Social problems -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
In the turpentine-country, in a forest, Jimmie and his pal came to a
“jungle”, a place where the “wobblies” congregated, living off the
country. Here around the camp-fires Jimmie met the guerillas of the
class-struggle, and learned the songs of revolt which they
sang--some of them parodies on Christian hymns which would have
caused the orthodox and respectable to faint with horror. Here they
rested up, and exchanged data on the progress of their fight, and
argued over tactics, and cussed the Socialists and the other
“politicians” and “labour-fakirs”, and sang the praises of the “one
big union”, and the “mass strike”, and “direct action” against the
masters of industry. They told stories of their sufferings and their
exploits, and Jimmie sat and listened. Sometimes his eyes were wide
with consternation, for he had never met men so desperate as these.
For example, “Strawberry” Curran--named for his red hair and
innumerable freckles--an Irish boy with the face of a choir-singer,
and eyes that must have been taken straight out of the blue vault of
Heaven. This lad told about a “free speech fight” in a far Western
city, and how the chief of police had led the clubbing, and how they
had got back at him. “We bumped him off all right,” said
“Strawberry”; it was a favourite phrase of his--whenever anybody
got in his way, he “bumped him off”. And then “Flathead Joe”, who
came from the Indian country, was moved to emulation, and told how
he had put dynamite under the supports of a mine-breaker, and the
whole works had slid down a slope into a canyon a mile below. And
then a lame fellow, “Chuck” Peterson, told about the imprisonment of
two strike-leaders in the hop-country of California, and of the
epidemic of fires and destruction that had plagued that region for
several years since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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