American
Working-Class
Literature
An Anthology
EDITED BY
Nicholas Coles
University of Pittsburgh
Janet Zandy
Rochester Institute of Technology
New York
Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
2007
Contents
Preface
xv
Introduction
xix
I. Early American Labor: Hard, Bound, and Free 1600s-1810s
1
"The Trappan'd Maiden: or, the Distressed Damsel" (mid-1600s)
6
James Revel, "The Poor, Unhappy Transported Felon" (1680s)
7
Gottlieb Mittelberger, "Gottlieb Mittelberger's Journey to Pennsylvania in the
Year 1750 and Return to Germany in the Year 1754" (1754)
13
"Petition of a Grate Number of Blackes" to Thomas Gage, May 25,
1774
16
Olaudah Equiano, ["I Was in Another World: The Slave Ship"]* from The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African,
Written by Himself (1789)
16
Phillis Wheatley "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth,
His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for North America, Etc." (1773)
"A Sea Song"
25
Francis Hopkinson, "The Raising: A New Song for Federal Mechanics" by
A. B. (1788)
26
John Mcllvaine, "Address to the Journeymen Cordwainers L. B. of
Philadelphia" (1794)
27
Tecumseh's Speech to the Osages (Winter 1811-12)
28
II. New Kinds of Work, Old Practices 182Os-185Os
Sorrow Songs and Spirituals
31
\
33
"Nobody knows de trouble I've seen"
34
"Steal away, to Jesus"
35
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"
35
"Many Thousand Gone"
35
"Bredden, don't git weary"
36
W E. B. DuBois, "The Sorrow Songs" (1903)
36
Maria W. Stewart, "Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall, Boston,
September 21, 1832" • 44
The Lowell Mill Girls 48
Josephine L. Baker, "A Second Peep at Factory Life" (1845)
49
Mary Paul, "Letters to Her Father" (1845-1848)
52
"The Lowell Factory Girl"
58
* Items in brackets are titles assigned by the editors.
vn
,
23
viii
American Working-Class Literature
Harriet Hanson Robinson, "Characteristics of the Early Factory
Girls" (1898)
59
Helena Minton, "From The Same Cloth: For the Mill Girls, Lowell,
Massachusetts, circa 1840" (1985)
62
Frederick Douglass, ["In the Shipyards"] (1845 and 1855)
62
"An Address to the Colored People of the United States"
from The North Star (1848)
68
Herman Melville, "The Paradise of Bachelors" and "The Tartarus of
Maids" (1855)
72
John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Ship-Builders" (1850)
85
Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis Parton), "Soliloquy of a Housemaid" (1854)
87
"The Working-Girls of New York" (1868)
88
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "The Slave Mother" (1857)
90
Harriet E. Wilson, ["Keep her . . . She's real handsome and bright, and not very
black, either."]
91
Walt Whitman, "A Song for Occupations" (1855)
96
"The Wound-Dresser" (1865)
101
Nineteenth-Century Work Songs
103
"Peg An'Awl"
104
"Paddy Works on the Railway"
105
"The Housekeeper's Lament"
106
"The Farmer Is the Man"
107
"John Henry"
108
III. Beneath the Gilded Surface: Wording-Class Fictions and Realities,
1860-1890S
111
Rebecca Harding Davis, "Life in the Iron Mills" (1861)
113
I. G. Blanchard "Eight Hours" (1866, poem; set to music, 1878)
137
Lucy Parsons, "To Tramps" (1884)
140
Songs of the Knights of Labor
142
"Knights of Labor" (1898)
143
"Storm the Fort, Ye Knights" (1885)
144
"Thirty Cents a Day" (1892)
145
"America" (1890)
145
"Father Gander's Melodies" (1887)
146
"One More Battle to Fight" (1892)
147
The Battle of Homestead, 1892
148
AAISW Preamble (from the Constitution of the Amalgamated Association of
Iron and Steel Workers)
150
"Tyrant Frick"
150
o
"A Man Named Carnegie"
151
"Father Was Killed by the Pinkerton Men"
152
"A Fight for Home and Honor"
153
Stephen Crane, "The Men in the Storm" (1894)
154
Hamlin Garland, "Under the Lion's Paw" (1889)
158
Edwin Markham, "The Man with the Hoe" (1899)
167
"Lifelets: Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans" from the
Independent
169
"A Georgia Negro Peon" (1904)
169
"The Autobiography A Labor Leader": James Williams (1902)
"A Negro Nurse" (1912)
178
174
Contents
ix
Maxine Hong Kingston, "The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains"
from China Men (1980)
182
Angel Island Poems by Chinese Immigrants (1910-1940)
197
Revolt, Represssion, and Cultural Formations: 1900-1929
Eugene V. Debs, "How I Became a Socialist" (1902)
204
"Statement to the Court" (1918)
207
Miners' and Other Labor Poems
201
209
J. A. Edgerton, "The Man Behind the Pick" (1903)
211
"Scab, Scab, Scab" (1904)
211
Shorty P., "The Eight Hour Day" (1904)
212
Joe R. Lazure, "A Colorado Miner's Fourth" (1905)
212
J. P. Thompson, "Union Poem" (1909)
215
Unknown Worker, "Labor Speaks" (1909)
215
Joe Foley, "Wadda Ya Want to Break Your Back for the Boss For"
(c. 1917)
216
Berton Braley, "The Worker," (1917)
216
Eugene Barnett, "Political Prisoners" (1921)
217
"St. Peter and the Scab" (1923)
217
Upton Sinclair, ["The Hog-Squeal of the Universe"] from The Jungle (1906)
219
Jack London, "The Apostate" (1906)
226
'
"Pinched": A Prison Experience (1907)
238
Rose Schneiderman, "A Cap Maker's Story" (1905)
245
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, March 25, 1911
249
Rose Schneiderman, "Triangle Memorial Speech" (1911)
Morris Rosenfeld, "Requiem on the Triangle Fire" (1911)
251
251
Contemporary Poems on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
253
Mary Fell, "The Triangle Fire"
253
Chris Llewellyn, "Four from Sonya," "I Am Appalled," "Survivor's
Cento," "Sear"
257
Carol Tarlen, "Sisters in the Flames"
260
Safiya Henderson-Holmes, "rituals of spring (for the 78th anniversary
of the shirtwaist factory fire)" 261
James Oppenheim, "Bread and Roses" (1914)
265
Arturo Giovannitti, "The Walker" (1914)
266
John Reed, "War in Paterson" (1913)
271
Fellow Workers: IWW Oral Histories
277
(from Solidarity Forever, An Oral History of the IWW 1985)
Sophie Cohen, ["Paterson had a prison-like feeling"]
James Fair, ["Working the Docks"]
282
Mother Jones, "The March of the Mill Children" (1903)
277
277
284
The Wobblies, the "Little Red Song Book," and the Legacy of
Joe Hill (1879-1915)
289
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "Joe Hill—Martyred Troubador of Labor" from
The Rebel Girl: My First Life (1906-1926)
290
Joe Hill, "The Rebel Girl" (song) and letter to Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn
294
From The Little Red Song Book (1913)
294
"Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World"
Joe Hill, "The Tramp"
295
Ralph Chaplin, "Solidarity Forever!"
296
294
American Working-Class Literature
Joe Hill, "The Preacher and the Slave"
296
T-Bone Slim, "The Popular Wobbly"
297
Joe HiU, "Joe Hill's Last Will"
298
Ralph Chaplin, "Mourn Not the Dead"
298
Alfred Hayes, "Joe HiU" (1928)
299
Cheri Register, "A Dream of Joe Hill" (2000)
299
. . .-.
Sarah N. Cleghorn, "Through the Needle's Eye: 1. Comrade Jesus
308
2. Quatrain" (1915)
309
Carl Sandburg, "Chicago" (1916)
310
"Muckers" (1916)
311
"Child of the Romans" (1916)
311
from "The People, Yes" (1936)
312
Lola Ridge, "The Ghetto" (1918)
314
Anzia Yezierska, "The Free Vacation House" (1920)
328
Edith Summers Kelley, "Billy's Birth," restored chapter of Weeds (1923)
Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance
342
James Weldon Johnson, "O Black and Unknown Bards" (1908)
Jean Toomer, "Reapers" (1923)
345
Claude McKay, "The Harlem Dancer" (1917)
345
"If We Must Die" (1919)
345
"The Lynching" (1920)
346
Countee Cullen, "For a Lady I Know" (1925)
346
"From the Dark Tower" (1927)
346
Sterling A. Brown, "Ma Rainey" (1930)
347
"Scotty Has His Say" (1932)
348
"Call Boy" (1932)
349
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "I Sit and Sew" (1920)
350
Angelina. Weld Grimke, "Fragment" (c. 1930)
351
John Beecher, "Report to the Stockholders" (1925)
351
"Beaufort Tides" (1934)
354
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, "Last Speech to the Court" (1927)
354
Agnes Smedley, ["The Wanderlust in My Blood"] from Daughter of
Earth (1929)
357
"Mining Families" 1937
364
V. Economic Depression and Cultural Resurgence: 1930s
367
Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues" (1925)
369
"Johannesburg Mines" (1928)
371 °
"Christ in Alabama" (1931)
371
"Park Bench" (1934)
371
"Let America Be America Again" (1936)
372
"Office Building Evening" (pub. 1960)
374
Genevieve Taggard, "Words Property of the People" (1934)
374
"Life of the Mind, 1935" (1935)
375
"At Last the Women Are Moving" (1935)
376
Mary Heaton Vorse, "The Emergency Brigade at Flint" (1937)
377
Mike Gold, "Go Left, Young Writers!" (1929)
380
"Jews and Christians" from Jews Without Money (1935)
383
Appalachia Voices
389
Aunt Molly Jackson, "Kentucky Miners' Wives Ragged Hungry
Blues" (1932)
391
Sarah Ogan Gunning, "I Am a Girl of Constant Sorrow"
392
344
333
Contents
xi
Kathy Kahn, "They Say Them Child Brides Don't Last: Florence Reece" from
Hillbilly Women (1972)
393
Florence Reece, "Which Side Are You On?" (1931)
396
Jim Garland, "The Murder of Harry Simms"
399
Tillman Cadle, "Commentary on Harry Simms" (1932)
400
John Dos Passos, "Harlan: Working Under the Gun" (1931)
400
Maggie Anderson, "Among Elms and Maples, Morgantown, West Virginia, August,
1935" (1986)
408
"Mining Camp Residents, West Virginia, July, 1935" (1986)
408
"Long Story" (1992)
409
Don West, "Clods of Southern Earth: Introduction" (1946)
411
"Mountain Boy" (1931-1932?)
415
"Clodhopper" (1940)
416
"There's Anger in the Land" (1950)
417
"No Lonesome Road" (1940)
418
"I Am a Woman Worker": A Scrapbook of Autobiographies from the Summer
Schools for Women Workers (1936)
419
"Soldering"
419
"One Day of Labor"
420
"Bean Picking"
420
"The Piece-Work System"
421
"The President Visits the Mill"
422
Boxcar Bertha (Ben Reitman) [" 'Are You Bill's Broad?' "] from Sister of the Road:
The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha (1937)
422
Richard Wright, "I Have Seen Black Hands" (1935)
427
"Fire and Cloud" (1938)
429
Tillie Olsen, "I Want You Women Up North to Know" (1934)
461
Meridel Le Sueur, "I Was Marching" (1934)
465
"Eroded Woman" (1948)
471
Muriel Rukeyser, from The Book of the Dead (1938)
475
"The Road"
476
"Gauley Bridge"
477
"Praise of the Committee"
478
"Absalom"
480
"The Disease"
481
\
"George Robinson: Blues"
482
"The^BookoftheDead"
483
Joseph Kalar, "Night Shift" (1934)
487
"Proletarian Night" (1934)
488
"PapermiU" (1931)
489
"Worker Uprooted" (1932)
489
"Now that Snow Is Falling" (1930)
490
Kenneth Patchen, "Joe Hill Listens to the Praying" (1936)
491
"The Orange Bears" (1949)
495
Jack Conroy "Monkey Nest Camp" from the Disinherited (1933)
495
Pietro Di Donato, "Geremio" from Christ in Concrete (1939)
500
Tom Kromer, ["Three Hots and a Flop"] from Waiting for Nothing (1935)
Zora Neale Hurston, ["Polk County Blues"] from Mules and Men (1935)
John Steinbeck, "Starvation Under the Orange Tree/' (1938)
524
["The spring is beautiful in California"] from The Grapes of
Wrath (1939)
527
Sanora Babb ["Dust"] from Whose Names Are Unknown (2004)
529
508
515
xii
American Working-Class Literature
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, from A Primer for Buford (1990)
533
"A Primer for Buford"
534
"Origins"
534
"Farm Children in the Grip of 1933"
535
"Via Dolorosa"
535
"You Can't Go Back"
535
"Okie Boy Boss at Puccinello's, 1936"
536
"Abdication Day"
536
"Picking Grapes, 1937"
536
"American Folk Music, 1937"
537
"Roster"
537
"Day of Return, August 4, 1986"
538
Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd" (1939)
539
"1913 Massacre" (1945)
541
"Two Good Men" (1946)
542
"Christ for President" (circa 1938)
543
["Listening to the Little Girls' Song Drift Out Across the Dark Wind"] from
Bound for Glory (1943)
544
Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty (1935)
547
Thomas Bell, "Zinc Works Craneman to Wed" (1936)
565
William Attaway, ["The Moss Brothers Enter the Mill"] from
Blood on the Forge (1941)
570
VI. Affluence, Cold War, and the Other America: 1940s-1970s
583
Ann Petry, "Like a Winding Sheet" (1946)
585
Carlos Bulosan, "If You Want to Know What We Are" (1940)
592
"The Story of a Letter" (1946)
594
Harriette Arnow, ["I'm Gertie Nevels from Ballew, Kentucky"] from
The Dollmaker (1954)
598
Alice Childress, "Like One of the Family" (1956)
611
"Sometimes I Feel So Sorry" (1956)
613
Hisaye Yamamoto, "Seventeen Syllables" (1949)
614
Edwin Rolfe, "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been" (c. 1952)
622
"Little Ballad for Americans, 1954"
624
'
Thomas McGrath, "A Long Way Outside Yellowstone" (1940)
625
"Ars Poetica: or Who Lives in the Ivory Tower?" (1949)
626
"A Little Song About Charity" (1949)
627
"On the Memory of a Working-Class Girl" (1940s)
627
"O'Leary's Last Wish: In Case the Revolution Should Fail" (1940s)
628
Tillie Olsen, "I Stand Here Ironing" (1956)
629
Gwendolyn Brooks, "Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat" (1960)
633
"The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" (1960)
636
"The Blackstone Rangers" (1968)
638
James Wright, "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" (1963)
639
"Honey" (1982)
640
Judy Grahn, "The Common Woman" (1969)
641
Breece D'J Pancake, "The Honored Dead" (posthumous, 1983)
646
Studs Terkel, from Working (1972)
651
"Dolores Dante, waitress"
652
•,
"Mike Lefevre, steelworker"
656
Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson" (1972)
661
Contents
VII. The New World Order and Its Consequences: 1980s to 2005
Philip Levine, "You Can Have it" (1979)
670
"Among Children" (1992)
672
"What Work Is" (1992)
673
Nellie Wong, "Unemployment" (1983)
674
"The Death of Long Steam Lady" (1986)
676
xiii
667
Tomas Rivera, from . . . y no selo trago la tierra I And the Earth Did Not
Devour Him (1987)
679
"It's That It Hurts"
679
"And the Earth Did Not Devour Him"
682
"The Portrait"
685
"When We Arrive"
687
John Gilgun, "Counting Tips" (1995)
690
"Whitman's Hands" (1991)
691
Bill Witherup, "Mother Witherup's Top Secret Cherry Pie" (1989)
691
Lucille Clifton, excerpt from Generations: A Memoir (1976)
695
"At the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south Carolina, ,1989" (1991)
Marge Piercy, "To Be of Use" (1973)
699
"Her Gifts" (2002)
700
Sue Doro, "The Cultural Worker" (1992)
701
"Hard Times in the Valley" (1992)
704
"Blue Collar Goodbyes" (1992)
705
Simon J. Ortiz, "My Father's Song" (1988)
706
"Final Solution: Jobs, Leaving" (1992)
707
"We Have Been Told Many Things" (1992)
709
Gloria Anzaldua, from Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)
710
"We Call Them Greasers"
711
"To Live in the Borderlands Means You"
712
Hattie Gossett, "the cleaning woman/labor relations #4" (1988)
713
Larry Smith, "The Company of Widows" (2002)
715
Ernie Brill, "Crazy Hattie Enters the Ice Age" (1980)
722
Karen Brodine, "Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking" (1984)
732
Linda Hogan, "Making Do" (1986)
741
"The New Apartment, Minneapolis" (1988)
746
,
"Blessing" (1994)
747
Carolyn Chute, "Faces in the Hands" (2000)
748
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Work" (1988)
758
"The Whistle" (1992)
759
Michael Casey, "The Company Pool" (1999)
761
"Positivity Poster" (1999)
762
"Positivity Poster #75" (1999)
763
"Urgent Need for Blood" (1999)
763
"Positivity Poster #76" (1999)
764
Leslie Marmon Silko, "Lullaby" (1981)
765
Dorothy Allison, "Mama" (1988)
771
Leslie Feinberg, ["It was time to find a factory job"] from Stone Butch Blues
(1990)
779
Susan Eisenberg, "Homage" (1984)
785
"Hanging in Solo" (1984)
785
"First Day on a New Jobsite" (1984)
787
"Wiretalk" (1984)
789
698
American Working-Class Literature
Dagoberto Gilb, "Romero's Shirt" (1994)
789
Joy Harjo, "The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth
Floor Window" (1983)
794
"Perhaps the World Ends Here" (1994)
795
Jeanne Bryner, "The Story of My Village" (1999)
796
"Mileage" (1999)
797
"Release of the Spirit" (1999)
798
"Blue Collar" (1999)
799
Kate Rushin, "The Black Back-Ups" (1993)
800
Cherrie Moraga, "Heroes and Saints" (1983)
803
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "The New Warden" (1979)
846
"So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans" (1982)
848
"Perfecto Flores" (1986)
849
Jan Beatty, "Awake in a Strange Landscape" (1994)
851
"Louise" (2002)
852
"The Rolling Rock Man" (1994)
853
"A Waitress's Instructions on Tipping" (1994)
854
"The Waitress Angels Speak to Me in a Vision (2002)
855
Helena Maria Viramontes, "The Cariboo Cafe" (1988)
856
Peter Oresick, "My Father" (1977)
864
"The Story of Glass" (1977)
865
"After the Deindustrialization of America" (1990)
866
"Toward the Heaven of Full Employment" (1990)
868
"Now", (1990)
868
Jim Daniels, "Digger Thinks About Numbers" (1985)
869
"Digger Goes on Vacation" (1985)
870
"Digger Laid Off" (2002) 873
"Digger, the Birthday Boy" (2002)
873
"Digger's Territory" (1989)
874
Martin Espada, "Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper" (1993)
875
"The Toolmaker Unemployed" (1993)
876
"Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100" (2002)
877
Lois-Ann Yamanaka, "Lovey's Homemade Singer Sewing Class Patchwork
Denim Hiphuggers" (1996)
878
Melida Rodas, "El Olor de Cansansio (The Smell of Fatigue)" (2000)
883
Contents by Genre
886
Select Bibliography
893
A Timeline of American Working-Class History
Credits
910
Index by Author
Index by Title
About the Editors
917
919
925
903