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A Word to Tramps
by Lucy E. Parsons
Published in The Alarm [Chicago], vol. 1, no. 1 (Oct. 4, 1884), pg. 1.
A word to the 30,000 now tramping the streets of this great
city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the
evidences of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not
sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to
appease the pangs of hunger now gnawing at your vitals. It is
with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situ-
ated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.
Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old
enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth?
Have you not toiled long, hard, and laboriously in producing
wealth? And in all those years of drudgery, do you not know you
have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars' worth of
wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you act,
never will, own any part in? Do you not know that when you
were harnessed to a machine, and that machine harnessed to
steam, and thus you toiled your ten, twelve, and sixteen hours in
the twenty-four, that during this time in all these years you re-
ceived only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the
bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to
purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of
the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to
wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting
toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were? And do you
not know that with all your squeezing, pinching, and economiz-
ing, you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the
wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your em-
ployer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting produc-
tion, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron
horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled, the factory
door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with
hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?
Yet your employer told you that it was over-production
which made him close up. Who cared for the bitter tears and
heart- pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you
bid them a loving "God bless you!" and turned upon the tram-
per's road to seek employment elsewhere? I say, who cared for
those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to be
execrated and denounced as a "worthless tramp and a vagrant"
by that very class who had been engaged all those years in rob-
bing you and yours. Then can you not see that the "good boss"
or the "bad boss" cuts no figure whatever? that you are the
common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery?
Can you not see that it is the industrial system and not the
"boss" which must be changed?
Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are go-
ing by, and you have no employment, and consequently can
save up nothing, and when the winter's blast sweeps down from
the north, and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice,
hearken not to the voice of the hypocrite who will tell you that
it was ordained of God that "the poor ye have always"; or to the
arrogant robber who will say to you that you "drank up all your
wages last summer when you had work, and that is the reason
why you have nothing now, and the workhouse or the woodyard
is too good for you; that you ought to be shot." And shoot you
they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner.
So hearken not to them, but list! Next winter, when the cold
blasts are creeping through the rents in your seedy garments;
when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your
worn-out shoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have cen-
tered in and upon you; when misery has marked you for her
own, and life has become a burden and existence a mockery;
when you have walked the streets by day, and slept upon hard
boards by night, and at last determined by your own hand to
take your life — for you would rather go out into utter nothing-
ness than to longer endure an existence which has become such
a burden — so, perchance, you determine to dash yourself into
the cold embrace of the lake rather than longer suffer thus. But
halt before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your
simple existence. Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure
those whom you are about to orphan against a like fate? The
waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but
stroll you down the avenues of the rich, and look through the
magnificent plate windows into their voluptuous homes, and
here you will discover the very identical robbers who have de-
spoiled you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here!
Awaken them from their wanton sports at your expense. Send
forth your petition, and let them read it by the red glare of de-
struction. Thus when you cast "one long, lingering look be-
hind," you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers
in the only language which they have ever been able to under-
stand; for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition
from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red
glare bursting from the cannons' mouths, or that was not
handed to them upon the point of the sword. You need no or-
ganization when you make up your mind to present this kind of
petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you;
but each of you hungry tramps who read these lines avail your-
selves of those little methods of warfare which Science has
placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a
power in this or any other land.
Learn the use of explosives!
Dedicated to the tramps by
Lucy E. Parsons.
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