Mary Heaton Vorse Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Socialist Party emphatically rejects the proposal that in times of war, the workers should suspend their struggle for better conditions.

Am I allowed to suggest that we owe much to these stubborn and sectarian people, those indefatigable strikers who take over our factories and bring disorder to our streets, these obstinate creatures who ceaselessly fought for reforms while fantasizing of the Revolution, these Marxists who, marching against the current of History, disturbed the complacent sleep of capitalism? … Communism is dead. Let us rejoice.

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

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.

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

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

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.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

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

Trade unionism is not a discovery or a formula. It grew and evolved slowly out of the needs of human experience.

If I ever thought it necessary, if I thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply for an injunction against them just as quickly as against so many capitalists.

The hospital strikers have demonstrated that you don't get a job done unless you show the Man you're not afraid...If you're not willing to pay that price, then you don't deserve the rewards or benefits that go along with it.

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

In a situation like that obtaining in Germany, I can only conceive a political general strike as a unique event in which the entire proletariat throughout the nation engages with all its might, as a life-and-death struggle, one in which our adversary is beaten down or else all our organizations, all our strength shattered or at least paralysed for years to come

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.

Here live women, the mothers of many children, who work at night. These women have never rested. They do not know what an unburdened hour is. Five nights a week for ten hours they work for a quarter an hour at midnight.

The trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

Solidarity Forever

One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.

There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.