The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-01-15
The WObbIies and Their Song Book

The WObblieS and Their Song Book
The present controversy among the I. w. w. has
fsaused their extreme right wing to be forced out
OF headquarters. AS result we notice that the
twenty-frst edition of the Little Red Song Book .
which has just been published contains casey
Jones" Ga little censored), "Should l Ever Be a
Soldier Meath the Red Flag Will Fight" ''Might
Is Right" and some other of the battling songs
which made the old wobblies famous, but which
have been taboo since John Grady's counter-revo-
lutionary faction seized power in 1922
Merely changing a few songs in the official
hymn book doesn't accomplish much in itself, but
1t may indicate change in sentiment.
The Red International Afiliation Committee
and the Workers Party have been urging for a
long time that the I. w. w. abandon their pacifst
position.
The edition is supposed to be dedicated to
the Cehtralia defendants of the capitalist class
dictatorship but there is little to indicate it ex-
cept three words on the cover and Ralph Chaplin's
poem to Wesley Everest on the fifth page.
The spirit of militancy which resides in the rank
and file of pToletarians unpouted by frenzied dog
matism and which crops out occasionally in the
left wing leadership between its moods of 'tired
radical cynicism that devastates all inward
prompting to action and turns the temperamental
rebel from the political (class) struggle to porno-
graphy and playing the races-this reservoir of
militancy in the ranks of the I. w. W. has yet to
be organized and put into action, if the 1. w. w.
is to show any true respect for the fighters of
Centralia
If this fertile field of revolutionary action is not
to go to seed, and if the remnant of revolutionary
leadership is going to justify it's existence and do
anything more constructive than wander around
in theoretical circles and curse Jim Rowan, it
will have firstly to solidify itself by uniting de-
hn1tely around the program of the Red Interna-
honal Affliation Committee, and secondly move
forward in an organized, militant struggle against
the bourgeois ideas and their spokesman.
1t is sufficiently shameful a comment upon the
revolutionary element of the 1. w. W. that at this
moment, when Ford and Suhr are half forgotten
in Folsom one hundred members behind the bars
of San Quentin and, not to mention more. the
eight Centralia victims are doing what amounts to
life sentence all victims of the capitalist dictator
ship, that the membership should permit it's SER
want its general secretary treasurer SO to insult
the memory and the work of those who died in open
struggle as to deliver speech defending capitalist
democracy" under the guise of attack on the
theory OF proletarian dictatorship.
How long will the membership of the l. w. w.
bear the infection of dictatorship of noisy
A@SN%0SAAtA~S
against the capitalist and cyncally Indifferent
OF the profound need of unity among all working
class organizations in defense against the capitalist
dictatorship, hope to acquire little passing
notice, to be crowned with little Pickering halo
by taking the offensive against the Communists
and in so doing to place themselves in position of
making united front with the class enemy of the
workers to prevent and disrupt the unity of their
forces?
The answer to this is the answer to the question:
Is 1t sufficient proof of revolutionary policy in
present-day affairs to put Wesley Everest's. Joe
Hills and Frank Titles pictures and Ralph Chap
Inns poems in song book, while the organization
is taught to forget and instructed never to apply
the policies of Everest, Hill and Little. and
squawking flock of inferorities are permitted TO
force Chaplin's abilities into the service of the
master class instead of making them an aid to the
organization?
Not until the revolutionary elements accept the
idea, the aid and program of the left wing bloc or
gained around the T. U. f. L. will the wobbles
stop from going from bad to worse