(Three "Spoon River" Poems)
Alexi Rakowski
I was handed a sign to hold that demanded
An increase in our pay and an eight hour day.
When the strike-breakers came the cops accompanied them.
They bulled their way through us, their brass-knuckled hands
Brandishing clubs or socks filled with lead weights.
A blind rage took hold of me and I swung my sign
At the head of one of the helmeted hooligans in blue.
In Russia the Czar used his police as agents of repression.
In Lady Liberty's land the rich have bought them as well.
How can you respect authority that can be purchased
By selfish men to do their evil bidding?
How can you respect laws that are written to protect scabs,
Yet can also be used to punish union workers?
I took a club to the head and came to in jail.
I heard an angry woman cursing out one of the guards
In language that a stevedore would have blushed to have heard.
Her voice softened though, as she knelt beside me
With her pail of water and rags and began to clean my wound.
"You're an angel," I whispered gratefully. "A humanitarian."
"I'm not a humanitarian," she corrected me sharply. "I'm a hell-raiser.
"Hang in there, son. Get well and return to the fight."
Her care and encouragement forever wedded me to the union cause.
I later found out that this ministering angel was "Mother" Jones,
Whom mineowners called "The most dangerous woman in America."
Scottie Walker
My co-workers never had much use for me, contemptuously
Referring to me as an "ass-kisser," or "company man."
I always knew though that I was better than the "tunnel rats"
That I had to work with. I was forced to leave the mines though,
When some of the men discovered that I'd been turning in names
Of union organizers and those miners sympathetic to joining one,
To management. I feared that if I stayed after my role leaked out,
That they'd find my body someday in some branch tunnel,
My head caved in and a bloody chunk of anthracite beside me.
There were men now who hated me and wanted to see me dead.
The company brass took care of me though, getting me a new job
As a Pinkerton dick. How I loved my new uniform! Two rows
Of shiny brass buttons, a badge, a gun and a billyclub.
As for the men who had little use for me as a co-worker,
You think I didn't lay it on them when I got the chance to?
Let me tell you this, you ambitious young men:
You'll rise faster if you ally yourself with capital.
You do its bidding and you'll reap rich rewards.
You join a union and all you'll get is a club to the head.
I rose to become Chief of the State Detective Bureau.
I had a grand mansion on the hill with the other rich folk,
And the boys at the club addressed me as "Mr." Walker.
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones
I could have given up when I lost my husband and children
To a yellow fever epidemic, then my dress shop to the Chicago fire.
Instead, I remained to help work to rebuild the city.
Soon the laborers that I worked alongside became my family,
And like any doting parent, I wanted better lives for them.
Better lives that could only be attained by union solidarity,
By organizing to work together to seize what the business interests
Would never deign to open their wallets to give them.
Management didn't know how to deal with a resolute woman.
They couldn't beat me into submission as they did the men.
I fought for labor's children too, as if they were my own.
Challenging the legislators, like those in Georgia,
Who had just passed a bill to protect the songbirds,
Yet offered no such protection to the mill-shackled children
Who worked brutal hours until all song was drained from them.
I was an advocate for the miners. When the owners would close
Mountain roads to me, I would ascend to their holdings
Via deer trails or by wading up mountain streams.
I became the "Mother" who urged her boys to read and to stand firm.
Nothing daunted me. I even took the cause to Rockefeller himself.
My "thank you" was the fifty thousand miners that gathered
At Mount Olive, Illinois, to consecrate the imposing monument
That they'd raised money to erect at my gravesite. A touching tribute,
But I wish they'd spent that money on their children instead.
