Workers of
the World. These were not turned on until an hour
before the Pageant, and then by a switch carefully
hidden." -- p.81
At that point, the "city police charged frantically
around the premises looking for the switch to the
provocative sign".
They performed for an audience of 15,000 people.
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