In
Honor Of The 98h Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist
International-Take Six- Chicago 1919
William Z. Foster (nobody ever called him Bill, not even his
closest drinking companions) was his angel idol. Yes, ever since Jim Gladstone
had started working for William Z. he had hung on his every word, whether that
word was right, or wrong. And he had to pinch himself because there he was sitting in same room as
William Z. planning out strategy for the next steps in the strike struggles
that William Z. was organizing in Chicago just that 1919 year, just that year
when the hellish war over in Europe was over and working men could go back to work, and go back to work for better pay
now that everybody had done his or her patriotic duty by not squawking when the
bosses keep piling up the dough and the workingman had barely enough to live
on. But William Z., one smart cookie, and one hell of an organizer would put
things straight. Hell he had even got the white guys down the steel plants and
meat butchery places to stick up for the “colored” workers, for a while anyway.
Yes, one smart cookie and Jim Gladstone was glad that he had
hitched his star to William Z’s. Moreover William Z. had been smart, smart as
hell, to keep clear of guys like that Socialist Debs and their ranting and
raving about President Wilson getting America all gummed up in that European
war. All it got Debs was some serious jail time and no chance to work the tide
sweeping working man America looking for a little more in their pot and some
respect. Yes, Jim Gladstone had it all figured, workingman figured. Out of the
nasty Chicago cold water tenements, out of that twenty languages yakking ethnic
squalor and onto easy street with a nice cushy job in some union office and who
knows maybe more. His mother, mother of nine, and without a rolling stone
father’s help (father last heard from out in Eureka in California looking for
gold or something, more likely women and whiskey from his track record), was
proud of him, proud that he was making something of himself although she would
have been just as happy if he had steady work over at the steel mill. Jesus,
mothers sometimes. No sweat and grime for him, him and Anna whom he intended to
marry just as soon as the strike was settled and he became a permanent union
official.
Then something happened, something that not even the smart
as a cookie William Z. could have figured on. The bosses dug in their heels,
dug them deep, started to call everybody reds and anarchists, started bringing
the coppers in, and before long the rank and file, those squawking twenty
languages, were ready to throw in the towel and the deal went down, went down
badly. William Z. thereafter went about his business without one Jim Gladstone.
But here is the funny part, although there was nothing funny
about the circumstances. Jim had in the aftermath of the strike defeat done a certain amount of
soul-searching since he, ah, had plenty of
time to walk Division Street and other haunts of the Windy City. He
contacted a friend, a friend who had left from Chicago and gone to New York and
had joined up with some radicals in Greenwich Village.
His friend and his radical friends were all huffed up about
what had been going on in Russia since the war was over and the Bolsheviks were
still fighting a civil war against the White Guards and needed help, and about
the new organization that the Bolsheviks, the government in Russia was forming
with kindred spirits throughout the world, a new international they called it
(although truth to tell Jim didn’t know there was an old one needing
replacement), the Communist International. And they were going to need trade
union organizers to help organize the unions to fight for power everywhere. Jim
perked up when he heard this news and got in direct contain with William Z. (or
rather his assistant) to tell him of this new opportunity. William Z. nixed the
idea, didn’t want to publicly get involved with reds and that was that. But Jim
Gladstone still in need of a job, still in need of showing his love for his
Anna by a little marriage and a white picket fence house got himself a train
ticket for New York…
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