I feel guilty because I think people should do something they really like to do in life. I should do something else, but there is nothing I can do really well. I’m established and make a steady living, so it becomes pretty easy. It’s not very fulfilling . . . but I’m lazy, I admit it. It’s an easier thing to do.
American author, historian and broadcaster (1912-2008)
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The strike of 1931 revolved around readers in the factory. The workers themselves used to pay twenty-five to fifty cents a week and would hire a man to read to them during work. A cigar factory is one enormous open area, with tables at which people work. A platform would be erected, so that he’d look down at the cigar makers as he read to them some four hours a day. He would read from newspapers and magazines and a book would be read as a serial. The choice of the book was democratically decided. Some of the readers were marvelous natural actors. They wouldn’t just read a book. They’d act out the scenes. Consequently, many cigar makers, who were illiterate, knew the novels of Zola and Dickens and Cervantes and Tolstoy. And the works of the anarchist, Kropotkin. Among the newspapers read were The Daily Worker and the Socialist Call.
Working in the fields is not in itself a degrading job. It’s hard, but if you’re given regular hours, better pay, decent housing, unemployment and medical compensation, pension plans — we have a very relaxed way of living. But the growers don’t recognize us as persons. That’s the worst thing, the way they treat you. Like we have no brains. Now we see they have no brains. They have only a wallet in their head. The more you squeeze it, the more they cry out.
At a moment in history somebody says, “I was there.” I wasn’t. They were marching down to the Arc de Triomphe and I didn’t know it. All I knew is I wanted some perfume and scarves. I went to the Galerie Lafayette, a great department store. Nobody was on the street. We walked through the store, wearing boots, with the .45s on the hip and wearin’ a helmet. Great. Out from behind the counters came all those little French girls. They followed us: “Ohhh! Marvelous Américain.” We bought scarves and all of a sudden someone said, in broken English, they are firing on the Place de la Concorde. The diehards were in the eaves of the building sniping at the parade. They had to rout ’em out. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t see the parade. I wasn’t on the Place de la Concorde at this marvelous moment in history. I was in the goddamn Galerie Lafayette buying perfume and scarves. Shit.
Freud put it one way. Ralph Helstein puts it another. He is president emeritus of the United Packinghouse Workers of America. “Learning is work. Caring for children is work. Community action is work. Once we accept the concept of work as something meaningful — not just as the source of a buck — you don’t have to worry about finding enough jobs. There’s no excuse for mules any more. Society does not need them. There’s no question about our ability to feed and clothe and house everybody. The problem is going to come in finding enough ways for man to keep occupied, so he’s in touch with reality.” Our imaginations have obviously not yet been challenged.
It was in ’35 — we had this campaign to raise a million tax dollars. In the town of Phillips, one evening, during a blizzard, I was met by a crowd of miners. They were given the day off and a stake to attend this meeting. They surrounded me and said this tax would cost six hundred of them their jobs. They were busted farmers and fortunately found a job in these Home Stake mines. I went back home feeling worried. But the tax was passed, and not a single miner lost his job.
I’ll never forget one of the first families I visited. The father was a railroad man who had lost his job. I was told by my supervisor that I really had to see the poverty. If the family needed clothing, I was to investigate how much clothing they had at hand. So I looked into this man’s closet — (pauses, it becomes difficult) — he was a tall, gray-haired man, though not terribly old. He let me look in the closet — he was so insulted. (She weeps angrily.) He said, “Why are you doing this?” I remember his feeling of humiliation . . . this terrible humiliation. (She can’t continue. After a pause, she resumes.) He said, “I really haven’t anything to hide, but if you really must look into it. . ..” I could see he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was, too. . ..