Definition of Socialism from the Socialist Party of Oklahoma:
Collective ownership and democratic management of things collectively used
and private ownership of things privately used.
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Friday May 21, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: "Preachers Fear Landlord's Ire" by H. G. Creel
In the latest edition of the
Appeal, Comrade Creel continued his series on the investigation conducted by the
Commission on Industrial Relations into the conditions of tenant farmers in Texas and Oklahoma. The hearings took place this past March in Dallas under the capable guidance of Chairman
Frank P. Walsh. Creel described testimony from a Socialist preacher who stated that he must "stifle" the preaching of the Bible as he understands it, or risk raising the ire of the Landlord.
Creel further reported how some of the witnesses were brought to tears by descriptions of the hardships endured by the women with small children, particularly the story of a woman struggling to care for a tiny baby as she picked cotton on her hands and knees, while dragging behind her her new-born on its improvised bed of cotton balls.
From the Appeal of May 15th:
Preachers Fear Landlord's Ire
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BY H. G. CREEL
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
Herr Glessner Creel
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"To land a man with plenty of force (a large family of children), who'll get up early, work late and push a mule down the rows between times is the sole philosophy of southern landlordism," declared W. T. Davis, witness before the United States industrial relations commission at Dallas.
Davis is a farmer tenant of A. [J.] Tom Padgitt, the Coleman county (Texas) landlord who says he is capable of deciding weighty questions for an entire community and who announced that he would rent no more land to Socialists. Davis is now a small land owner. He told a vastly different story than either Padgitt or his overseer, Rieves. The former tenant declared that most of the people of the community were in hearty accord with Socialism and that because of its rapid growth the landlord and overseer decided to stamp it out. He told of preachers who joined the Socialist local on Padgitt's place and related that he was the local Sunday school superintendent when he took out membership in the party. He declared that commissary prices were 50 per cent to 60 percent higher than elsewhere.
Country Preacher's Position.
The Rev. John C. Granberry followed Davis. Granberry is professor of sociology and economics at Southwestern University, Georgetown. He testified:
The country church and the country preacher are keys to the whole situation. I have been a rural preacher and I know what I'm talking about. The man who enters and remains in the rural ministry today is either a fool or a hero. The books he studies were written in a bygone age. They do not deal with present-day problems. But his Bible deals very definitely with matters of today. It teaches "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." It declares that land shall not be sold forever. It thunders against usury. It gives the preacher every encouragement to mount his pulpit and say "The Heavenly Father put oil in the earth for all of his children and you, Mr. Oil Monopolist, are only one of them."
But what's going to happen if he does that? He'll certainly lose his job. Whether he stifles himself and makes sure of a living for his family or says what his book teaches him to say and is kicked out he's either a fool or a hero. I don't know which.
[Continued below the fold.]
[Continued from above.]
The Big Land Graft.
Geo. W. Simon, social worker for Jewish Agricultural Society, supported by the Baron De Hirsh fund, told the commission that the south was a victim of Big Business. He declared that most southern land companies exist upon paper only and that most of those actually in business soon fail. He told of their successful efforts to lure northern people southward. He related many instances in which corporations purchase land at $5 and $6 an acre, subdivided into 10-acre tracts and sold to unsuspecting northerners at $40 to $50 an acre.
Judge E. O. Meitzen of Hallettsville, Texas, produced cancelled notes signed by tenant farmers and originally held by Governor Ferguson of Texas. One note was for $10, the loan being secured by a bale of cotton. In case the borrower could not repay the $10 it was stipulated that Ferguson receive an extra dollar for his trouble in finding a buyer for the bale.
"Government Must Take Hold."
Professor of Economics L. H. Haney of the University of Texas produced figures showing that in 1914 more than half of the tenant farmers of Texas borrowed more than their incomes. He showed how this was gradually reducing a considerable number to peonage or actual slavery. He caused the commission to sit up when he remarked. "The share-cropper or the man who works on halves merely borrows his wages and pays interest on them. It is too late," he continued, "to scruple about the niceties of the government taking part in things. No individual can do it and the state must take hold. The state should establish banks immediately."
W. L. Thurman of Sulphur, Okla., a physician, told the commission he could duplicate the Stewart family by hundreds in Oklahoma. He was questioned closely about the effect of cotton picking on women, particularly expectant mothers or those with very young babies. He brought tears to the eyes of many women as he related how Oklahoma mothers, wives of tenant farmers, care for their babies at cotton picking time. "I have seen them," he remarked, "with a babe but a few days old, pick a few pounds of cotton, make the child a pillow on the end of the cotton sack and then drag it up and down the rows as they worked on their hands and knees."
Asks Socialist Definition.
When Thurman concluded his testimony Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, member of the commission, leaned over and asked: "Did I understand you to say that you are a Socialist?"
"yes," answered Thurman.
"Will you please tell us, briefly, what Socialism is?"
And then Thurman gave the sixteen-word definition of Socialism adopted by the party in Oklahoma-
Collective ownership and democratic management of things collectively used and private ownership of things privately used.
And so it was that when the commission closed its hearing that definition of Socialism became part of the record.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 15, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Appeal to Reason, banner
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Herr Glessner Creel
https://books.google.com/...
Tenant Farmer Plucked By Parasites,
from The Tenant Farmer, Oct 1914
http://gateway.okhistory.org/...
Socialist Party of America
http://www.marxisthistory.org/...
See also:
"Appeal to Reason on the Losing Fight Against Debt Bondage of Tenant Farmers"
by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"Family of Tenant Farmers So Poor That They Are Offering to Give Children Away"
by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"Landlords want tenant farmers with plenty of "force," meaning little children."
by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"Texas Landlord Evicts Socialists Tenants as a "menace to God and humanity."
by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Industrial relations: final report and testimony
-United States. Commission on Industrial
Relations,
-Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
Vol 9:
https://books.google.com/...
8949-The Land Question in the Southwest
https://books.google.com/...
Vol. 10
https://books.google.com/...
9057-9290-The Land Question in the Southwest-
Continued
https://books.google.com/...
Appeal Socialist Classics, No. 8
Socialism and the Farmer
-ed by W. J. Ghent
Girard, Kansas, 1916
https://archive.org/...
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Hungry Ragged Blues - Aunt Molly Jackson
Although written for the coal miners and their families, this song fits every worker every where who labors for poverty wages.
I'm sad and weary, I've got the hungry, ragged blues.
Not one penny in the pocket to buy one thing I need to use.
I woke up this morning, with the worst blues I ever had in my life;
Not a bite to eat for breakfast, a poor coal miner's wife!
When my husband works in the coalmines, he loads a carload every trip;
Then he goes to the office at the evening to get denied of scrip.
Just because they took all he made that day to pay his mine expense,
A man that will work for just coal oil and carbide, he ain't got a stack of sense.
All the women in the coal camps are sitting with bowed down heads,
Ragged and bare-footed, and the children cryin' for bread.
No food, no clothes for our children, I'm sure this head don't lie;
If we can't get more for our labor we'll starve to death and die!
Don't go under the mountain, with a slate hangin' o'er your head;
And work for just coal oil and carbide, and your children cryin' for bread.
This mining town I live in is a sad and lonely place
Where pity and starvation is pictured on every face!
Some coal operators might tell you the hungry blues are not there.
They're the worst kind of blues this poor woman ever had.
-Aunt Molly Jackson
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