… The sombre one whose brow
Is seared by all the fires and ne’er will bow
Shall come forth, both his hands upon the hilt.
Whatever its future, the I. W. W. has accomplished one tremendously big thing—a thing that sweeps away all twaddle over red flags and violence and sabotage. And that is the individual awakening of “illiterates” and “scum” to an original, personal conception of society and the realization of the dignity and the rights of their part in it. They have learned more than class-consciousness; they have learned consciousness of self. The I. W. W. is making the “wop” into a thinker. And that is what Giovannitti wrote in his Proem when he said of his own verses:
They are the blows of my own sledge
Against the walls of my own jail.
[1] Arrows in the Gale. By Arturo Giovannitti. The Hillacre Book House.
EMERSON
A Mystic Who Lives Again in His Journals[2]
Warren Barton Blake