FROM A LABOR JOURNAL
Marquart, Frank
Frank Marquart is one of the true, and the best, veterans of American radicalism. He lived through the early days of the struggle for union organization in Detroit, was active in a variety of...
...In those days the Communist International pursued its "Third Period" policies—and what crazy antics those policies called for...
...It required several days for me to recover from that ordeal...
...The headline featured the dubious bonus system at Hudson Motor...
...The two sisters fought like snarling cats...
...When the shift ended, my clothes were soaked with kerosine and I was so aching-tired that when I sat down in the streetcar I fell into a deep sleep and the conductor had to wake me at the end of the line—far past my stop...
...the opening speaker would sound off for 15 minutes or so, followed by another speaker who was followed by another...
...We always ended up by taking a "position" on each and every important event of the time...
...Poor Miles...
...I remember that I had more success than the other speakers in holding the attention of Negroes in the audience—and for good reason: I belabored the auto companies for their hiring practices...
...they would quote Lenin and Stalin and I would quote Kautsky and Luxemburg...
...I can still hear Minnie's shrill cry: "Damn you Helen, you and your brat ain't gonna sleep in my bed anymore, buy your own damn bed...
...Did the CP have cells in the plant, people who worked in the various departments and 424 FRANK MARQUART reported their observations...
...I used to go on reading sprees...
...reading kept me from brooding over the insecurity of prolonged unemployment...
...Then I would go to the nearest hobo jungle, make coffee in a tin can, hollow out the loaf of bread and fill it with the pork and beans...
...When the auto companies were rushing like mad to get out production, they would advertise for help in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana...
...Downtown was so jam-packed with people that some of the large plate-glass windows in big department stores were pushed in...
...the spindles fed the hones into the cylinder bores automatically while a steady, fine kerosine spray kept the hones damp...
...The Proletarian party, for instance, held classes in public speaking as well as in labor history, economics, and, of course, the "Socialist Classics...
...He has recently been writing his memoirs under the title of Labor Journal, and from them we excerpt the following pages.—ED...
...The work force was composed of so many different nationalities: Poles, Italians, English, Germans, Slays, and many others, not to mention the "Hillbillies," "Swadbusters," and "Crackers" from such places as Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana —workers lured to Detroit factories by the "high wages...
...The large downtown square was available to any group, party, or individual seeking an audience...
...I have read books on the subject by sociologists and industrial psychologists...
...Unlike CP members, the Wobblies treated opponents as opponents and not as enemies...
...Members of the Communist" party dubbed us "intellectual snobs" and referred to us as "Tea Drinkers" because there were a number of Englishmen in our group...
...I think they were most successful in textile areas of the South, where they conducted some bitter strikes...
...I can remember times when I would take the streetcar to work in the morning, get as far as the factory gate, and then suddenly decide to spend the day on Belle Isle...
...No longer did I have to heave heavy kettles and mop the floor...
...Today they carry briefcases containing class materials on steward training, collective bargaining, labor law, etc...
...How different my life might have been if that doctor had ordered a chest X-ray...
...I was anything but a "handyman" around his farm and he observed my awkward work movements with amused tolerance...
...Miles, his daughters and their children lived on potatoes and green vegetables—no milk, no meat or cheese ever...
...I doubt that the Socialist party, or the Proletarian party or any of the lesser sects held out any hope for effective unionism in auto...
...In another year, Detroit, being a one-industry town, was so paralyzed that it became known as "The City of the Dead...
...I soon discovered that hoboing was not the romantic experience depicted in Jack London's "On the Road...
...Those AWU papers were read eagerly by the workers...
...How I stumbled when I read passages from Macbeth aloud...
...I forget how much I received for each basket of peaches, pears, and apples I picked, but while the season lasted I earned enough to pay for my room and board...
...The text used in one of those classes was The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, by Friedrich Engels...
...I did not study systematically, but read at random: newspapers, magazines, fiction, history...
...The job was timed so that the operator had to work every minute of every hour, with no rest periods and no fatigue-time allowance whatsoever...
...they came to eat German food, dance to German music, and drink good German beer...
...I spent most of my spare time in radical activity— soapboxing, attending Marxist study classes, and passing out shop papers for the AWU...
...When the stock-market crash rocked Wall Street in the fall of 1929, layoffs in the auto industry were not long in coming...
...When the chairman was about to bring the meeting to a close, the leader of the CP contingent gave a prearranged signal for action...
...The next morning I heard the bad news...
...We spurned "bourgeois values" in terms of material status, but we had our own kind of snobbery...
...I listened to the comments: `By God, that's just how it is—you never can figure out how the hell much you are going to make by that bonus system...
...I taught a class in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, and I would spend hours preparing my lessons, especially the lessons pertaining to the section on metaphysics and dialectics...
...I knew there was a large General Motors plant as well as smaller parts plants in Buffalo, New York...
...The harder you work the more you think you are going to earn and then when payday comes, the less you get...
...From practice, the speakers would learn how to use their voices effectively, how to parry questions, and to handle hecklers...
...The leaders of the Proletarian party contended that only a small portion of auto workers could be organized, and those would have to join the AFL–machine workers in the Machinists Union, sheet metal workers in the Sheet Metal Workers Union, and so on...
...Living with him were his two daughters, one of whom was the mother of an illegitimate child and the other was a divorcee who had custody of her two-year-old daughter...
...Bridge's report: "You have a small cavity in your right lung...
...I spent most of it in the library reading...
...Instead, I followed a pattern I was to continue all through the rest of the 1920s...
...One day during lunch hour an AWU organizer set up a soapbox in front of the Hudson Motor Company and proceeded to give a talk...
...It was generally a leaflet explaining the aims of the AWU and inviting workers to come to a scheduled meeting...
...not one of us had completed grade school and we were hungry for some formal education...
...Sometimes I would go to the IWW hall and discuss the One Big Union with Wobblies...
...During the day I looked for work and in the evening I became a "free-lance soapboxer...
...In that city, people responded to the call by the thousands...
...The scar tissue on your lung indicates that you had TB on and off over the years, but apparently you had enough resistance to hold the disease in check in that area...
...In the winter of 1930-31 I was lucky enough to find a job waiting on tables in the Ratskeller of the Rochester Labor Lyceum...
...I think I was able to stick it out for about two weeks before the foreman told me I was too slow and he'd have to let me go...
...Later the CP picked up the pieces and formed the Auto Workers Union, and tried to direct it along industrial union lines...
...A large crowd gathered and everything seemed to be going according to plan...
...But I didn't snap out of it...
...If I let you through this gate without a pass I'll get fired, you know that," he told me...
...When I tried to explain that I had machine trouble, he roared: "I don't give a damn what you had, you get out production or you get fired— that's the rule around here, and no goddamn excuses...
...The Marxian Club sponsored study classes, debates, and informal discussions...
...How well I remember what happened one evening in 1927 when a group of organizations held a mass meeting in Cadillac Square, demanding immediate freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti, who were slated for execution that night...
...How they used to laugh at me when I predicted a depression...
...But one out of every three blocks that I took off my machine was rejected by the inspector, either because it was undersized or out-ofround...
...It's silly for us to get a chest X-ray...
...And their aim is not knowledge for its own sake, but training for union posts...
...We would work from six in the morning until one in the afternoon, get two hours off, and then work again from three to six in the evening...
...Though small in numbers, the AWU served as a training ground for workers who became shoplevel leaders in later years...
...I was one of the speakers and found myself addressing the largest audience I had ever faced in my life...
...And Miles would plead: "Now, now, Minnie, that ain't a way to talk to your sister...
...Mounted police ordered the crowd back, but there was no place to move, so the cops used their clubs on heads and shoulders...
...During the prohibition era the Ratskeller was frequented by Germans every Saturday night...
...When someone in Buffalo told me that a machine shop in Corning, N.Y., needed tool-grinders, I lost no time getting to the Erie Railroad and catching a freight train going East...
...I took to my new life as a duck to water...
...I would speak for short periods, call for questions, and then take up a collection...
...When I returned to Detroit I did not have sense enough to go to a good hospital for a checkup...
...Sometimes I would work only three days a week, and spend the other days in Belle Isle Park reading...
...Some groups conducted forums of their own, like the Proletarian University, which was formed by Al Renner, John Keracher, and Dennis Batt...
...The organizer spoke only about ten minutes, then handed out copies of the "Hudson Worker...
...I don't think I ever told my black audience that white workers were just as opposed to extending job promotion to Negroes as the employers were...
...The produce scale in the storeroom showed me that I was losing weight, yet it never occurred to me that there might be something organically wrong...
...We were convinced our theories were right because they were grounded on the Marxist–Leninist principles of the class struggle, historical materialism, and the "law of value...
...I would buy my wares from the broom factory wholesale and sell them at retail price...
...Picture the scene on a Baker streetcar when it was filled with Ford Rouge workers who came off the second shift around midnight: most of those lucky enough to get seats fell asleep almost as soon as they sat down...
...Although Rochester had many diversified industries, factory jobs were not to be had...
...Looking back at those times I wonder how the laid-off auto workers with families to support managed to live during those payless weeks...
...I couldn't eat, I always felt in a daze...
...Thanks to her I enrolled in the high school that, in the fall of 1921, was connected with the Michigan State Normal College, now Eastern Michigan University, and also took some courses at the college...
...I knew that the Proletarian party had a branch in Rochester, N.Y., so one afternoon I climbed up on the tender of a New York Central passenger train and rode into that city...
...We considered ourselves "well-informed...
...There was the "Hudson Worker," the "Packard Worker," the "Ford Worker," etc...
...Sometimes I would go in for imaginative literature— FROM A LABOR JOURNAL 423 plays by Shaw, Ibsen, O'Neill, novels by Dreiser, Anatole France, Tolstoy, etc...
...After that experience I made up my mind to quit production work forever and go into the toolroom...
...He's right...
...Every Saturday evening we used to hold forth at Woodward Street and Temple...
...Bridge orders an X-ray you better damn well get an X-ray...
...Among the sponsoring organizations were the Central Body of the AFL, the Communist party, Proletarian party, the Anarchists, and the Wobblies...
...To prepare for this class, I spent hours reading up on the various family forms and marriage customs of different historical periods...
...One day in the spring of 1931, Cy Ware, a member of the Proletarian party, who worked as a waiter in Iola Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Rochester, told me the head chef needed another "kitchen hand...
...Many of those who had to stand, fell asleep on their feet, swaying back and forth, while holding onto the car straps...
...Kitchen hands got one day off a month...
...And as for Stalin's genocidal policies toward the Russian peasantry, we still believed and contended that the capitalist press greatly exaggerated the mass starvation resulting from those policies, and we insisted that the only victims were the rich peasants, the "kulaks" who sabotaged socialist reconstruction, and therefore received the punishment they deserved...
...Or did the AWU have contacts in the form of nonpolitical workers who belonged to the union and served as reporters...
...I witnessed rural poverty at its worst...
...One day she said to us: "Why don't you fellows work your way through college...
...All radical outfits addressed themselves to "The American Working Class" but in those days the great bulk of the American workers were not even union-conscious, much less class-conscious...
...We rationalized every twist and turn of the Third International, while at the same time criticizing the American Communist party for carrying out the policies dictated by that International...
...I saved my money and returned to school in the fall...
...Never before nor since in this country were the Communists so successful in "calling the masses into the streets...
...For about two weeks I looked for work, but finally gave up the search, realizing it was futile...
...She offered to teach English to a group of young socialists...
...As one hobo told me, "When you know damn well you can't find a job, it's a hell of a lot better to ride the rods than to sit home brooding...
...Morris Field, who later became an able union negotiator on the International UAW staff, conducted a class in economics, using Das Kapital as the text...
...I think it was in 1925 that the motor companies found a way to eliminate cylinder grinding...
...Or I would get into heated arguments about the Russian Revolution...
...We ate lunch in a large room supplied with benches...
...If you sounded off like that in Russia, they'd shoot you...
...The straw boss, a subhuman pusher who had the authority to hire and fire, bellowed like a bull...
...To a lesser degree, organizations like the PP, IWW, and SP, and such offshoots of the Communist party as the Trotskyites, Lovestoneites, each and all afforded training for people who were destined to take active roles in building the UAW...
...No economic worries for me now...
...Like so many of the other workers, I gulped down a sandwich and a cup of coffee—and lay on the floor to sleep until the whistle called us back to work...
...I heard the same question thrashed out time and again by radicals in their meetings...
...Past efforts to organize an industrial union in auto had failed dismally...
...Rochester has always been noted for its cultural activities—the Eastman School of Music, a fine symphony orchestra, and an excellent library...
...During the '20s Hastings Street was still called "Kike Town," although the Jews were rapidly moving into better areas, and Hastings soon became part of the Black Belt...
...They laughed about what the paper had to say concerning a certain foreman: "It's about time someone put out the dirt on that son of a bitch...
...They fairly bristled with onthespot shop reports, exposing health hazards in the paint shop, describing brutal acts of this or that foreman, citing facts and figures about speedup on specific operations, revealing how workers got shortchanged by a bonus system no one could ever figure out...
...I worked strictly for tips and was able to earn enough on Saturday nights to pay for my room and for the food I would buy and cook during the week...
...The CP leaders were utterly ruthless in their dealings with rival organizations, such as the Proletarian party, which professed to be the only sound communist organization in the United States...
...The Proletarian University also sponsored classes and published a magazine, copies of which can still be found in the University of Michigan Labor Archives...
...they rode in empty box cars, on top of box cars, in gondolas, on the running boards of oil tankers, and on flat cars...
...If she did not need a broom I would ask if she needed something done around the house—a tree chopped down, perhaps, or the yard cleaned up or whatever...
...In March 1930 the Communists organized a "Hunger March" in many cities, including Detroit...
...Pitching hay all day would just about do me in...
...Eager to have his hay off the ground and into the barn before the rain came, a farmer would hire me...
...AFTER I had worked at Iola about three months, Oscar called the kitchen staff together and informed us that Dr...
...Those were the days of the "suitcase brigade...
...So I went back to the doctor...
...We young radicals in the 1920s used to denounce "AFL Piecards...
...many young workers enroll in labor courses sponsored by university labor-relations institutes...
...Those papers had the smell of machine oil about them...
...Then I went to the toilet and sat on the stool until the whistle blew in the morning...
...Thanks to this law of value, capitalism was floundering in a catastrophic depression from which it could never recover, so consequently, all measures adopted by government and business to save the economic system were doomed to failure...
...Do you bastards want to rape the scrubwomen over there...
...So I went to the Nickel Plate Railroad, caught a freight train and headed for that city...
...I knew that one of the foremen I worked under in Timken Axle was an active Klansman...
...Hearty meals, a comfortable bed, and endless hours of leisure for reading whatever the mood dictated...
...And now I want to say something about a gentle anarchist woman to whom I owe a lasting debt of gratitude...
...The workers referred to the layoff as their "starvation vacation...
...Western New York State is famous for its rich fruit belt and I arrived in Rochester at a time when farmers needed pickers...
...all we can tell you is that time and rest will eventually cure you...
...I always got along amicably with the Wobblies, even though we disagreed on basic theory...
...The Party boys ran to a nearby truck, grabbed placards and responded to the order: "On to City Hall...
...Hillbillies" lugging cardboard suitcases would travel to Detroit by bus and get jobs on the assembly lines, leaving their families behind...
...I would draw on endless examples of flagrant discrimination in the shop and would ask such rhetorical questions as: "Is there any reason why Negroes should not be promoted to cushion building...
...Every rejected block had to be put on the machine for rehoning...
...There was a kind of intellectual rivalry among us in that club...
...But I knew only too well how filled with racial prejudice white workers were, especially white Southerners...
...When I asked him how serious my condition was and how long I might have to "take the cure" his answer was succint: "There is no way of knowing...
...We would spend hours there, discussing, arguing, pontificating over coffee or tea...
...I think it was in June 1930 that Lubricator laid me off...
...I told him flatly I would not work on the machine and he told me just as flatly that he would see me in hell before he would give me a pass...
...I hired out as a tool-grinder in a small tool-and-die plant on Fort Street...
...Once I worked in the ring-gear department of the General Motors Gear and Axle plant on Holbrook Avenue...
...Yes, the work was hard...
...I went to the lunch room, curled up on a bench and promptly fell asleep...
...He said there was nothing to worry about: "You are run down, just take it easy for a few days and you'll 421 snap out of it...
...In this way I was able to supplement what little money I still had left...
...When the harvest season ended, I picked up odd jobs: for a while I tried selling vacuum cleaners from house to house, but I soon learned that housewives were not about to spend money on vacuum cleaners when a broom would do...
...This time he diagnosed the trouble as "a chest cold" and gave me more pills...
...It was piece work and I toiled furiously to keep up with the other hone workers...
...I had no car, not even a cheap jalopy, and I didn't want any, for I believed that the more material things I possessed and the longer I had to work to pay for them, the less free time I would have at my disposal...
...I had an incentive to read, not a material incentive, but a different kind...
...The old Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers succumbed to the postwar depression in the early '20s...
...The room was a hayloft and the board consisted of bread and potatoes...
...etc., etc...
...now we'll pay hell before we ever get another permit to hold a street demonstration...
...I still recall the sickening sensation in my stomach as I listened to Dr...
...The honing machines were equipped with six spindles, like a multiple drill press...
...They were determined to maintain an open-shop industry and to this end they employed industrial spies to ferret out any and all workers who "talked union...
...I met her for the first time when she delivered a lecture on geology to a socialist audience...
...We radicals knew that a depression was on the way, but none of us thought it would come so soon nor be so severe and last so long...
...I had little money but did not need much, for I earned my meals by working as a busboy in a restaurant...
...Today you won't find young factory workers boning up on De Leon, Marx, and all that...
...How Can Auto Workers Be Organized into a Strong Industrial Union...
...He lived through the early days of the struggle for union organization in Detroit, was active in a variety of left-wing groups, and later worked as an educational director in UAW locals...
...What to do...
...I removed my shop apron, shut 422 FRANK MARQUART down my machine, bundled up my tools, punched out my time card and walked out of the plant...
...I lived in cheap rooming houses and ate in the cheapest restaurant, and with each passing day my FROM A LABOR JOURNAL 427 savings dwindled...
...I couldn't sleep in the daytime...
...I told him I had quit and wanted to go home...
...This was my theme at street meetings...
...Pass my ass, you get no goddamn pass from me...
...I would take a bundle of their leaflets into the shop and furtively place them near the time clock so that each worker could take one when he punched his time card...
...But the Communists achieved their aim...
...I rode to Syracuse and spent several days there tramping for work...
...every gear had to be ground to plug-gage size...
...I don't know...
...some ingenious engineer invented a honing system and one man could hone 12 cylinders in the time it used to take to grind one...
...I will never forget what pains she took to help me in Algebra...
...In January 1929 I got a job tool-grinding in the Detroit Lubricator Company on Trumbull Avenue...
...Circumstances had finally made a student of me...
...Soapboxing in those days was an institution in Detroit and some of the speakers in time became forceful orators...
...In those days the auto industry had its model-change layoff period in late summer...
...Oscar said orders were orders and "if Dr...
...I even told the X-ray technician she was wasting her time "taking my picture...
...At the close of the second semester I became very ill, so fatigued and listless that I drank endless cups of strong coffee to keep going...
...Every Erie freight train was loaded with hobos in those days...
...I would get a job in a factory, work until fatigue would overtake me—and then "take a few days off...
...Splits occurred in the Socialist party, with some of the members flocking into the Communist party and others forming new groups, like the Proletarian University or the Marxian Club...
...When I got to the gate the watchman told me that he could not let me out without a pass...
...Some days I would hang around the AWU hall and discuss union strategy and tactics with the organizers...
...During changeover the industry would tool up in preparation for the new models, and tool-and-die shops worked overtime...
...The Negroes would respond to my questions in chorus: "He's right...
...So I peddled brooms— floor brooms, whisk brooms, brushes...
...Today most papers put out by UAW locals are usually filled with canned news about state and national politics, officers' reports, and petty shop gossip...
...In this way I was able to earn a few extra dollars...
...Of all the radical groups active in the 1920s, only the CP and IWW were convinced that the auto industry could be organized along industrial union lines...
...He did not get an enthusiastic response...
...I did not find work in Corning, nor in all the other towns along the Erie Railroad in New York and New Jersey...
...We in turn called them apostles of dictatorship because they approved of everything the Bolsheviks did...
...Today the motivation is different...
...One morning I saw specks of blood in my phlegm...
...The Arrangements FROM A LABOR JOURNAL 425 Committee received permission from the police to hold the meeting, after pledging there would be no disturbance...
...The most rousing speech was given by a fiery Italian Anarchist, whose oratory brought the Italians in the crowd to a pitch of emotional frenzy...
...I always refused to work overtime because the long hours were too much of a drain on my strength...
...I always felt terribly tired and literally "ran on my nerves," consuming endless cups of coffee and chain-smoking cigarettes...
...For a while it would be Bertrand Russell...
...With the depression that followed World War I, Detroit became a beehive of radical activity...
...There was no unemployment compensation to tide them over untilthey returned to work...
...There is nothing romantic about sleeping in public parks, police stations, and in box cars...
...But I do know that those papers played a significant role in preparing auto workers' minds for the union thrust that was to come in the days ahead...
...Hell's fire man, you ain't ever gonna be a farmer, you can't even learn to hold a pitchfork right...
...The farmer paid me $2 a day plus "room and board...
...Not far from our Marxian Club was Greenfield's restaurant on Woodward Avenue...
...In that year "prosperity" reached its peak, yet there was so much unemployment in Detroit that the Free Press carried pictures of job-seekers massed at the employment offices of the Ford Motor Company...
...The police, who had been posted at strategic sections, quickly formed a cordon around City Hall and the inevitable happened—confrontation between Communists and police...
...Or I would quit my job and not look for another one until my money was running low...
...When my first college year ended, I returned to Detroit and found a job at Cadillac Motor Company grinding cylinders...
...There was much unemployment and suffering in Detroit that winter...
...Like a religious sect waiting for the Second Coming, we were certain the revolution would come in our time...
...Our opponents said we expected to achieve the revolution drinking tea...
...I was running an internal grinder...
...I was working at Hudson Motor at the time and I remember how workers, leaning out of windows, made snide remarks: "Hey, Buddy, what's your racket...
...So my status in the sanitarium changed from cook's helper to hospital patient...
...When exams were completed, I consulted a local doctor...
...Frank Martel lashed out at the CP leader who gave the order to march on City Hall...
...Several times when riding freights through farmland I would get off and apply for work as a farmhand...
...By that time I was firmly convinced that auto workers needed a union and I volunteered to help the CP in any way I could...
...Then I looked for a job elsewhere...
...We were only a vestpocket study group, yet we had all the "correct" answers...
...When a man has no money and can't find a job, he either becomes a bum and vegetates in one place or becomes a hobo and moves on...
...What lively, fresh shop papers they used to put out...
...The PP argued that while industrial unionism was the only kind that made sense in the auto industry, it was not practical...
...Is there any reason why they should be chained to the foundry or to mopping toilets...
...What's the matter with you damn fools, you gave your word that you would abide by the agreement with the police...
...How could I ever heave those heavy kettles of soup bones on the stove if I had TB...
...I contacted members of the Proletarian party and one of them offered to let me stay in his home "until 428 FRANK MARQUART you land a job...
...Some of them, like myself, rode in hopes of eventually finding a job, others rode for the sheer sake of traveling...
...She offered to coach us in English, mathematics, and other studies so we could enter high school and go on to college...
...I remember what agonies I suffered every time I worked on the night shift...
...When a man is not only unemployed but also broke, he grasps for straws...
...I preferred asking a storekeeper for a can of pork and beans and a loaf of day-old bread and a little loose coffee...
...The paper said what they felt...
...I would spend my precious "free day" at the beach, little realizing that lying in the sun was the worst thing I could have done, in view of what was ailing me...
...Within a few hours the Detroit Free Press hit the streets with screaming headlines about the RIOT...
...I hired out as a honer in the Hupp Motor Company—and lasted one night...
...I was still single, still working three days a week, just long enough to earn board and room and expenses...
...The workers in my department were sympathetic to the Klan: "The Klan keeps Communists and niggers in their place...
...During the week we would speak on Detroit's East Side at Hillger Street and Jefferson and also at Hastings and Erskine...
...Miss Haug was a retired schoolteacher...
...We had no way of knowing that our study-class and soapbox experience would someday enable us to become piecards ourselves...
...The Klan was strong in 426 FRANK MARQUART Eastern Michigan in those days...
...Oscar, the chef, drives himself hard and drives his help even harder...
...You honed all six cylinders at one time...
...By speaking at factories, by distributing thousands of papers, leaflets, pamphlets, and other materials at shop gates, the Communists performed the kind of spade work that paid off when the CIO organizing drive got under way in the 1930s...
...He warned: "The work will be hard...
...The straw boss came in and roared: "This ain't no hotel, no sleeping here...
...I looked upon every housewife who came to the door as either a prospective customer or a prospective employer...
...How seriously we took ourselves in that small sectarian outfit called the Proletarian party...
...So I went back into the plant and asked the straw boss for a pass...
...Why don't you make an honest living for a change...
...Then it would be Karl Kautsky...
...We prided ourselves on being the only true revolutionary party in America...
...Every employment office I went to in Buffalo was filled with job-seekers, but of course, no one was ever hired...
...Volumes have been written about the alienated factory worker, about speedup, about the monotony and boredom of the assembly line...
...I spent my days during the winter browsing in the library, where it was warm and clean and light and quiet...
...The Proletarian University developed factions and splits, and eventually Batt, Renner, and Keracher formed the Proletarian party...
...The operator had to watch the job every second to see that the bores were honed to within 1000th of an inch of required size...
...The foreman would threaten to fire me but when I still refused, he tolerated me because toolgrinders were not easy to replace during tool-up season...
...The Proletarian party conducted classes in the Labor Lyceum two evenings each week...
...Living in cheap rooming houses and eating in cheap restaurants, they managed to accumulate "a stake" by the time the modelchange layoff season arrived—then they would return to their farms...
...From such studies I gained new theoretical insights, but they were pale compared to my gut memories of what it was like to be an auto production worker in the '20s...
...In America the CP declared war against the AFL and sought to win the membership away from the top-ranking leaders by calling for a "United Front From Below...
...The AFL leadership was castigated as "flunkies of the bosses," and the CP sought to organize dual unions in coal, auto, textile, and I don't know how many other industries...
...And knocking on back doors, offering to do chores in return for something to eat, is not exactly a dignified way of making a living...
...Despite their "Third Period" absurdities, the Communists helped pave the way for industrial unionism...
...I would go to the library and take out books that would facilitate my understanding of what Engels was driving at—then go to Belle Isle and "bone up" on the subject...
...I agreed with those who contended that the organizing attempts of the AWU would prove as futile as the labors of Sisyphus...
...What did I do with my free time...
...I heard this proposition debated by Al Renner and a CP member, with Renner taking the negative...
...One night I had machine trouble and fell behind in production...
...But I did not sleep long...
...Also making themselves heard in those days were the Socialist Labor party, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Anarchists, and free-lance radicals too individualistic to fit into any group...
...When the Marxian Club disbanded, I joined the Proletarian party...
...The library was my place of escape...
...Bridge, the superintendent, had ordered all kitchen hands to have an X-ray taken, "as a precautionary measure...
...A college education will equip you to make -a better contribution to the radical movement...
...None of these workers carries a thumb-worn copy of Herbert Spencer's First Principles in his pocket as did the young Welshman in our Marxian Club...
...The old AAVW floundered and died and the AWU was actually getting nowhere—it was a paper union...
...One farm I worked on was operated by Harry Miles, who once owned the farm but was now running it on a crop-sharing basis for the bank that took it over in lieu of mortgage payments...
...I immediately applied for the FROM A LABOR JOURNAL 429 job and was lucky enough to get hired, at $30 a month "and all the food you can eat...
...I was not used to working that hard and that steady...
...So-and-so was said to be well-informed about economics, another about history, another about literature, and some fancied themselves well-informed about everything...
...How did the editors get their news "hot from the shops...
...But he didn't, not even when I saw him for the third time and reported I was losing weight...
...I worked in at least a dozen such small shops before I acquired enough competence to perform any grinding job in the toolroom, whether external, internal, or surface grinding...
...I liked Miles, he was a kindly man, but terribly defeated...
...And when they did workthey never earned more than just enough to keep the family going from payday to payday...
...How could a work force composed of such dissimilar elements ever be brought together to tackle such corporate giants as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler...
...And in those days we all knew that "the AF of Hell" was not interested in organizing a strong industrial union because such an organization would threaten the entrenched jobs of many craft-union leaders...
...My job called for helping the first cook, which meant that I had to lift heavy pots and pans of food, mop the floor, carry kettles to the dishwasher, lift crates of vegetables and large boxes of meat —in short, do all the chores that are expected of a cook's helper in a large institution...
...And why in hell march on City Hall...
...I suspect my radical bias made me concentrate all my denunciation on "the bosses...
...When William Green, president of the AFL, wrote to the Automobile Manufacturers Association asking for a conference to weigh the pros and the cons of unionism, the arrogant auto barons did not even deign to reply...
...As in Detroit, so in Cleveland: looking for a job was an exercise in futility...
...Also speaking was Frank Martel, president of the AFL Central Body, and during his remarks he called upon the workers to "join the union of your craft...
...The Detroit Lubricator plant slackened to a threeday week, and that suited me perfectly...
...It was a 12-hour shift, from six in the evening until six in the morning, with a half hour off for lunch...
...430 FRANK MARQUART...
...I was like the work stiff the Wobblies sang about: "Tramp, tramp, keep on a-tramping, there's nothing doing here for you...
...My right hand burned with raw blisters from forcing the gage into the gears...
...The paper spoke to them about the experiences that impinged on their nerves, muscles, and brains...
...I recall arguing with Oscar about this...
...And yet I believed that radicals should at all times advocate industrial unionism in the auto industry...
...After two weeks of pitching hay, hoeing corn, and subsisting on a malnutrition diet, I bid Miles and his daughters good-bye and caught an Erie freight train heading West...
...Cleveland had a free-speech tradition that went back to the days of its famous liberal mayor, Tom Johnson...
...Nearly all of my friends and relatives were unemployed in the spring of 1930, and most of them were not to find jobs again for several years...
...To the CP, all other radical parties and groups were "social fascists" and counterrevolutionists...
...I knew there were many more jobbing shops and parts plants in Cleveland than in Detroit, so I decided to try my luck in that city...
Vol. 21 • July 1974 • No. 3
