Ida M. Van Etten Quotes

The picket line is the best place to train organizers. One day on the picket line is where a man makes his commitment. The longer on the picket line, the stronger the commitment. A lot of workers think they make their commitment by walking off the job when nobody sees them. But you get a guy to walk off the field when his boss is watching and, in front of the other guys, throw down his tools and march right to the picket line, that is the guy who makes our strike. The picket line is a beautiful thing because it makes a man more human.

The present miner has had his day; he has been oppressed and ground down and denied the right to live as a human being; but there is another generation coming up, a generation of little children prematurely doomed to the whirl of the mill and the soot and the noise and the blackness of the breaker. It is for them that we are fighting.

That's the Rebel Girl, That's the Rebel Girl. To the working class she's a precious pearl. She brings courage, pride and joy To the fighting Rebel Boy We've had girls before, but we need some more In the Industrial Workers of the World For it's great to fight for freedom With a Rebel Girl

At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

A divided labor movement hurts the prospects of union members and it makes me very angry.

The courts may have their finest hours, but they'll not break us. We will not settle for one penny less than our objectives. The judge can drop dead in his black robes. I don't care if I rot in jail. I will not call off the strike.

We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers -- we were all poor -- we were all overworked -- we were all victims of the 84 hour week. In fact, we were all so low down on the economic and social ladder that we had nowhere to go but up

To permit ourselves to be provoked into violence would mean defeating ourselves; our real power is in our solidarity and our capacity to endure suffering rather than to give up the fight for the right to organize; no one can weave wool with machine guns; that cheerfulness was better for morale than bitterness and that therefore we would smile as we passed the machine guns and the police on the way from the hall to the picket lines around the mills.

It was the spirit of the workers that was dangerous. They are always marching and singing. The tired, gray crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their months to sing.

Twenty thousand textile workers in Lawrence had walked out against a wage cut. It was a sudden, unplanned uprising. A fifty-four-hour week for women and children had been put into effect in Massachusetts, and the textile industry employed so many women and children that it meant a fifty-four-hour week for everyone. Consequently, there was a wage cut. It was a small cut, but it meant "four loaves of bread" to the workers.

Solidarity forever …. We stand outcast and starving from the wonders we have made.

Solidarity Forever

The only way a workingman can get anything is by collective bargaining, and by saying "If you don't give us a raise, not only will I quit but we will all quit and tie up your business

The strike is the weapon of the oppressed, of men capable of appreciating justice and having the courage to resist wrong and contend for principle. The nation had for its cornerstone a strike.

I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.

Any member of the party who … advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation, shall be expelled from membership of the party.

The Socialists are no fomenters of strikes; they know too well that a strike is a two-edged weapon, wounding the proletariat more deeply and more grievously than the capitalist. But, when the strike is declared, they take their part in the fight. They organize and assist the workers, protecting them against the snares of the police and the brutality of the military, and giving them such moral and material support as is in their power

A rise of prices necessarily results in a diminution of the enjoyments of the laboring class until they can force the employers, through a long process of agitation, to make an increase in their wages.

To the workman we appeal by the memory and traditions of his own sufferings and wrongs to be vigilant to avoid the great guilt of inflicting upon his fellow-citizens the injustice from which he has himself escaped.

If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop.

The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity

No one has a copyright on working-class struggles.

I can identify with steelworkers. I can identify with workers that have had a difficult time.

The men in the steel industry who sacrificed their all were nor merely aiding their fellows at home but were adding strength to the cause of their comrades in all industry.

If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.