American Folksongs of Protest

Welleslev College Library + ej lacuna + EDITH BUTLER FOOL This book-plate was designed in 1909 by Edith Butler Pool (Class of 1896) for her library. It seems appropriate that it should be used to mark the books purchased for the Department of English Literature through her memorial bequest i o 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/americanfolksongOOgree merican oiKsonos of Protest John Greenway Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 1953 Copyright 1953 University of Pennsylvania Press Manufactured in the United States of America Published in Great Britain India, and Pakistan by Geoffrey Cumberlege Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi 28413 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 53—6929 TO RUTH Preface The songs of the working people have always been their sharpest statement, and the one statement that cannot be destroyed. You can burn books, buy newspapers, you can guard against handbills and pamphlets, but you cannot pre- vent singing. For some reason it has always been lightly thought that singing people are happy people. Nothing could be more untrue. The greatest and most enduring songs are wrung from unhappy people—the spirituals of the slaves which say in effect— "It is hopeless here, maybe in heaven it will be better." Songs are the statement of a people. You can learn more about people by listening to their songs than any other way, for into the songs go all the hopes and hurts, the angers, fears, the wants and aspirations. —John Steinbeck. From the earliest periods of American history the oppressed people forming the broad base of the social and economic pyramid have been singing of their discontent. What they have said has not always been pleasant, but it has always been worth listening to, if only as the expression of a people whose pride and expectation of a better life have traditionally been con- sidered attributes of the American nation. Yet the more literate persons to whom the songs of protest have frequently been directed have stopped their ears, allowing many worth-while and often noble songs to vanish with the memories of the folk who made them. The purpose of this study is to stimulate the inception of a corrective movement which will consider, evaluate, and preserve those songs still remaining to us. It is, therefore, an introduction rather than a scientific analysis, an impressionistic panorama rather than a blueprint. While it has been impossible to achieve com- pleteness in a work designed to open a previously unexploited vein of American folk culture, I am confident that the picture of our singing protest presented by the songs, stories, and descriptions that I have selected as representative of thousands of others neces- sarily omitted is not an inaccurate one. For those good things which readers may find in this study I am indebted to many people. To Professor MacEdward Leach, who persuaded me to abandon my share of those inhibitions which have denied these songs the scholarly consideration they have deserved, and who supervised the work with a faith in its value transcending my own, I am especially grateful. My gratitude is due also to University of Pennsylvania professors Matthias Shaaber, Sculley Bradley, Edgar Potts, and Wallace E. Davies, who read the manuscript and offered suggestions for its improvement; to Pete Seeger, Dr. Charles Seeger, Dr. Wayland Hand, Lawrence Gellert, Irwin Silber, Dr. Philip S. Foner, Alan Lomax, and Dr. Herbert Halpert, who led me to much material I might otherwise have overlooked; to Moses Asch, for allowing me to quote freely from his copyright holdings of recorded material; to the gracious and ever-patient library workers, particularly those at Brown Uni- versity and the American Antiquarian Society, who made available to me numerous broadsides and songsters from the early years of our nation; and most of all, to Aunt Molly Jackson, Woody Guthrie, Harry McClintock, Joe Glazer, and the hundreds of nameless composers who wrote this book, and whom I served in the office of a sometimes presumptuous amanuensis. And of course to my wife, who ministered with unflagging good humor to a bear in the house during the composition of this book. Contents PAGE introduction 1 The Position of Songs of Protest in Folk Literature — The Genesis of the Protest Folksongs — The Structure of the Modern Protest Song 1 An Historical Survey 21 The Aristocracy and Limited Tenure of Office — Impris- onment for Debt — Dissolution of the Landed Aristoc- racy (New York Anti-Rent War, Dorr Rebellion) — The Movement for a Shorter Working Day — The Irish Immigrant — The Knights of Labor — The General Strike — The Single Tax Movement — The Freight Han- dlers' Strike — The Pullman Strike — The People's Party — Coxey's Army — Hard Times — The Urge to Com- placency 2. Negro Songs of Protest 67 The Social Background — The Spirituals — Secular Songs — The Songs: White Abolitionists — Negro Abolition- ists — Slavery Days — Underground Railroad — Jubilee Songs, Negro — Jubilee Songs, White Ventriloquism — Disillusion — Chain Gang Songs — The New "Bad Man" Ballads 3. The Songs of the Textile Workers 121 The Marion Strike — The Gastonia Strike — Miscellane- ous Textile Songs 4. The Songs of the Miners 1 47 The Ludlow Massacre — The 1913 Massacre — The Davidson-Wilder Strike — Miscellaneous Songs from the Coal Fields 5. The Migratory Workers 173 The Making of a Movement: The Wobblies — The Making of a Legend: Joe Hill — The Making of a Folk- song: "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" — The Migrants 6. Songs of the Farmers 209 7. A Labor Miscellany 225 The Automobile Workers — The Steel Workers — Sea- men and Longshoremen — The Lumber Workers 8. The Song-Makers 243 Ella May Wiggins — Aunt Molly Jackson — Woody Guthrie — Joe Glazer Appendix 311 Songs of Social and Economic Protest on Records Bibliography 329 List of Composers 339 List of Songs and Ballads 341 Index 345 Musical transcriptions by Edmund F. Soule Introduction The position of songs of protest in folk literature When the lowborn ballad maker composed his lyrical descriptions of lords and ladies in the dazzling splendor of their rich red velvet robes and silken kirtles and habiliments worth a hundred pounds, did he ever look down upon his own coarse garments? Did his wife ever look at her own red rough hands as she sang about the lily-white fingers of her mistress? When the varlet polished the knight's sollerets, did he ever think about their weight on his back? After the groom had put away the golden saddle and led to its stall his master's berry-brown steed, did he ever look at his own bed in the straw and reflect upon the similar- ity of the beast's estate and his own? If we are to judge by the English and Scottish ballads that have come down to us, these inequalities never occurred to the medieval peasantry; they ac- 2 * American folksongs of protest cepted the kicks, curses, and deprivations of their station in abject servility, and sang only in admiration of the heaven-appointed aristocracy. But folksong cannot be dissociated from sociology; and the social history of the Middle Ages proves that the common man was aware of the injustice of aristocratic oppression, that he revolted against it and, furthermore, that he sang against it. On June 14, 1381, the peasant army that Wat Tyler led against London buoyed its determination with the couplet When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman? which is congeneric to the refrains that nearly six centuries later are being sung on picket lines. There are other modern analogues that support the inference that there was considerable vocal protest against social and economic inequalities in the folk expression of the Middle Ages. The medieval folk who, in their desperate need for militant champions, adopted and idealized such a dubious altruist as Robin Hood, established a tradition that their distant posterity continue with ballads about Jesse James, Pretty Boy Floyd, Matthew Kimes, and other criminals whose only identity with the cause of the oppressed was their temporarily succcessful flouting of laws the poor often found dis- criminatory. Present-day subversive political organizations have ancient analogues in the medieval witch cults that in all probabil- ity were seeking objectives beyond the dissolution of the Church, and which had songs full of potential symbolism. 1 And John Ball's exhortations to his followers to persist in "one-head" are only linguistically different from the appeals of modern labor leaders who reiterate the necessity for union. The traditional ballads provide evidence to show that they arose from an area of social enlightenment sufficiently well de- veloped to have produced songs of more overt protest than those extant; "Glasgerion," "The Golden Vanity," "Lord Delamere," "Botany Bay," "Van Diemen's Land," "The Cold Coast of Green- land," and many similar pieces are pregnant with social signifi- cance that could not conceivably have escaped the consciousness of their singers. But except for these hints of social consciousness 1 Cf. "The Cutty Wren," p. 110, in which the wren is possibly a symbol of the people under feudal tyranny. Introduction * 3 and some possible symbolic protest deeply imbedded in the traditional songs and ballads, and a few scattered manuscripts of pieces like "The Song of the Husbandman," nothing remains of the songs of protest that must have been produced by the social up- heaval resulting from the decline of the feudal aristocracy and the rise of merchant capitalism, two movements that ground the working class between them. Unquestionably these songs dis- appeared for the same reasons that the body of song represented by the selections in this collection will not survive.

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