Woody Sez: Woody Guthrie in the People's World Newspaper

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WOODY SEZ: WOODY GUTHRIE IN THE PEOPLE’S WORLD NEWSPAPER

MATTHEW DOWER BLAKE

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2006

Matthew Dower Blake

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

LIST OF TABLES...... v

ABSTRACT...... vi

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Three Inquiries...... 2 Literature Review ...... 4 Statement of Primary Sources ...... 10 Methodology...... 12 Structure of Dissertation...... 17 Notes...... 18

2 DUST BOWL ...... 20

Before the Dust Bowl ...... 21 The Dust Bowl...... 22 Woody Guthrie in the Dust Bowl ...... 23 Guthrie’s Dust Bowl in the People’s World...... 25 Notes...... 37

3 LANGUAGE ...... 41

Folk Literature ...... 42 Guthrie's Phrases...... 45 Guthrie's Spelling ...... 46 Beyond the Newspaper...... 61 Notes...... 64

4 CALIFORNIA ...... 67

People’s World ...... 68 Guthrie and Prominent California Leftists ...... 70 Standard of Living ...... 77 Guthrie as Policy Advocate ...... 82

iii

Notes...... 87

5 WAR...... 91

The Buildup to World War...... 92 Guthrie and the European Conflict...... 94 Guthrie and the Pacific Conflict ...... 96 Economic Considerations and War ...... 99 Guthrie’s Anti-War Message...... 101 Notes...... 103

6 NEW YORK...... 105

Wall Street ...... 107 Physical Disorientation...... 110 Music in New York ...... 112 Washington...... 114 Notes...... 116

7 CONCLUSION...... 119

Relationship with Audience...... 121 Guthrie’s Media Criticism ...... 123 Guthrie as Adman...... 126 Future Research ...... 129 Notes...... 132

APPENDIX PRIMARY SOURCES...... 135

LIST OF REFERENCES...... 137

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 143

LIST OF TABLES

Table page

3-1 Phrasings in Guthrie's People’s World column...... 46

3-1 Wells’ lexical sets...... 49

3-2 Vowel substitution...... 51

3-3 Consonant substitution ...... 53

3-4 Subtraction of letters...... 54

3-5 Addition of letters...... 55

3-6 Transposition of letters...... 56

3-7 Double letters in misspellings ...... 57

3-8 Examples of misspellings in personal correspondence and the World ...... 62

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

WOODY SEZ: WOODY GUTHRIE IN THE PEOPLE’S WORLD NEWSPAPER

Matthew Dower Blake

August 2006

Chair: William McKeen Major Department: Journalism and Communications

This study evaluates the newspaper writings of Woody Guthrie that appeared in the People’s World newspaper during an eighteen-month period beginning May 1939 and ending November 1940. While widely recognized as a songwriter, little scholastic attention has been paid toward Guthrie’s newspaper work. To accommodate this shortcoming, this examination evaluates the “Woody Sez” column by using content analysis of both broadly conceived themes of Guthrie’s writing as well as more narrowly considered features, such as his use of language.

This study is organized using a historical narrative approach that follows

Guthrie’s biography during the period he contributed to the People’s World and addressing themes found in his writing. Six major components are addressed. First is the evaluation of Guthrie as a dust bowl migrant, whose newspaper column permitted an opportunity for the expression from a migrant’s perspective. Regardless of subject matter, Guthrie’s writing used a unique manner of spelling and grammar; his method of idiomatic composition is the second component of this study. Third is Guthrie’s

discussion of the social and political conditions in California, which he addressed through his support of individual public policies and well-known state activists. The build-up toward the Second World War coincided with his column, and Guthrie’s discussion of the conflict, and more broadly, the ignobility of war, is the fourth focus of this study. The author evaluates Guthrie’s columns during his 1940 residence in New York City before concluding by addressing Guthrie’s role as a media contributor and critic.

vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Woody Guthrie is recognized as a songwriter, artist, political activist, sufferer of

Huntington’s disease, and more generally, as an American icon. His “This Land is Your

Land” is recognized as both an alternative national anthem and reaction to private property rights, his dust bowl ballads joined Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Dorothea

Lange’s photography as cultural representations of the Depression-era dust bowl migration and settlement, his ultimate demise to Huntington’s chorea allowed greater understanding of the genetic disorder. Less well known, yet equally significant, is

Guthrie's eighteen-month tenure as contributor to People’s World, the San Francisco- based Communist Party newspaper, where he composed a regular column and cartoons for the publication during a two-year period (1939-1940).

This study will investigate his 253 columns and 98 cartoons composed for the

People’s World that first appeared May 1939 and concluded November 1940. Published from California during 1939 and New York City during 1940, the “Woody Sez” columns address a variety of subjects that reflect Guthrie’s lived experience during the period: observations from the California migrant camps and Los Angeles’ skid row, discussions of family life during the close of the depression, and criticisms of the impending war and the mass media, among other subjects. Guthrie’s columns were small, usually only occupying a few column inches and containing less than 1,000 words and used a unique

1 2

written dialect that mimicked oral delivery through use of creative spelling and syntax.

In an attempt to gain a broader understanding of Guthrie's work and convictions, his

columns were content analyzed for broad themes—dust bowl representation, build-up to

war, public policy—and language use. Beyond his newspaper work, other primary

sources include his song texts and recordings, recorded interviews, and coinciding

personal correspondence and publications (most notably Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit

People, a songbook that featured Guthrie's song notes). These primary sources will be analyzed to complete a larger understanding of Guthrie, his association with the People’s

World during the period, and his ethos expressed in the newspaper and other coinciding sources (so far as these can be discovered).

Three Inquiries

In evaluating the newspaper work of Woody Guthrie, three primary inquiries will be addressed. The first inquiry is to gain a greater understanding of Guthrie using

material created during the eighteen-month time period while he contributed to the

People’s World. This can be accomplished with temporal-spatial understanding of

Guthrie's travels and the determination of what he witnessed and what he deemed

important for comment in the People’s World. During the period that he contributed to

the newspaper Guthrie engaged many communities that were reflected in his newspaper

column and his political beliefs; these include his Southwestern origins, the California

settlement camps and Los Angeles during 1939, and New York City during 1940. In

each of these communities Guthrie encountered individuals and groups that helped shape

his socio-political convictions and provide material central to his column. As a columnist, Guthrie represented at least one of these social groups—the dust bowl migrants—and emphasized their struggle throughout his column. But Guthrie also

maintained relationships with more prominent figures in society and often noted these associations. In both cases, these associations helped establish Guthrie’s media identity, and this study hopes to further establish how these relationships helped to shape his newspaper content.

The second primary inquiry is Guthrie's use of language, specifically his use of idiomatic representations of common terms in his People’s World column. Guthrie’s use of unique, colloquial spellings and grammar often existed somewhere between the formal format of the printed word and the informality of the spoken word; to what degree these represented an expression of a folk or community is unknown and perhaps unknowable.

But investigating this unique use of Guthrie's language across different media will

hopefully allow a greater understanding of Guthrie's communication with each audience.

This also will help aide an understanding of Guthrie's identity with the reader or the listener.

Lastly, the third primary inquiry involves the specific messages Guthrie conveys

in his newspaper column. While writing in a vernacular voice and incorporating personal

associations into his prose, Guthrie communicates political, social and cultural judgments

addressing issues of the two-year period. Some of these judgments are explicitly

political, such as his promotion of individual state or federal policies designed to

redistribute wealth. Others are observations encountered in his travels and lived

experience, such as living conditions in migrant camps or skid row in Los Angeles. In

both cases the perception of a socio-economic divide shapes the column, which reflects a

commitment to narrowing the financial divide through policy promotion and social

observation. But other messages exist as well. International affairs are also a prominent

subject in Guthrie’s column, specifically the European and Pacific conflicts that

eventually led to the Second World War. Cultural institutions—such as the popular press and financial organizations—are also given principal consideration in his column. These are among the broad themes that Guthrie addressed and this study is largely the identification and organization of individual messages exhibited in this column.

Literature Review

Woody Guthrie has been the subject of scholarly examination in two primary areas: the popular biography and the fields of folklore. Klein was first to pen a popular

press Guthrie biography and nearly 25 years later Cray contributed another.1 Each

frames Guthrie's life in a similar chronology: childhood in Okemah, Oklahoma and

Pampa, Texas; a migratory early adulthood spent primarily in Los Angeles and New

York during which he initiated in music career and wrote for the People’s World;

Guthrie's thirties, which were marked by periods in the Merchant Marine during the

Second World War and the initial onset of Huntington’s chorea, as well as latter musical

recordings such as the “Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti”; his physical and psychological

decline that occurred due to Huntington’s during the late 1940s and early 1950s; and his

final period marked by seclusion and finally death in 1967. While both biographies are

exhaustive in their research, neither critically examines Guthrie's newspaper work;

instead both use his columns as primary documents to aide in his life’s chronology.

Formal scholarship concerning Guthrie's cultural contributions is confined to the

fields of folklore and musicology. Alan Lomax “discovered” Guthrie at a 1940 New

York City benefit for farm workers and shortly thereafter recorded Guthrie at the Library of Congress. John Greenway’s American Folksongs of Protest was the first text to

examine Guthrie's songwriting in the context of social commentary while considering

Guthrie's unique identity.2 It is his experienced tragedies—his mother’s insanity and

eventual death in a house fire, his daughter’s premature death, his children’s racial

bigotry he detested—that framed Guthrie's self-professed “honeriness” that resulted in his

unique emotional statements in song, according to Greenway. In his recollections of

experiences with Guthrie, Greenway recalls a prolific songwriter, whose identity is determined by his surroundings, both personal and socio-political. Greenway’s discussion is primarily concerned with Guthrie's songwriting in the folksong canon, where Guthrie's work evolves from a strictly oral tradition basis to a greater dependence on literary sources that informed his later material.

Reuss published two pieces concerning Guthrie and his occasional band mates, the Almanac Singers.3 While much of Guthrie’s material was created individually and

without great contributions from the communities that the material represented, Reuss

argues that Guthrie demands investigation in the field of folklore that is traditionally

concerned with material that is the creation of a broader collection of individuals.

Guthrie, Reuss notes, moved between many groups during his life—rural Okies and

Arkies, Greenwich Village elites, Hollywood communists, Western laborers—and thus

became the embodiment of the Noble Savage to some, the down-home singer and

commentator to others. Like Greenway, Reuss notes Guthrie's incorporation of written

works for song material in a series of “newspaper ballads.” Beyond the use of Guthrie's

column as primary documents, Reuss, like Greenway and other folklore scholars, does

not attempt the critical analysis proposed in this study.

In September 1996, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum inducted

Guthrie and hosted an American Music Masters event and conference in his name. The

conference featured both scholarship and personal recollections, as recorded in Hard

Travelin’ – The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie.4 The publication contains the text of recollections by Pete Seeger, Harold Leventhal and Arlo Guthrie that vividly recall the

personal relationships Woody Guthrie maintained; equally valuable are the essays

examining his work and impact on American society. Santelli examines Guthrie's impact

on rock and roll—especially through the songs of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteeen;

Werner evaluates Guthrie as a writer by looking at his published work (although only briefly touching on his newspaper work); Landau considers Guthrie as an artist and notes his artistic evolution coinciding with Huntington’s chorea; Cohen considers his affiliation

(or non-affiliation) with the Communist Party; and Cantwell builds on Lomax’s concept of Guthrie as a Pict to define his unique physical characteristics and near-universal

appeal. These essays offer much analysis and valuable secondary sources, however, like

other Guthrie-related publications, his newspaper work is never critically evaluated nor

considered beyond a primary document source.

While the literature reviewed to this point has discussed Guthrie in a folklore and

biographical domain, more circumstantially related material exists also. The People’s

World newspaper is a primary consideration in Al Richmond’s A Long View From the

Left.5 Richmond was introduced as the newspaper’s editor in 1938, during its

transformation from the Western Worker to the publication where Guthrie’s column

appeared. The Western Worker, which lacked creativity and interest, was reintroduced as

the colorful People’s World that offered a sports page, a Sunday magazine, colorful

photographs and regular columnists including Guthrie. Richmond’s biography provides

valuable insights into the newspaper, which is often overlooked in favor of its East-coast

counterpart, the Daily Worker. Meanwhile, Guthrie’s association with the Los Angeles

editor of the People’s World, Ed Robbin, is recollected in Robbin’s Woody Guthrie and

Me (1979), which contains first-person accounts of Guthrie’s activity during his time contributing to the newspaper.

The late 1930s and early 1940s have been characterized as dominated by conservative philosophies of popular newspapers, whose editors and owners were often fearful of the fiscal consequences of the era’s New Deal legislation. This characterization is the accepted scholarly explanation of the popular press’ editorial policy during the

Depression and contrasts with the sympathetic voices the migrants and laborers found in the Communist Party press.6 The extent of the popular press’s conservatism was not limited to the written word but was also found in the editorial cartoons of the period, which, unlike WPA photographers of the period, failed in portraying the hardships.

Discussions about the history of the American editorial cartoon are found in Lamb’s

Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons in the United States (2004) and Hess & Northrop’s Drawn and Quartered: The History of American Political

Cartoons.7

Individuals intimately related to Guthrie have published recollections of their

association. Longhi’s Woody, Cisco and Me (1996) describes their period together in the

Merchant Marine, including an much-cited episode in which Guthrie subverts the

military’s wartime segregation policy in demanding that African-American soldiers be

allowed to perform with him during a Nazi submarine attack. Beyond these works, an

exhaustive collection of songbooks exists that focus on, or feature Guthrie's

compositions.

Guthrie has been associated with several movements and occurrences in twentieth-century American society: the 1930s dust bowl and subsequent migration, the

1930s Popular Front movement, the federal government’s projects during the late 1930s

(by way of his employment and songwriting at the Bonneville Power Administration), the

Red Scare of the 1950s, the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Each of these offers bibliographies too vast to adequately address here, but several texts are instrumental in a general understanding of the context of Guthrie's work.

Perhaps the most exhaustive study of the dust bowl and its migration is American

Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California, in which Gregory discovers many relevant characteristics of the phenomenon.8 The refutation of the migration as being a primarily rural movement—both in terms of origin and settlement— is a critical component and agrees with Guthrie's experiences with migrants in Los

Angeles’ Skid Row and the more widely acknowledged rural work camps. Gregory also examines the Bakersfield-centered country music genesis and discusses the cultural representations of the migrants. While Gregory focuses on the cultural manifestations of the migration, Worster’s Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s examines the ecological and sociological origins of the storms that came to signify the Depression-era suffering of those who migrated to California.9 It is in this work—that helped define the field of environmental history—where the researcher finds scientific verification of

Guthrie's accounts of the storms.

During the 1930s, the existence of New Deal programs helped preserve traditional music, due at least in part to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s appreciation of American vernacular music. The introduction of federal funding allowed the formation of the

Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk-song, headed by Alan Lomax who first

recorded Guthrie in 1940 and subsequently promoted his “Dust Bowl Ballads.” Thus, as

Filene’s Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music demonstrates,

Guthrie and his cultural creations were not simply a reaction to Depression-era financial

distress but also an indirect consequence of the government programs designed to combat

such distress.10 Beyond the recording of Guthrie, support of traditional music of the era

included the songs of Huddie Ledbedder (Leadbelly), Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and the

Almanac Singers. These musicians initiated a renewed interest in folk music that

culminated in the 1960s with the emergence of Bob Dylan and popular musicians who

drew on the music of the 1930s and 1940s.

The renaissance of American traditional music coincided with a larger political

movement that encouraged collective cultural creation. In 1935, the Popular Front emerged at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International that called for

Communists to embrace former political adversaries, including American liberals and socialists. Prior to this moment, Communist International considered the collapse of capitalism to be eminent and believed that the 1930s Depression would initiate this breakdown. Political success for the Left during this period was not limited to

Roosevelt’s victories, but included victories by less centrist candidates: Huey Long in

Louisiana, Floyd Olson in Minnesota, and Upton Sinclair, who won the Democratic candidacy in the 1932 California gubernatorial election. The Popular Front was an attempt to internationally isolate the Nazis; in the United States, where the Communists had fought for the Scottsboro boys and other victims of racial inequality, the movement was considered attractive to many. It is this acceptance, writes Liebermann in “My Song

is My Weapon”, which motivated eighty- to ninety-thousand persons to join the CPUSA

in 1939 and incorporate many cultural forms into its movement, including People’s

Songs.11 The relative solidarity of the Left during the late 1930s was short-lived

however; when Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler on August 22, 1939,

American Communists scrambled for a justification. Some justified the non-aggression

treaty by claiming the Soviets were simply pro-peace, but following the Poland raids, the

CPUSA deemed their Soviet counterparts as liberators. A thorough discussion of the

Popular Front period and the 1930s Communist movement is found in Weinstein’s The

Long Detour – The History and Future of the American Left.12

Statement of Primary Sources

This study is concerned with Woody Guthrie's newspaper columns and required

collection at the Library of Congress during May 2004. Two years of People’s Daily

World were examined on microfilm in the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading

Room, where the collection existed in the Madison Building under the call number

“Newspaper Microfilm 2521.” Photocopies of the microfilm were created and dated. As noted previously, his newspaper columns were 253 in number, most often appearing on page four of the World until the editorial page moved to page five. His cartoon work for the newspaper most often appeared on page one but during 1940 occasionally appeared on page four. These are the foremost primary documents for this study and will be analyzed for content, language and subject. However his newspaper column only represents a fraction of Guthrie's material created during this period and his books, song texts, audio recordings and personal correspondence will be analyzed as well.

First, two Guthrie-written publications will be considered. Hard-hitting Songs for

Hard Hit People was written during Guthrie’s period as a contributor to the People’s

World. Authored by Alan Lomax, Hard-hitting Songs for Hard Hit People offers song notes written by Guthrie that use similar idioms found in his newspaper column, as well as discussions of his songwriting inspiration accompanying his original material. This text was analyzed and compared to his People’s World content. Bound for Glory was published during 1942, almost two years after Guthrie concluded his tenure at People’s

World, nevertheless it remains a valuable resource for both Guthrie’s biography and writing style. This study uses Bound for Glory for comparison of Guthrie’s unique spelling (Chapter 3).

Second, Guthrie song texts offer a promising primary source during this two-year period. His Library of Congress Recordings, recorded with Alan Lomax during May

1939, provide an aural complement to Guthrie's written material. The recordings contain his famous dust bowl ballads that discuss the conditions of the migrants and reflecting the class-consciousness apparent in his other work during the period. Equally important, the

Library of Congress Recordings provide valuable interviews between Guthrie and Alan and Elizabeth Lomax that address his personal history, his process of song creation and the experience of migration. The incorporation of spoken interviews, song texts and written content allow the methodological triangulation to yield discoveries often prohibited with the incorporation of a single source.

Third, his personal correspondence during this period, which has been maintained by the Library of Congress and the Woody Guthrie Foundation, offer the final primary source. Usually addressed to family members, Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax and others, these correspondences offer at least two research considerations: chronology and use of language. Charting a daily existence for Guthrie is often a difficult chore; he rarely

remained in the same locale for a long period during this time and his newspaper column

required submission prior to publication and therefore cannot be considered an accurate account of Guthrie's whereabouts. His letters during this period often provide a date and location, which assists in the discovery of his travels during which he submitted newspaper articles. His correspondence also provides important insight about his natural form of writing. While his newspaper articles used unique spelling and grammar to represent oral pronunciation, Guthrie's correspondence was often more properly composed in terms of grammar and idiomatic writing. The relationship between his writing for the newspaper versus his personal correspondence—both have unique audiences—will inform us about Guthrie's media identity and self-portrayal in the newspaper.

Methodology

This examination follows the narrative model of historical scholarship, which often discourages formal discussion of methodology in hopeful preservation of the fluid narrative. But the method of discovery will be briefly addressed here. The primary method is content analysis, which for our purposes most closely aligns with Holsti’s definition: “Content analysis is any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages.”13 Content analysis will

be employed using two primary techniques: Grammatical and spelling analysis and

theme-based analysis.

Grammatical and spelling analysis

Grammatical and spelling analysis will use the individual word in Guthrie's

column as the unit of analysis to establish patterns of unique linguistic representation.

This has been identified as a unique feature of the column by the author in two refereed

conference presentations.14 When noting individual instances of misspellings the author identified only the initial appearance of the term; this limitation was required due to the frequency of misspellings and grammatical errors.

In identifying patterns of grammatical error, preliminary types of representation have been identified:

• Misspellings to reflect political statements. In Guthrie's column, his written language often reflects larger themes; for example, his use of “ploticians” and “plotics” to represent “politicians” and “politics” is a reflection of his distrust of conventional party politics. This theme is echoed in his criticism of California politics (“Scarecramento” is Guthrie's spelling of “Sacramento,” California’s state capital), and international affairs (“Lamechamber” is Guthrie's representation of Neville Chamberlain following his signing of an appeasement pact with Hitler).

• Misspellings to reflect oral pronunciation. Whether to reflect authenticity with his audience or used as a literary technique, Guthrie's motivation for spelling words to match oral pronunciation is unknown but common in his column. His oral representation was found to follow six broadly conceived techniques. First, Guthrie often substitutes one vowel for another within a word; for example, spelling “get” as “git.” Second, sometimes a consonant is substituted for another consonant; for example “banquet” spelled as “bankuet.” Third, the subtraction of letters sometimes resulted in an oral reading of words in his column. Fourth, Guthrie would transpose letters (“poet” spelled as “pote”). Fifth, the addition of letters would sometimes be used to emphasize a particular syllable (“sure” spelled as “shure”). Lastly, his spelling employs dual lettering when the correct spelling employs both vowels and consonants: “would” becomes “wood,” “could” becomes “cood,” “figure” becomes “figger.”

Subject analysis

Subject-based analysis was employed to gain a broader understanding of the column and its contents. This type of analysis moves beyond the single word to include phrases, paragraphs and entire articles as units of analysis. A considerable range of terms and concepts were considered, roughly aligning with the following eight subjects: geography (both cultural and physical), the dust bowl and its migrants, economic disparity among social classes, endorsement and criticism of domestic public policy,

criticism of the Second World War and international affairs, criticism of the popular press, and discussion of music and musicians. Let’s consider each subject individually:

• Geography, cultural. During his correspondence with the World, Guthrie discussed culture unique to geographic locale. The researcher coded any discussion of local culture, which ranged from the opulence of Hollywood to the taste of Texas hamburgers.

• Geography, physical. Concepts of physical geography – including urban design, distance between locales, natural geographic characteristics – were each coded by the researcher. Specific examples included Guthrie's description of building height in New York City and the relative distance between cities in the eastern and western United States.

• The dust bowl. The area most seriously impacted by 1930s dust storms (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado), the impact of the storms, and Guthrie's personal recollections of the storms were each coded by the researcher. Examples include Guthrie's discussion of local folklore (called “cyclone tales”) and his discussion of conditions endured during the subsequent migration.

• Economic disparity. Guthrie regularly addressed the economic disparities between dust bowl migrants and common laborers with others in society. These include, among other similar groups, California migrant camp residents, Southwestern farmers, Pacific coast longshoremen, denizens of Los Angeles’ Skid Row and New York City’s Bowery District, as well as more general descriptions of the economically disenfranchised.

• Endorsement and criticism of domestic public policy. Guthrie's column addresses public policy both critically and as an advocate. Any discussion of a specific public policy was coded. Examples include the End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement, the Ham and Eggs social program, the production for use instead of profit movement, and the legality of gambling boats in Los Angeles.

• World War Two. Both the Pacific and European fronts of the Second World War are discussed in Guthrie's column during the period of study. His column includes criticism of leaders of involved nations, discussion of wartime events, and a generally critical dialogue concerning the practice of war.

• Media criticism. This was noted and analyzed when Guthrie makes explicit criticisms of stories, editors, reporters or general editorial philosophy. His media criticism most often focused on two newspapers – the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Examiner – but also included radio station policies, such as undue advertiser influence on broadcasters.

• Music and musicians. In his column, Guthrie discussed music, musicians and the music industry. Any mention of a musical performance, a musician, the music

industry or creation of music was coded by the researcher. Examples include Guthrie's discussion of meeting musicians in New York City and performing in California labor camps.

These eight subjects and corresponding examples represent the researcher’s

coding schema for the theme-based analysis. The criterion here is Guthrie’s discussion of

a subject. The format of the discussion is varied since Guthrie operated in both cartoons

and text in the newspaper, either of these may be considered for analysis. These

examples are from his newspaper column but this study of course encompasses more

material than simply his World column. In this regard, the research design will account

for inter-media comparison: Guthrie's themes and language used in the newspaper

column compared to the content in his recorded music and interviews with Lomax, the

content in his Hard-hitting Songs for Hard Hit People, and his personal correspondences

during the period. Lastly, Guthrie's Bound for Glory is considered for comparative

analysis despite its not reaching publication until 1943.15 It is these comparisons that

potentially allow the discovery of Guthrie's use and avoidance of idiomatic language.

The nature of each medium – newspaper, songbook, non-fictional text, recorded

music – each provided a unique audience that likely influenced Guthrie’s language and

message. The People’s World, for example, was likely distributed to like-minded leftists

and Guthrie’s columns usually addressed the audience as a representative of the

migratory under-class. As will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, his methods of

accomplishing this was with the use of idiomatic language and the writing of passages

that reflected the life of a migrant. But his introduction to Alan Lomax, who prompted

Guthrie to contribute to Hard-hitting Songs and write the autobiographical Bound for

Glory, encouraged Guthrie to abandon the idiomatic language for subsequent texts.16

One witnesses the impact in Guthrie’s contributions to Hard-hitting Songs, the scholarly

songbook that contains little of the contrived spellings witnessed in the People’s World.

Later, when he composed the popular Bound for Glory, Guthrie reserved the idiomatic spelling for direct quotations and the dialects he encountered during his migration

(Chapter 3). It is important to distinguish these texts because each represents a unique audience and method of composition. Methods witnessed in the People’s World are unique to the medium and are not replicated in other texts.

It is also important to consider the spoken and musical form of communication that Guthrie often employed during this period. While not the focus of the present study, interviews and songs contained in the Library of Congress Recordings—recorded under the direction of Lomax during this period—provide an opportunity to compare the syntax, emphasis and pronunciation of Guthrie’s oral communication with his writing.

As demonstrated in Chapter 3, Guthrie’s People’s World spellings usually emphasize the vowel or syllable that is emphasized in the spoken form.

Temporal dimension

The final consideration for this research methodology concerns temporal dimensions. While periods prior to and following the publication of Guthrie’s newspaper column will be considered for context, the primary time period to be considered for this study begins May 12, 1939 and concludes November 29, 1940. This is appropriate for several reasons beyond being the bookends of his newspaper publication. First, this period is recognized as one of Guthrie's most prolific, during which he was first formally recorded, he wrote many well-known songs (including some dust bowl songs and “This

Land is Your Land”), he produced two publications, and was involved in the Communist

Movement, if only as a fellow-traveler. Secondly, this period marks a unique period in the history of the United States, when the Depression is considered to have concluded

and the Nazi appeasement pacts (and subsequent collapse of the pacts) with the British

and Russians occurred and United States was forced to reconsider its policy of

isolationism. It was within this context of a rapidly evolving world that Guthrie made his important contributions to United States society and culture.

Structure of Dissertation

This study is primarily organized through Guthrie’s involvement and commentary regarding events that roughly corresponds with decade of the 1930s and the year 1940, separated by a one-chapter discussion of Guthrie’s writing style. Chapter 2 discusses

Guthrie’s involvement in the dust bowl migration and his commentary about circumstances and conditions encountered by migrants. It attempts to follow Guthrie from his lived experience during the 1934 and 1935 dust storms through his 1937 settlement in California before looking at his discussion of the dust bowl in the People’s

World newspaper. Chapter 3 analyzes Guthrie’s writing style in his People’s World newspaper columns, specifically his improper spelling that often was a reflection of oral pronunciation. Chapter 4 resumes the biographical structure and addresses Guthrie’s

1939 residence in southern California and his introduction to the local media as a newspaper columnist and radio broadcaster. This chapter addresses Guthrie’s political advocacy during the period and his association with prominent California leftists.

Chapter 5 briefly addresses the late-1930s build-up toward the Second World War before examining Guthrie’s columns on the subject, which reflect an opposition to military conflict. Chapter 6 examines Guthrie’s columns during his 1940 residency in New York, a period that was marked by professional accomplishment and his integration into the

New York community as a musician. Chapter 7 concludes this study with an assessment of Guthrie’s role as a media figure in California and New York during the two years he

contributed to the People’s World. This chapter examines Guthrie’s role as a media critic and designer of People’s World advertisements before classifying his column in terms of conventional journalism scholarship.

Notes

1 Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1980). Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man – The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004).

2 John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (New York: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953).

3 Richard Reuss, “Woody Guthrie and His Folk Tradition,” The Journal of American Folklore (83): 273-303.

4 Robert Santelli and Emily Davidson (eds.), Hard Travelin’ – the Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999).

5 Al Richmond, A Long View from the Left (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).

6 See Wm. David Sloan, The Media in America: A History (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005).

7 Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop, Drawn & Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons (Montgomery, AL: Elliot & Clark, 1996).

8 James, N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989).

9 Donald Worster, Dust Bowl – The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979).

10 Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Folk Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

11 Robbie Lieberman, “My Song is My Weapon”: People’s Songs, American Communism and the Politics of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).

12 James Weinstein, The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left (Cambridge: Westview, 2003).

13 O. R. Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969).

14 See Matthew Blake, “The dust bowl representative in the Communist Party press: Woody Guthrie’s People’s World columns.” Presentation at the August 2005 national conference of AEJMC, San Antonio. Matthew Blake, “Woody Sez: Woody Guthrie as columnist (1939-1940).” Presentation at the March 2005 southeast regional colloquium of AEJMC, Athens, GA. Matthew Blake, “Promotional and political considerations in Woody Guthrie’s People’s World cartoons.” Presentation at the March 2006 southeast regional colloquium of AEJMC, Tuscaloosa, AL.

15 According to Cray, Bound for Glory was initially inspired by a request by Alan Lomax to Guthrie for autobiographical sketches, which Lomax deemed worthy of publication. The meeting occurred during Guthrie's tenure at the Daily People’s World; see Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004). The edition of Bound for Glory analyzed in this study is: Woody Guthrie, Bound For Glory (Chicago: Signet, 1943).

16 See Cray, 181.

CHAPTER 2 DUST BOWL

The dust storms that ravaged the central and western United States during the

1930s initiated a vast migration that defined a unique sub-cultural identity among the

diverse migrants. During a five-year period (1939–1940), from Oklahoma, Texas,

Arkansas and Missouri more than 250,000 persons traveled to California to flee

economic depression caused by agricultural mechanization, declining crop prices and

inclement conditions.1 The majority of migrants settled in metropolitan Los Angeles or

the San Joaquin valley, forging an Okie subculture defined by populist politics, a

Southwestern vernacular speech and country-western music. This understanding is due, in part, to the culture brokers who defined the migration and translated its cultural profile for the American public. Dorothea Lange’s photography at the San Joaquin valley worker camps brought images of the “Migrant Mother” to the newspapers. John

Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath introduced the Joads to the American consciousness, accompanied by stark illustrations of destitute migrants in print and motion picture.

Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin conducted an ethnographic sample of the migrants’ culture in song, introducing the academic community to the pickers’ plight.2 Perhaps the

most important voice associated with the dust bowl and its migrant population is Woody

Guthrie. This chapter will discuss the origins and causes of the dust bowl before examining Guthrie's contributions to popular understanding of the ecological phenomenon.

20 21

Before the Dust Bowl

The United States’ westward expansion during the nineteenth century established circumstances that contributed to the dust storms of the 1930s. The 1803 Louisiana

Purchase provided the country with the geography for continental expansion and cattlemen soon established ranches on the southern plains. The cattlemen often exceeded ecological limits of the land with large herds and this became evident by the second half the century; while in 1870, five acres could provide for a growing steer, in 1880 fifty acres were required. The dominance of the cattle barons came to an end during the winter of 1885–86, when cattle grass was greatly diminished and 85 percent of the cattle perished on prairie.3 The earlier passage of the Homestead Act (1862) provided few

requirements for land ownership, and farmers soon replaced cattle barons on the southern

plains.4 With iron plows, six million people settled the Great Plains by 1890. Despite a

drought lasting from 1889 to 1894, the population had become established.

In 1909 Congress passed the Enlarged Homestead Act, which provided each settler

with 320 acres. The result was a land rush. In 1912, there were 24,000 land entries in the

West; during 1913, 53,000 were filed and until the early 1920s the annual rate exceeded

30,000.5 This coincided with the First World War, which resulted in high wheat prices fueled by European demand and the Food Control Act of 1917, which guaranteed wheat prices of more than $2.00 per barrel. Consequently the area that was later known as the dust bowl greatly expanded their wheatlands: from 1914 to 1919, Colorado, Nebraska,

Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas expanded their wheatlands by 13.5 million acres.6

Coinciding with the population increase and farmland expansion were technological innovations that provided the farmer with more efficient means of production. The gasoline-powered tractor was widely produced by 1917; Ford,

International Harvester and John Deere each sold models that replaced the oxen-led plow.

The one-way disk plow was used to break new land by quickly cutting the land,

increasing water absorption and killing weeds. The combine—called such because it

combined the harvester and thresher—was used by three-quarters of farmers in the late

1920s and permitted farmers to replace seasonal workers with a single machine. These

three machines—the tractor, the one-way disk plow, and the combine—were later

partially blamed for the great dust storms in the southern plains.

The Dust Bowl

During the early 1930s, while urban America was suffering from the Depression,

the rural southern plains benefited from relative economic isolation. While urban

Americans stood in soup lines, rural Americans survived on their own food supply. In

the southern plains the economic slowdown was not caused by traditional economics but

three natural occurrences that coalesced to wipeout the region’s economic stability. First,

a serious drought persisted throughout the thirties, preventing the establishment of a

strong harvest. Second, a heat wave caused both crop failures and 4500 deaths.7 Lastly, strong winds lifted the loose earth, preventing crops from taking root and causing uncomfortable conditions. As Worster writes, “day after day, year after year, of sand

rattling against the window, of fine powder caking one’s lips, of springtime turned to

despair, of poverty eating into self-confidence.”8 The combination of ecological state

and use of agricultural technology allowed circumstances that encouraged devastation of the land and the crops. Nature made the land vulnerable while man made the land more

profitable with the destruction of sod; no defense against the natural conditions remained.

While weather bureau stations reported a few minor dust storms in 1932, the first

major “duster” occurred during May 1934, when earth from Wyoming and Montana was

lifted and blown eastward. During the next few days, dust would be found from

Dubuque to Boston, from Madison to Atlanta. The eastern states were largely spared

following the 1934 storm, but the plains encountered many more severe storms, capped

by the storm that occurred April 14, 1935, known as Black Sunday. Black Sunday began

a clear and warm day that saw falling temperatures—as much as 50 degrees—in the afternoon. An enormous rising wall of muddy waters, called a “black blizzard,” approached and overtook Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, leaving individuals trapped in darkness within whatever shelter could be found. The day

following Black Sunday, Robert Geiger, an Associated Press reporter referred to the region as the “dust bowl of the continent” in a dispatch to the Washington Evening Star.

The name, likely referring to a great fertile bowl rimmed by mountains, remained.9

Woody Guthrie in the Dust Bowl

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie's historical association with the dust bowl is in part due to his lived experience. Born in Okemah, Oklahoma on July 14, 1912, Guthrie was given the namesake of the 1912 Democratic presidential nominee. From 1929 to 1937 Guthrie resided in Pampa, Texas, a town of 22,000 in the high country of the Texas Panhandle, an area that suffered the greatest drought during the 1930s.10 In Pampa, Guthrie worked at a

local drugstore that sold jake—a mixture of imported Jamaican ginger and pure grain

alcohol—as he noted in a May 1939 column:

I worked several years in a drug store which turned into a likker store when prohibition went out. The boss of the likker store said that on that very day I took a greater liking to my work. Personal, I woodent say. Anyhow, in them oil boom towns, located as they was right in the big middle of the dust bowl, it was dern hard to find a place of business that wasen’t engaged directly or indirectly in the bootleg game.11

Besides his drug store employment, Guthrie supplemented his income by painting signs

for local businesses and performing music for an audience or on the local radio station,

KPDN. Never finishing his final two years of high school, Guthrie was regarded in the community as having great promise but little ambition. Despite his lack of formal education, he spent days in the Pampa Public Library and likely attended correspondence

classes during this period.12

During 1933, 21-year-old Guthrie married Mary Jennings and lived in a shotgun shack behind her parents’ house purchased for 25 dollars. It was here where he and Mary endured the storms by sealing doors and windows with wet newspapers to prevent the fine dust from entering. His Black Sunday experience was chronicled in later interviews with Alan and Elizabeth Lomax.

When all of this dust started blowin’ in the Texas oilfields, why, these peoples’ houses wasn’t built to keep out this dust. So every morning, when you’d wake up, why, you’d see where the dust had drifted in through cracks in your house and just all over the floor and made ripples and drifts all over the floor of your house and wherever the drafts of air went. When you’d wake up in the morning, there’d be just a big drift of dust in the house and in your hair and your eyes and whole face sticking out from under the cover would be just covered up with dust.13

The storms inspired Guthrie to write the first of many songs that described the storms and aftermath, initially titled “The Texas Dust Storms.” Describing the darkness and destruction of the Black Sunday storm, the topical song that was later re-titled the

“The Great Dust Storm”:

On the fourteenth day of April Of nineteen thirty-five, There struck the worst of dust storms That ever filled the sky.

You could see that dust storm coming, It looked so awful black, And through our little city, It left a dreadful track…

This storm took place at sundown And lasted through the night, When we looked out next morning We saw a terrible sight:

We saw outside our windows where Wheat fields once had grown Was now a rippling ocean of dust The wind had blown.

The dust storms continued and Guthrie's prospects in Pampa did not improve even

with the birth in his first child Gwendolyn in November 1935. He became more focused

artistically, creating oil paintings of Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ, but his artistic

work provided little income. Briefly Guthrie tried faith healing as a profession, perhaps influenced by Depression-era Mexican radio broadcasts that promised cures for hair loss, impotency and bodily impurity through unconventional means, including psychic readings.14 This seven-month experiment introduced Guthrie to the promise of

newspaper publicity that he would later employ with the People’s World. He advertised

his services, including lessons in psychology, telepathy and “strange powers of the mind”

in the Pampa Daily News. Guthrie also created his own publication during 1935, when he created two issues of the “News Expose,” a mimeographed publication he created to

publicize his practice. Using the pseudonym Alonzo M. Zilch as the author of the stories,

Guthrie distributed the “newspaper” to local friends.

Guthrie’s Dust Bowl in the People’s World

In 1937 Guthrie left his wife and family and made his way to California by riding

trains and hitchhiking. Once in California, Guthrie moved throughout the state, living

with family and performing on the radio before settling in Los Angeles in 1939 (his

migration to California is discussed in detail in Chapter 4). Thus, Guthrie was two years

and eleven hundred miles removed from Pampa when he began to write for the People’s

World while living in Los Angeles, but this temporal and geographic distance did not

discourage repeated references to his dust bowl roots. In his “Woody Sez” columns,

Guthrie refers to himself as the “dustiest of the dustbowl refagees,” and like in his topical

songwriting, tells stories of the dust storms.15 In doing so, he acts as a cultural broker,

attempting to explain an unfamiliar culture to the southern California community. This

he accomplishes by addressing two primary themes: first is his self-references as an

individual worthy of transmitting the stories due to lived experience and knowledge of

dust bowl culture; second, his representation of the dust bowl migration and migrants as

noble individuals that were victims of ecological and economic circumstances.

Self-representation

His status as an authentic dust bowl representative is celebrated in nearly every

form of media exposure Guthrie gained following his arrival in Los Angeles. Introducing

Guthrie on his Library of Congress recordings, Alan Lomax declares Guthrie “to have

seen more in those thirty years than most men see before they’re seventy.”16 In his Hard-

Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People, co-authored with Lomax and Pete Seeger, Guthrie is

introduced by John Steinbeck, an advocate for dust bowl migrants himself, who declares:

“He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, the people.”17

The first “Woody Sez” column appeared on the editorial page of People’s World in

the Friday, May 12, 1939 edition. Located beneath a large editorial cartoon that

portrayed an enormous businessman chopping at a diminutive crowd holding AFL and

CIO placards is the headline “Woody Sez: A New Columnist Introduces Himself.” The article begins with an introduction to Guthrie, likely written by an editor obviously sympathetic to the migrants’ socioeconomic position:

Woody calls himself a hill-billy singer. He is one of the 200,000 people who came from the dustbowl looking for work and a little food—the people who have picked the fruit and the crops of California—lived in shanty camps, been beaten and driven about by the bank-landowners.

But Woody came with a guitar on his back and with an eye and an ear sensitive to the suffering of his own people…

…And Woody has gathered a great deal of homely wisdom from his people. Each day he will speak to you on this page in his own way about how he looks at things.

The newspaper’s introduction for Guthrie reveals a division between two allied communities: first, the newspaper editors and communist advisors; second, Guthrie and the dust bowl refugees. While the newspaper was largely sympathetic to the migrant’s

plight and reported the conditions in the labor camps, the language used to describe

Woody’s writing—“homely,” “speak … his own way”—distinguishes Guthrie from

traditional columnists and the communist readership. Similar to Steinbeck’s introduction

that appeared in Hard-hitting Songs for Hard Hit People, the People’s World editors

celebrate his authentic status. Due to the national publicity about the migrants during this

time, most notably through Lange’s photography and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,

the newspaper welcomed an authentic dust bowl migrant and Guthrie fit this image.

Following the editor’s introduction appears Guthrie's self-composed

“AWTWOBYOGRAFIE” that relates his dust bowl experiences to the newspaper’s

audience:

Well, I was born in Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, in 1912, the year that Woodrow Wilson was nominated for President. My dad was quite a figger in Okfuskee county politics at that time an’ so he named me after the President, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie—which is too much of a name for a country boy. So I sawed off all the fancy work an’ jest left “Woody”—I cood remember that.

Okemah got to be a oil boom town just like about ½ the other towns down there, an’ got to be full of boom-chasers, drillers, roustabouts, tooldressers, teamskinners, bootleggers, Indian guardians, an’ other tong-buckers an’ grease monkeys of the oil

field work. When Okemah went dead, I left town with the first migration, headed for the plains of west Texas, around Amarillo, Pampa, and Borger…

…When the drouths drove all the folks out of Oklahoma, an’ Arkansaw, into the cow country, wheat fields, an’ oil towns of West Texas, I was in the runoff. We had a hard old go of it. I’ve picked it by asking questions that the bad weather drove 1, an’ the banker drove 9 out of every ten families thet deeserted there farms by the oodles an’ gobs in eastern Okla., Ark., Missouris, Kansas, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, an’ Tennessee. (Naturally my stetistics is jest a guess, but a mighty good guess, I think.)…

…We wrestled with the dust storms there in Texas till we wore the house out a tryin’ to keep it clean, an’ finally rented it out to a colony of ground hogs for a prairie dog hotel.

I worked as a grocery clerk, shelf-stocker, banner painter, windo and customer trimmer, an’ all around clean-up man.

I got what you wood call disgursted, busted, an’ rooled me up a bundel of duds, an’ caught a long, tall, frate-train thet had a California sign on the side of it…

…And, so, in a getting’ acquainted with you readers of The People’s World, I ain’t got much to say. The reason I ain’t got much to say is because I’ve been a tryin’ to rite about myself, an’ when a feller is a tryin’ to talk about his self, he’d might just as well say nothin.

Anyhow, if you will, an can, read what I rite—I’m mighty glad to be a writin’ it.18

From its initiation, the audience is introduced to a genuine dust bowl refugee, with deliberate misspellings to match oral pronunciation (“cood,” “figger,” “diden’t,” “wich,”

“rite,” “bundel”) and use of terms unique to dust bowl culture (“boom-chasers, drillers, roustabouts, tooldressers, teamskinners”). To further establish himself as an authentic dust bowl representative Guthrie introduces his personal history, which includes lived experience and being named for a Democratic president. His description of the banker, who “drove 9 out of every ten families thet deeserted there farms,” was likely welcomed by both California communists and residents in the migrant camps, both of whom were battling the Associated Farmers and other agricultural industrialists during the period.

Guthrie discusses his work history, framing him and other migrants as hard working—

contrasted with other contemporary perspectives in the media that considered the

migrants a drain on public resources.19 His work history in the Southwest is revisited often in his column; for example in a December 1939 column addressed to Los Angeles

Mayor Fletcher Bowron, Guthrie revisits his experience as a bootlegger: “You know Mr.

Bowron, i—i spent 6 of the best years of my life a workin in a hoss-leg, booseleg, gamblin’ joint down in Texas—an’ my dad and my uncle was on the Police force at the same time.”20

Beyond representing himself as a common laborer, Guthrie also celebrates his lack

of education in a June 1939 column that criticizes the local gas company. “Uneducated,

unenlightened, and uninformed as I am,” Guthrie writes, “provides me with a magnificent

opportunity, and a elegant excuse to tell you right here and now that I oftimes have

nightmares in which there go crawling and creeping a speciies of creature similar to those

which symbolized by the practices you use.”21 His references to his and other migrants’ lack of education is reinforced in a May 1939 column that criticizes the Los Angeles

Times depiction of migrants. Addressing the reporter of a story about the migrants,

Guthrie states, “’Course we ain’t as educated as you are—‘cause you’re a mighty smart feller. But we’d like fer our children to grow up an’ be big, smart, educated fellers like you.”22 Guthrie’s rejection of formal education is not inconsistent with the views of

many migrants, both in terms of enrollment and attitudes. Among high-school aged Farm

Security Administration camp residents, only 41 percent attended school in 1940.23

Meanwhile, the migrant culture often shunned formal education. As Gregory notes,

“many of the migrants shared a vaguely populist outlook which directed expectations

towards manual occupations and away from extended schooling.”24 With his insistence

at being without education or enlightenment, Guthrie further establishes himself as the

migratory everyman.

While framing himself as ignorant in formal matters, Guthrie’s knowledge of local

tales and folklore provided his audience with an informal education gathered through

lived experience. In his early Texas and Los Angeles radio broadcasts Guthrie was

renowned for telling tall tales of the dust storms, which he referred to as “cyclone tales.”

Following the Black Sunday storm, Pampa residents recalled their reactions to the conditions, which usually involved seeking shelter wherever it could be found. Some hid in cars, others in their homes, as Guthrie had done. Other stories were more detailed and sometimes less reliable; Guthrie related one of these in a May, 1939, column:

I guess you’ve heard about as many wild and windy Cyclone Tales as I have. An’ I guess you’ve seen as many Cyclones in operation as I have. But the thousands of letters on thet very subjict thet come into me at KFVD, has prooved to me that ever body likes to stop an’ hear a good, tall, handsome, wild, an’ windy, Cyclone Tale oncet in a while.

The One I want to scribble here this mornin’ is sposed to be a fact, as facts seem to be purty stretchy outfits. An’ this is one of the stretchiest I cood git a holt of.25

Guthrie proceeds to tell the tale of Jim Lukas, who “was a boilin’ an’ a scrapin’ a hog one mornin’ down in the cow lot when a Cyclone struck.” Lukas’ reaction is swift; he slaughtered his four hogs and “sliced ‘em up into bacon, pork chops, back-bone, hogs- head, an’ chitlin’s.”

His knowledge of cyclone tales is supplemented with his descriptions of states both inside of and beyond the dust bowl region. While Guthrie traveled extensively in

Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico while he resided in Pampa, there is no evidence that he visited Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri or Alabama. His knowledge of the regions and the folksy description where likely gained from other migrants to California, including

Missouri native Maxine Crissman, whom he shared a radio program with in Los Angeles.

Common with his description of Pampa, the middle South is described as a contradictory experience, where promising attributes are contrasted with natural shortcomings:

KANSAS IS A PLACE where you can blow 47 miles out in a cowpasture and blow 25 more miles acrost the fields and not see a cow, nor a crop in the whole blow.

TEXAS IS WHERE you can see further, see less, walk farther and travel less, see more cows and less milk, more trees and less shade, more rivers and less water, more fun on less money than anywhere else.

OKLAHOMA IS WHERE you can see miners going down in the hole, oil drillers going down the hole, and farmers going into the hole – to get what-ever they need. In this respect Oklahoma is just like the rest of the world. You got to go in the hole to get what you need.

ARKANSAW IS WHERE YOU CAN own less and have more, eat more on less money, love more on less clothes, live easier and work harder—than most places.

MISSOURI IS WHERE you see more teams and less skinners, more roastin ears and less roasting, more work and more play, more mules and longer ears—more farmers and fewer framers—than some places.

ALABAMA IS WHERE you take it easy, even if it is hard, go fishin and get under the shade of a big tree, and just set there and ex-lax.26

The dust bowl migration

Guthrie's transit from Pampa to California roughly followed Route 66 through

Amarillo, Hereford, Clovis, Roswell, Las Cruces, Tuscon, Yuma, Riverside, Los

Angeles; his method of travel was either hitching rides in cars or riding freight trains.

The few possessions he brought—including his guitar and paintbrushes—were sold for food. Guthrie slept in jails and asked to work for meals at churches.27 His experience is revisited in a June 1939 column:

While I wuz on the bum in Calif., I slept in everything but a bed. I et ever thing except a square meal. An found ever thing except a home. I rode on everything that had wheels, from a one cylinder kiddy car to a mountain massey railroad locomotive.28

While he eventually reached family in Riverside, the trip was a disorienting

experience, as recalled in a May 1939 column:

I was a headin’ out to see some relatives, but I diden’t know for shore wich r. r. bridge they was a livin’ under, so you see I was travelin’ practically without a magneto. I mean a compast. I diden’t know where the heck I was a goin’.29

Appearing throughout his 1939 columns, Guthrie’s conception of the dust bowl

migration contains imagery of destitute, penniless travelers, intent on reaching California

where a better life waits. But, unfortunately for Guthrie’s migrants, the promise is not

met after reaching California. Perhaps the most telling example of the dust bowl

migration concerns “a couple of old Texas boys” who “just blowed into California”:

They been a getting up a round sup—sun up—an a goin out a lookin fer a job of work. But I wonder how meny jillion other folks is a getting up an a lookin fer a job of work? Moren they got laws on the statue books I bet. (An that’s a heck of a lot of folks.)

They come out on what I call a Bootleg Bus. They dident have enuff money to come out legal. But you caint tell the difference now that they’re here.

A bootleg bus is wher you just happn to be a standin a long side of th road, an a car just happens to come down the road, an it just happens to stop—and you just happen to get in—or just happen to cetch a ride, an then after a while the feller gets to a needin some expense money, an you just happen to sweeten th pot a few dollers—and he just happens to bring you to Calif.

An you just happen to get here broke, an get up every mornin for 847464546474645 mornins, a lookin fer a job of work.30

Collectively, the migrants are portrayed as hard working and individualistic.

While not highly skilled laborers, the migrants fulfill a necessary and noble role in society. Similar to the self-motivating messages presented in the Pea-Patch Press that appeared the migrant camps, Guthrie establishes the migrants as industrious.

We can gather in the crops. An’ we can drive Tracters, an’ Draglines, an’ Shovels, an’ Cranes, an Cement Mixers, an’ Picks, an’ Hammers, an’ lots of things like that.31

Beyond their hard-working nature, the migrants are considered superior to others in

society:

The dustier you are the finer you’re polished…The Dustbowl Refugees, and Floodbowl Refugees, and the Drowthbowl Refugees, and all of the rest of the Refugees are forced to live so closet to nature, that they wake up to the Truth…

…I sometimes think the hungerier you are, the righter you are, cause it dern shure proves you are honest…I mean fiarly honest.32

While his column establishes the cultural characteristics of the dust bowl migrants,

Guthrie also focused on the conditions the migrant community encountered once

reaching California.

Settling in California

In California, the dust bowl refugees settled equally between metropolitan (51.6

percent) and non-metropolitan (48.4 percent) environs. Likewise, the two areas containing the greatest migrant influx occurred in an urban and rural setting, Los Angeles

and the San Joaquin Valley. The consequences of a dynamic population become evident

in labor statistics: In 1940, Los Angeles suffered a 14 percent unemployment rate, while

families in the San Joaquin Valley who had arrived from the Southwest during the

previous four years averaged $650 yearly income in 1939.33 This dichotomy is evident in

Guthrie’s column, where the migrant’s environment consisted of two extremes: Los

Angeles’ Skid Row and the rural work camp.

The migrants who settled in the rural work camp endured great hardship and

suffering. First, rarely did they “settle.” Instead, the migrants followed a harvest circuit

that might traverse 700 to 1,000 miles. Once finding work, the migrants found varying

degrees of shelter, from one-room shacks to small plots of land where tents could be

pitched. Disease, especially among children, flourished.34

During 1939, Guthrie occasionally reported for the People’s World from the

migrant camps and his articles reflected his experience and the living conditions of the migrants. His first work camp article describes the Redding, California work site, where idle laborers found a delayed dam-building project:

The would be workers worked harder a tryin to keep from a starvin in the jungles than if they had built 2 dams…

…You was lucky to get one meal a day. Most of the boys was flat busted. Hit town with $5 or $10 which dont last long in a dam boom…

…They was more people on relief than they was people who lived in Redding.

When a hobo (noble worker) got a good feed at a house he just painted a big X on the gate or door or house an they was so many bo’s hustlin grub that ever house in town except the deacon’s got 4 X’s all over the three trunks…

…Whole families was out in the woods—down on the river, up on some little hills—under the rail road trustles—a livin in houses of mickey mouse description— made out of junk tin, flattened out buckets, pasteboard boxes, shippin crates, apple boxes, old boilers, etc. (an them that was not so lucky lived just rudely, crudely, almost nudely).35

But his discussion of the work camp conditions is not without more encouraging observations. At the Shafter, California, camp Guthrie finds striking workers, who are

“really a holding out for $1.25 a 100 for cotton picking.” The Shafter strikers find support from “their own speakers, singers, dancers, and all sorts of entertainers,” including folk singers, who impress Guthrie. In Arvin, Calfornia, Guthrie finds Fred

Ross, a camp manager found to run a “real progressive camp government.” The migrant

newspaper at Arvin, The Toe Sack Tattler, also impress Guthrie with its “news reports of

workers interest like strike conditions, wages, hours, unions, and how they’re developing

around over the country.”36

The most common alternative to the rural labor camps was Los Angeles, where

Southwestern migrants encountered a vast, diverse and often intimidating urban environment. Due to its inexpensive rent, many migrants settled in the central and eastern sections of the city, a section that include the Los Angeles Skid Row. Much like the rural working camp, Guthrie wrote of the suffering and displaced Okie attempting to navigate a new environment.

Skid Row is generally where you land when you first hit Los Angeles on a freight train a blowin out of the Dustbowl.

Two reasons why you hit Skid Row is somethin to eat, an somewheres to sleep.

You can do both cheaper on Skid Row then you can in the more civilised sections of town. Besides the Police bother you too much in the classier sections…

…Skid Row is Skid Row because all of the r.r. hobos is skidded off down there—so’s they wont go to sleep on the laws out on millionair avenew.37

Like others, Guthrie finds less-than-ideal housing on Skid Row, where he shares a room with 20 men for 20 cents per night. But Guthrie’s Skid Row, with its music, fights, criminals and lack of police oversight is something he celebrates, for it allows for genuine people not found in the “high hat” areas:

Anyhow I went down on L. A. “Skid Row” east of 5th & Main…down where the men are men and the wimmen are glad of it. Down where the refugees are homeless and the finance men are glad of it.

I love the slums…and when I hit a new town I all ways go to the slums…not the high hat end of town, you can see that anywhere, but the slums where the people are real, and the hunger realer.

Billionaires cause hoboes, and hoboes make billionaires. Yet both cuss the other and say they are wrong…but personal I ruther trust the hoboes. Most of what I know I learnt form the kids and the hoboes.

Kids first. Hoboes second. Rich folks last—and I don’t give a dam if you like it or not, I think the poore folks down in the slums has got just exactly 56746475647

times as much common sense as then playfolks that populate our banks and hotels.38

For both rural and urban migrant environments, Guthrie finds familiar themes:

Poor living conditions and lack of employment in a community that contains promising

culture in music or printed communication. To Guthrie, it is an upside-down setting,

where the noble, industrious migrant laborers suffer injustice at the whims of the well- heeled few.

A family affair

While economic misfortune initiated the Southwestern exodus of the 1930s, the

decision to settle in California was often determined by more personal factors; namely

the influence of relatives living in the state who had followed an earlier Southwestern migration. Studies conducted in the Salinas and Sacramento Valleys during this period

report that at least half of the respondents told interviewers the presence of relatives had

been central to the California migration. Either in correspondence or during return trips,

California migrants would report fieldwork to be available for migrants; in the 1930s dust

bowl this was a promising opportunity. Familial influence on migration patterns did not

end with the initial wave of California migrants. Often new migration chains were

created when a young male family member returned from California and convinced the

entire family to relocate.39

As a migrant, Guthrie occupied both roles. Members of his extended family

influenced his initial migration and his initial California destination was the house of relatives. After settling in Los Angeles and enjoying moderate success as a broadcaster,

Guthrie returned to Oklahoma for his wife and children. In the People’s World, Guthrie’s relatives are often subjects of his column, portrayed as victims of low wages and

excessive costs of living. His aunt Laura Moore, for example, is a 60-year-old

grandmother living with a granddaughter and two sons and is unable to pay a $5.96 gas

bill. The gas company cuts off her power, despite her oldest son being sent to “France

for the Colors.”40 Guthrie later writes about Chief Harris—his “cousin’ and a half”—

who gains the status from marrying Guthrie’s cousin. Harris and his family are forced to

sleep on the floor until purchasing furniture, for which he is overcharged and returns to

the floor for sleep.41

Not all discussions of family members are so grave. Guthrie’s discussions of his brother George—whom he briefly shared a Los Angeles residence with—are portrayals of a young man obsessed with “wimmen, wimmen, and wimmen,” whether it’s a girlfriend or movie star.42 But as with most discussions, Guthrie eventually returns to the

circumstances of dust bowl migrants, in this case revisiting his plan to redistribute used

automobiles for people in love. “We ott to hire 1,000,000 more Investigators and

Policemen to arrest and deport from the United States the first Finance Credit Man that sought, by usury, and outrageous interest rates—to enslave, degrade, depress, deprive and otherwise “rob” our young folks that’s a fallin in Love, and a getting married.”43

Notes

1 James, N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989), 8.

2 Todd and Sonkin recorded 200 songs for the Folklore Division of the Library of Congress during 1940. Their ethnography resulted in a New York Times article, see Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin, “Ballads of the Okies,” New York Times, 17 November 1940, p. 117-118.

3 Chris Marbut, “Soils of the Great Plains,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 13 (Mar. 1923): 41-66.

4 The act permitted ownership to any person who paid a filing fee, settled on 160 acres, and stayed for five years while making “improvements” to the land. See Donald Worster, Dust Bowl – The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979), 16.

5 Donald Worster, Dust Bowl – The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979).

6 Lloyd Jorgenson, “Agricultural Expansion into the Semiarid Lands of the West North Central States during the First World War,” Agricultural History, 23 (Jan. 1949): 30-40.

7 During the summer of 1934, for example, Nebraska reached 118 degrees and Iowa reached 115 degrees. See Worster, 1979.

8 Ibid, 13.

9 Ibid, 28.

10 The concentration of counties most severely affected by the 1930-1936 drought was centered in the Texas Panhandle, the Oklahoma panhandle and southwestern Kansas. Ibid, 36-37.

11 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez: A New Columnist Introduces Himself,” People’s World, 12 May 1939.

12 Steven Brower & Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie Artworks. (New York: Rizzoli, 2005) 21.

13 Library of Congress Recordings, Woody Guthrie. Rounder CD 1041/2/3.

14 Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (Austin: University of Texas Press), 67. 15 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 14 December 1939.

16 Library of Congress Recordings, Woody Guthrie. Rounder CD 1041/2/3.

17 Alan Lomax. Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People. (New York: Oak Publications, 1967), 13.

18 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez: A New Columnist Introduces Himself,” People’s World, 12 May 1939, p. 4.

19 The biased coverage of the migrants was especially pronounced in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Examiner. Both newspapers were operated by conservative

publishers that considered migrants to be “Career Men in Relief,” to borrow a Times headline. Guthrie’s direct criticism of the conservative popular press is addressed in Chapter 7.

20 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez;,” People’s World, 8 December 1939.

21 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez;,” People’s World, 3 June 1939.

22 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez;,” People’s World, 23 May 1939.

23 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics and Farm Security Administration, Population in Farm Security Administration Camps, No. 1 (Berkeley, 1940), 17.

24 Gregory, 135.

25 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 22 May 1939, p. 4.

26 These descriptions were featured in Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 8 July 1939, p. 4, and Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 28 July 1939, p. 4.

27 Ibid, p. 22.

28 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 17 June 1939, p. 4.

29 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez: A New Columnist Introduces Himself,” People’s World, 12 May 1939, p. 4.

30 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 5 September 1939, p. 4.

31 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 23 May 1939, p. 4.

32 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 12 July 1939, p. 4.

33 James, N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989), 63.

34 Ibid, 64.

35 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 27 June 1939, p. 4.

36 Three consecutive columns used in this paragraph: Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 23 October 1939, p. 4; “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 24 October 1939, p. 4; “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 25 October 1939, p. 4.

37 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 10 August 1939, p. 4.

38 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 7 July 1939, p. 4.

39 Studies reported by Gregory, who discusses examples of these migration chains. See Gregory, 26-35.

40 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 3 June 1939.

41 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 6 June 1939, p. 4.

42 Guthrie portrays his brother as in love with “Harriet”: Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 19 September 1939. Later, Guthrie reports his brother “is at it again” in an attempt to woo Deanna Durbin George Guthrie writes the movie star a letter (Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 1 November 1939); “wimmen” quote from same edition.

43 Ibid.

CHAPTER 3 LANGUAGE

Cood you tell what I look like jest a readin what I write? Silly question I reckon. I don’t gess you could…’cause I know I coodent tell what you look like a readin this.

—Woody Guthrie, Woody Sez (28 June 1939)

To establish his authenticity as a migrant with his People’s World readership

Woody Guthrie employed many techniques, including the writing of his biographical sketches and knowledge of regional folklore. These stories provided context important to understanding Guthrie's personal history but the People’s World introduction promised its readership more than simple contextual understanding: readers were promised

“homely wisdom” that would be spoken by Guthrie in “his own way.”1 Critical to his introduction is the promise of oral transmission in the written form, an assurance fulfilled by Guthrie through the employment of specific writing techniques that emphasized oral representation of words and phrases. Specifically, Guthrie would misspell words to match oral delivery and use grammatically incorrect phrases in his columns. Through these two techniques he complemented his personal history to establish authority with his readers. But Guthrie's grammatical freedom extended beyond the casual misspelled word or incorrect phrase: he also used deliberate misspellings to make political statements.

Commonly misspelling political names and organizations, Guthrie likely sought to express political sentiment without overt declaration. Regardless of method, Guthrie

41 42

sought simplicity in his composition, whether in song or newspaper, as described in

Hard-hitting Songs for Hard Hit People:

It wouldn’t have to be fancy words. It wouldn’t have to be a fancy tune. The fancier it is the worse it is. The plainer it is the easier it is, and the easier it is, the better it is – and the words don’t even have to be spelt right.2

This chapter investigates these two methods of composition by examining the

specific techniques used by Guthrie; that is, what grammatical patterns were employed to

orally represent terms and phrases in the written form, and what political representations

were used to express sentiment. Before examining Guthrie's methods, the researcher will

attempt to classify the writings by referring to work in the folklore field before

concluding with a comparison of Guthrie's newspaper writing with his correspondence

during the period to establish a pattern of deliberate misspellings and grammatical errors.

Folk Literature

Folklore and written composition would initially seem fundamentally incompatible.

Traditionally, the expressive culture of folklore is understood to be oral tradition—the spoken transmission of stories and tales—that is often shared by a community. With oral tradition comes inconsistency of communication; adaptations and variations are inevitable when information is transferred orally. In folklore these inconsistencies are expected and the notation of folklore—whether story or song—neither ensures nor heightens its “correctness.” Thus, there is no “correct” version of a folktale or folksong, only variations of the original text (insofar as an “original” folklore text exists). This is contrary to traditional literary texts that appear in print upon creation. However folklore is not entirely divorced from the printed text; stories that have existed in the oral tradition become printed without losing status as a folktale and folk music is notated without

necessarily losing its “folk” status. Brunvand refers to the relationship between the

printed and oral story in his explanation of what he deems “folk literature”:

It seems clear that people do tell stories or print them, sing songs or write them, for much the same reasons—in order to reshape reality in a creative fashion so as to discover meanings in life and to comment on them. Although there are great differences in style, intent, media, audience, and so on between formal and folk literature, the basic storytelling and poetizing impulses behind them are comparable.3

In his People’s World column, Guthrie directly comments on this dichotomy. His

printed columns sometimes reiterated stories he earlier told or sung. Consider the two following “outlaw tales,” told by Guthrie in his column and in song:

From the People’s World (in a passage about robbery) : You can operate with a billy club, sapling, two by 2 scantlin, rig timber, r. r. tie, six gun, or penny pencil, or a founten pen.4

From music recording, “Pretty Boy Floyd”: Some will rob you with a 6 gun, and some with a fountain pen.5

From the People’s World: The Railroad President offered $2500 for one of Jesse’s own men to shoot him in the back. Robert Ford, a dirty coward, done the job… Jesse’s Tombstone read: Here Lies Jesse James, shot down by a dirty coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.6

From music recording, “Jesse James and His Boys”: Robert Ford it’s a fact, shot Jesse in the back, while Jesse hung a picture on the wall. They dug Jesse’s grave and a stone they raised, it says, “Jesse James lies here. Was killed by a man, a bastard and a coward, whose name aint worthy to appear.”7

Guthrie's descriptions of crime, both specific and general, are comparable here across two

mediums. The chief differences are the amount of information and the rhythm of

composition, both likely due to the limitations of respective media. However, even

within an equivalent print communication channel Guthrie refers to similar language in

two passages in a published songbook and his World column:

For the last eight years I’ve been a rambling man, from Oklahoma to California and back three times by freight train, highway, and thumb, and I’ve been stranded, and disbanded, busted, disgusted with people of all sorts, sizes, shapes and calibres.8

I got what you wood call disgursted, busted, an’ rooled me up a bundel of duds, an’ caught a long, tall, frate-train thet had a California sign on the side of it.

Despite the initial contradiction between printed communication and folklore, the division between the two forms has attempted to be breached by recognizing the advantages to the use of print format. Although oral transmission is central to folktales, as Dorson notes, printed representation of folktales provides three primary advantages not present in the oral form.9 First, the printed form allows comprehensive recording of material when the “traditional impulse has largely died” or when the material is overly detailed for accurate oral transmission. Secondly, the “tones and emphases and settings” may be more faithfully represented in print form than the literal translation, which is

“divorced from mood and audience.” Lastly, a text’s “vitality, persistence, and range” is signified by its existence in the print form.

While the written recording of spoken transmission ensures the survival of a simple message, the printed format often lacks a component that is central to understanding in the oral form. This is the emphasis of sound present in oral transmission. In his discussion of vernacular poetry, Replogle identifies two methods of accomplishing emphasis of sound in the printed form: first, through the use of repeated patterns of phonemic sounds; second, through the stressing of individual words or sounds.10 The second method, which Replogle refers to as the “sound of sense,” a term borrowed from a 1913 Robert Frost letter, is accomplished through intonation, which provides essential meaning in oral transmission but is often absent in the printed form.

To achieve this “sound of sense” the writer must at least offer vernacular intonation; in addition, the inclusion of vernacular diction and syntax result in unique vernacular voices. In Guthrie's writings one witnesses two of these methods: vernacular intonation,

45 which is achieved by his creative misspellings that emphasize individual syllables, and vernacular syntax, which is accomplished through entire phrases.

Guthrie's Phrases

When Guthrie composed sentences for his People’s World column, the result was rarely grammatically correct. Most often a misspelled word—or several—existed.

However, misspelled words were only one of Guthrie's grammatical errors; frequently entire phrases would mimic oral delivery through casual language or collections of misspelled words that resulted in entire sentences or sentence fragments. Examples are demonstrated in table 3-1. Many of Guthrie's phrases were comparisons that drew on western or rural understanding, as when using a pistol to describe warm weather (“hottern a pistol,” “hottern a sheep”) or the government debt (“deeper than a rotary oil well”).

Other comparisons drew on perceived greed of financial institutions (“colder then a bankers heart”). Another strategy employed is the introductory phrase that would be more familiar in oral communication (“boy howdy,” “yessiree,” “yes siree”), followed by a declarative statement (“when you git these here women folks dander up,” “I’m hottern,”

“dust bowl refugees has a lot to be thankful for,” “funny as the dickens”).

Most common is the existence of superfluous language. Unlike professional newspaper writing, which relies on concise phrasings and parsed language, Guthrie's column often contained phrases that simply established a disposition before making a informational statement. For example, when speaking of an automobile’s performance,

Guthrie tells the reader, “I was purty well satified with the performance, but not with the traporstation.” Or, when complementing Steinbeck’s portrayal of the dust bowl migrants in Grapes of Wrath, Guthrie's description is neither brief nor conventional: “We went so fast you coodent see mutch but you cood see enuff to see that Stinebeck was right.”

Guthrie's call for a labor union that includes all “Worken Folks” requires a superfluous

introduction: “you know I was just a thinkin.”11 Even the description of reading requires non-essential language: “I just hauled off an read that there book.”

Table 3-1. Phrasings in Guthrie’s People’s World column Date Phrase 22 May 1939 They are hot and heavy after the bankers 23 June 1939 Ain’t seen no doctor yet, cause we aint got what the dr. likes to see. 24 June 1939 The oily tongue catches the sucker 30 June 1939 That is downright plumb nice of Mr. Hague. 9 September Boy howdy, when you git these here women folks dander up, you 1939 really got somethin. 12 September We went so fast you coodent see mutch but you cood see enuff to 1939 see that Stinebeck was right. 18 September I just hauled off an read that there book you call the people be 1939 dammed. 23 September Hottern a pistol loose at both ends. 1939 25 September Boy, howdy, I’m hottern a sheep at a county fair 1939 3 October Hows the govt debit? I heard we was in deeper than a rotary oil 1939 well. 17 October I tuned in Sunday on the radeo an heard a hole tribe of senaters a 1939 making’ speeches 27 October Yes siree, us old dustpan, I mean panbowl, I mean dust bowl 1939 refugees has got a lot to be thankful for—even if none of us caint think of what it is. 30 November Japan may of bit off more’n she can chew – ‘er did she even git it 1939 bit off? 9 March 1940 Colder then a bankers heart…Snowed up here to beat the devil. 10 May 1940 Yessiree, funny as the dickens

Guthrie's Spelling

Guthrie misspelled many words in his People’s World column. Simple words,

complex words, short words and long words: no matter, Guthrie generated alternative

spellings for each. His columns demonstrate an awareness of his misspellings in his

column and even mocked his own prose on different occasions. Sometimes these represented a departure from the commercial journalism of his era: “Hearst wont let me

in none of his papers ‘cause he’s afraid I wood mess around an’ mis-spell something

right.” Later in the column, he writes, “If I write somethin’ right, I spell it wrong, an’ if I

write something wrong, I spell it right—so write er wrong, I’m wrong.”12 But Guthrie

would also comment on his spelling capabilities through example. In an August column,

Guthrie writes, “Races to day at Hollerwood Park—all proceeds to Chairyt—how do you

spell Cah—Chairity???”13 Another example occurred eight days later in the People’s

World, when he attempts to correctly spell “crooked”: “No matter what you got to say they’ll let you say it, just so long as you aint crokked. I don’t mean crocked, I mean crokked.”14

The inspiration for the misspellings comes from two sources, Guthrie informs his

audience in a November 1939 column: weather patterns and the influence of Oklahoma’s

Native American population.

It all has got to do with the weather. I spell accordion to th weather.

If its too cold a weather I caint spell a lick, an’ if its too hot of a weather, I caint spell either.

But on days when they aint a bit of weather, boys an’ gals, I’m a speller from Amariller! I’m a mortal spellin’ machene.

You see I learned how to spell among th’ Indians down in th’ land of th’ 5 civilized tribes.15

While claiming that he learned to spell from the Five Civilized Tribes – Cherokee,

Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Muscogee Creek nations – in the same column

Guthrie explains that he hopes to improve his spelling to reflect the influence of civilized

society. This process is referred to as “civilitis”:

But—my trouble is simply a case of what you wood call “civilitis”—that means I am trying to civilize myself to where I can spell to some civilized folks when I run onto some.

Nevertheless, Guthrie’s misspellings continued. Most often, these misspellings closely

correlate with the oral pronunciation of the word by using one or more of the following

six strategies.

• Vowel substitution. To present an oral representation of a term, Guthrie often substituted the correct vowel for another vowel that matched pronunciation.

• Consonant substitution. Less frequently but with equal impact, Guthrie would substitute a consonant for another to represent pronunciation of the term.

• Subtraction of letters. Guthrie would frequently subtract one or more letters to generate oral representation.

• Addition of letters. Guthrie would commonly add letters to a word to represent oral pronunciation.

• Transposition of letters. Reversing the order in which letters appear was a common strategy Guthrie used to generate oral representation.

• Double letters. Replication of letters appearing in the word to generate emphasis on a syllable was another strategy employed by Guthrie.

To measure the relationship between Guthrie's spelling in written composition and

the common spoken output, a standard classification system of the relationship between the spoken and written word is required. Due to the English language’s complex vowel system and its inability to accurately and reliably reflect oral pronunciation, one often begins with equivalence classes that categorize a set of words that interpret vowels in the same method. While classification systems are numerous, Wells’ lexical sets are often used in scholarly discussions of phonetics and will be used to categorize Guthrie's methods of spelling.16 Wells’ lexical sets classify 24 classes of vowels that behave

similarly across different words in the English language; these classes are categorized

with a representative word and corresponding number.

Table 3-1. Wells’ lexical sets Number Name Other Examples Number Name Other Examples 1 KIT ship, rib, dim 13 THOUGHT Waugh, hawk, broad 2 DRESS step, ebb, hem 14 GOAT soap, robe, home 3 TRAP bad, cab, ham 15 GOOSE loop, mood, boom 4 LOT stop, odd, Tom 16 PRICE ripe, tribe, time 5 STRUT cup, rub, hum 17 CHOICE boy, void, coin 6 FOOT bush, look, good 18 MOUTH pouch, loud, noun 7 BATH staff, clasp, dance 19 NEAR beer, weird, fierce 8 CLOTH cough, long, gone 20 SQUARE care, air, wear 9 NURSE curb, turn, work 21 START Far, sharp, farm 10 FLEECE reap, seed, seize 22 NORTH For, York, storm 11 FACE late, babe, name 23 FORCE Ore, floor, coarse 12 PALM bra, Brahms, blah 24 CURE boor, tour, gourd

Due to regional distinctions, any chosen lexical set will contain potential redundancy in categorization—most American dialects, for example, do not clearly distinguish between categories 3 and 7 while British dialects do make this distinction— nevertheless, this system of classification provides a means of distinguishing syllables in a universal manner.17 More importantly for this study, it allows the categorization of vowels and syllables that Guthrie chose to emphasize in his composition.

Vowel substitution

A common method of spelling resulting in oral pronunciation used by Guthrie is the substitution of a correct vowel for another that more closely represents the spoken transmission of the term. Demonstrated in table 3-2, Guthrie most often substituted the letter “e” for another vowel: “a” (enyhow, coller, performance), “o” (er, fer, acter), “i”

(radeo, devorce, profets). The replacement of the letter “a” with “e” Guthrie's Daily

People’s World writings include other, less-frequently utilized substitutions, including “i”

for “e” (honist) and “u” for “a” (ruther). In terms of Wells’ classification, Guthrie's

misspellings often demonstrate a reliable pattern in terms of the lexical group which the

correct spelling belongs and the lexical group reflected in Guthrie's misspellings. While

great variation exists among the correctly spelled words, the most common groups

resulting from Guthrie's misspellings are the NURSE and DRESS groups. Five patterns

of lexical group changes have been identified:

• START group (correct spelling) to the NURSE group (Guthrie spelling). This is reflected in the spelling of “dern” in the following example: “Anyhow, in them oil boom towns, located as they was right in the big middle of the dust bowl, it was dern hard to find a place of business that wasen’t engaged directly or indirectly in the bootleg game.”18

• NORTH group to the NURSE group. This demonstrated with Guthrie's common misspelling of “or” as “er”: “She dont give a dern about Russia’s standin’ army, er Hitler’s lady friends, er Hollywood’s nudest beauties…”19

• TRAP/BATH groups to the DRESS group. This is demonstrated with Guthrie's spelling of “that” as “thet”: “But the thousands of letters on thet very subjict thet come into me at KFVD…”20

• KIT group to the DRESS group. This is reflected in Guthrie's spelling of “profit” as “profet”: “It has all ways been th big business folks a workin th working folks, an a usin some kind of a dern money profet system to frame th farmers, and skin th workers.”21

• STRUT group to the DRESS group. This is demonstrated in Guthrie's spelling of “just” as “jest”: “Well, the worken folks has got to be jest like a solid bolt of electricty to come out on top—they caint be a break in it.”22

Occasionally Guthrie's misspellings fail to result in vowel group shift however. For example, his spelling of “radio” as “radeo,” which includes a vowel substitution, remains in the same group (FLEECE group). Likewise, his spelling of “mystic” as “mistic” also substitutes vowels but fails to alter its group classification.

Table 3-2. Vowel substitution Substitution Proper spelling Wells Guthrie Wells Date (initial category spelling category appearance) E substituted Darn 21 Dern 9 12 May 1939 for A That 3/7 Thet 2 24 May 1939 Japanese 3/7 Japenese 2 25 May 1939 Performance 3/7 Performance 2 13 July 1939 10 August Collar 21 Coller 9 1939 16 August Anything 3/7 Enything 2 1939 16 August Than 3/7 Then 2 1939 17 August Ordinary 20 Ordinery 2 1939 17 August Anyhow 3/7 Enyhow 2 1939 18 August Human 3/7 Humen 2 1939 22 August Anyway 3/7 Enyway 2 1939 24 August Particular 21 Perticular 9 1939 30 August Look at 3/7 Looket 2 1939 5 September Dollars 21 Dollars 9 1939 9 September Gathered 3/7 Gethered 2 1939 22 September Germany 3/7 Germeny 2 1939 2 December Standard 21 Standerd 9 1939 Catch 3/7 Cetch 2 14 June 1940 E substituted For 22 Fer 9 31 May 1939 for O Or 22 Er 9 7 June 1939 Editor 22 Editer 9 15 June 1939 Factories 22 Facteries 9 1 July 1939 5 August Reasons 5 Reasens 2 1939 28 August Actor 22 Acter 9 1939 1 September Forget 22 Ferget 9 1939 9 September Reason 5 Reasen 2 1939

Table 3-2. Continued. Substitution Proper spelling Wells Guthrie Wells Date (initial category spelling category appearance) E substituted 9 December Comfortable 22 Comfertable 9 for O 1939 18 December Comfort 22 Comfert 9 1939 E substituted Radio 10 Radeo 10 12 May 1939 for I Instead 1 Enstead 2 13 May 1939 Divorce 10 Devorce 2 13 June 1939 Printed 1 Prented 2 10 July 1939 10 August Districts 1 Destricts 2 1939 19 August Profit 1 Profet 2 1939 31 August Profits 1 Profets 2 1939 14 September Family 1 Famely 2, 11 1939 20 December Discovered 1 Descovered 2 1939 E substituted 22 August Just 5 Jest 2 for U 1939 A substituted 11 August Refugees 15 Refagees 3 for U 1939 U substituted 16 August Rather 3/7 Ruther 5 for A 1939 U substituted 22 September Bomb 12 Bumb 5 for O 1939 E substituted 26 August Your 24 Yer 9 for OU 1939 A substituted 13 October Proposition 14 Propasition 3 for O 1939 I substituted 2 December Honest 4 Honist 1 for E 1939 18 October Pocket 4 Pockit 1 1939 Pocketbook 4 Pockitbook 1 19 May 1939 Entertainment 4 Entertainmint 1 6 July 1939 I substituted 4 December Sharks 21 Shirks 9 for A 1939 A substituted 20 December Telephone 12 Telaphone 3 for E 1939 I substituted Rhyme 16 Rhime 16 1 July 1940 for Y 28 October Mystic 1 Mistic 1 1940

Table 3-2. Continued Substitution Proper spelling Wells Guthrie Wells Date (initial category spelling category appearance) Y substituted 9 July 1940 Sahara 12 Sahary 10 for A E substituted 2 December Certain 3/7 Certen 2 for AI 1940

Consonant substitution

While Guthrie’s incorrect replacement of vowels was his most common type of letter substitution, his column contains several instances where at least one consonant was substituted for another that more closely matched oral pronunciation. Included in table 3-3 are substitutions that include “w” for “s” (arkansaw), “f” for “ph” ( ffidavi) and “d” for “t” (pardner), all of which result in a term spelled as it is spoken.

Table 3-3. Consonant substitution Substitution Proper spelling Guthrie spelling Date (initial) W substituted for S Arkansas Arkansaw 12 May 1939 Grandpas Grandpaws 18 October 1939 X sub. For CKS Shucks Shux 18 May 1939 K substituted for H Stomach Stomack 19 May 1939 S substituted for C Cylinders Sylinders 13 July 1939 F substituted for PH Alphabet Alfabet 8 August 1939 Phonographs Phonografs 18 December 1939 T substituted for D Second Secont 19 August 1939 D substituted for T Partner Pardner 8 March 1940 K substituted for Q Banquet Bankuet 1 September 1939 S substituted for C Finance Finanse 13 September 1939

Subtraction of letters

Guthrie’s substitution of letters was not always required for an oral representation of a term; among his other methods of misspelling was the subtraction of letters. Four primary techniques of subtraction were employed by Guthrie. First, letters that are silent when pronounced are often deleted (for example, “whole” is spelled “hole” and locomotives is spelled “ ffidavits ”). Second, letters unnecessary for pronunciation

were often deleted by Guthrie (“ornge,” “senery,” “ ffidavi,” “wher”). Third, letters that

represent spoken syllables unnecessary for pronunciation were often removed; thus,

“liberal” becomes “libral,” “federal” becomes “fedral,” “literature” is “ ffidavits,”

“different” is “difrent,” and “supposed” becomes “sposed.” Fourth, Guthrie would often delete a single letter that is repeated when properly spelled (for example, “meting,”

“ ffidavits,” “sherfs”).

Table 3-4. Subtraction of letters Letters Proper Guthrie spelling Wells Date (initial) subtracted spelling category E Defenseless Defensless 2 25 May 1939 The Th 10 7 August 1939 Federal Fedral 9 18 August 1939 Electricity Lectricity 10 22 August 1939 Locomotives Locomotivs N/A 26 August 1939 Representative Representativ N/A 29 August 1939 Where Wher N/A 5 September 1939 Meeting Meting 10 25 September 1939 Been Ben 2 2 November 1939 Liberal Libral 9 12 October 1939 A Company Compny 12 9 June 1939 Literature Literture 12 7 August 1939 Against A ginst 12 16 August 1939 Donates Donats 11 2 November 1939 Orange Ornge 7 15 September 1939 And An N/A 21 May 1940 Federal Federl 13 5 October 1939 Miserable Miserble 12 2 December 1939 W Whole Hole N/A 12 May 1939 Write Rite N/A 12 May 1939 C Ruckus Rukus N/A 17 August 1939 Scenery Senery N/A 12 May 1939 I Virginia Virgina 12 8 April 1940 Contained Contaned N/A 13 September 1939 T Dispatch Dispach N/A 17 May 1940 Slept Slep N/A 19 August 1939 N Columns Colums N/A 15 August 1939 Damn Dam N/A 26 October 1939 Y Everybody Everbody 10 23 June 1939 G Huntington Huntinton 10 13 July 1939 D Children Chilren N/A 18 August 1939

Table 3-3. Continued. Letters Proper Guthrie spelling Wells Date (initial) subtracted spelling category U Supreme Spreme 5 10 October 1939 F Affidavits Afidavits 1 20 July 1940 S Islands Ilands N/A 30 August 1939 FE Different Difrent N/A 12 May 1939 TH Them Em N/A 9 September 1939 IF Sheriffs Sherfs 1 13 October 1939 UP Supposed Sposed 5 24 May 1939 UGH Thought Thot 13 12 May 1939

Addition of letters

Besides his use of subtraction and substitution of letters when misspelling words,

Guthrie would add letters to words, in some cases to emphasize spoken noise from pronunciation. The addition of letters sometimes results in the creation of syllables, as in

“hungery,” “babpitising” and “filum.” Guthrie's spelling of “neutrition,” “chainge” seem to ensure a reading that reinforces existing vowels that are dominant in oral pronunciation. Other words have letters added that require the reading of a sound that does not exist in written composition (“enoufgh,” “buntch,” “lodgic,” “asshociated”).

Table 3-5. Addition of letters Letters added Proper spelling Guthrie spelling Date (initial) E Nutrition Neutrition 25 September 1939 Migrate Migerate 27 September 1939 Hungry Hungery 23 May 1939 H Associated Asshociated 10 July 1939 Sure Shure 10 July 1939 F Enough Enoufgh 9 August 1939 K Articles Artickles 15 June 1939 T Bunch Buntch 9 September 1939 U Film Filum 29 September 1939 D Logic Lodgic 10 October 1939 I Change Chainge 18 October 1939 B, I Baptizing Babpitising 18 June 1940

Transposition of letters

As demonstrated in table 3-6, Guthrie's column often contains misspellings that

transpose adjacent letters. These examples contain instances of transpositions altering the

order of a vowel-consonant sequence, consonant-consonant sequence and vowel-vowel-

consonant sequence.

Table 3-6. Transposition of letters Transposition Proper spelling Guthrie spelling Date (initial) RE as ER Hundreds Hunderds 5 August 1939 Representatives Repersentatives 29 August 1939 Congress Congerss 25 September 1939 LE as EL Little Little 11 August 1939 Cradle Cradel 2 December 1939 EIN as INE Steinbeck Stinebeck 19 August 1939 CT as TC Picture Pitcure 25 September 1939 ET as TE Poet Pote 18 October 1939 GN as NG Foreign Foreing 21 July 1939

Double letters in misspellings

As demonstrated in table 3-7, the final compositional strategy Guthrie employed

to communicate an oral pronunciation is the coupling of individual letters within a word.

Most often this method involved duplicating the dominant vowel in oral pronunciation, in terms of Wells’ classification these comprise of the FOOT (6) and FLEECE (10)

categories. Here the association of Guthrie’s spelling with Wells’ vowel sets is perhaps

most evident: the very spelling strategies likely used to determine Wells’ categories are

reflected in Guthrie’s method of composition. For example Guthrie spells “could” as

“cood” and “would” as “wood” – a spelling that more obviously reflects the FOOT (6)

category of lexicology than the proper spelling that at first glance could be associated

with the MOUTH (18) category that often features the “ou” vowel grouping. Guthrie

also used repetition of a consonant central to pronunciation when composing for the

World, as evidenced by his use of “figger,” “trubble,” “gittar,” “likker,” and “wimmen.”

Table 3-7. Double letters in misspellings Double Proper spelling Guthrie spelling Wells Date (initial) letter category G Figure, Figured Figger, Figgered N/A 12 May 1939 Wagon Waggon N/A 10 August 1939 O Could Cood 6 12 May 1939 Rheumatism Roomatism 15 7 March 1940 Would Wood 6 18 September 1939 Should Shood 6 10 August 1939 Wouldn’t Woodent 6 12 May 1939 E Desert Deesert 10 12 May 1939 Deport Deeport 10 30 August 1939 Decide Deecide 10 27 May 1939 Speakers Speekers 10 1 September 1939 Religious Reeligious 10 1 December 1939 Ideas Idees 10 15 August 1939 Relief Reelief 10 20 September 1939 Derailed Deerailed 10 5 October 1939 Guitars Geetars 10 1 July 1940 S Listeners Lisseners N/A 11 August 1939 Horse Hoss N/A 9 August 1939 F Chef Cheff N/A 16 May 1939 Laughing Lauffing N/A 20 December 1939 T Guitar Gittar 1 15 August 1939 Ought Ott 4 12 May 1939 B Maybe Mebbe 2 22 June 1939 Trouble Trubble 5 20 May 1940 L Holidays Holladays 12 15 May 1939 Telegram Tellygram 10 20 May 1939 K Liquor Likker N/A 12 May 1939 M Women Wimmen 1 1 November 1939 O Rheumatism Roomatism 15 7 March 1939

Socio-political spellings and term manipulation

Guthrie's alternative spellings are not limited to simple grammatical errors that mimicked oral pronunciation; his substitutes for proper spelling often reinforced his stated opinions about social or political organizations, individuals and policies, as well as

geographic locales that housed political capitols. Usually accomplished with the

addition, subtraction or transposition of letters, Guthrie's political representations

appeared throughout his 1939 columns and became less frequent during 1940. While

these misspellings occasionally corresponded with the previously discussed strategies

that imitated oral delivery, when critically examined it is possible to distinguish spellings

intended to make a political statement from those that are a result of Guthrie's usual

methods of misspelling. For example, this June 9, 1939 paragraph includes misspellings that reflect both methods:

When Hitler an Musclini gets together they draw up papers. Then Mr. Lamechamber comes along an they make out some more papers. Then Mr. Stalin comes down an they tear up all the old papers. Mr. Rosevelt comes along an they all hook up an make out some more peace pack papers—an when all of em get home they tear up all of the papers an Mr. Hearst puts it down to suit him in his own papers and Mr. Rockyfeller loses some oil papers an Mr. Dupont some compny papers an the millionaires get in squabble about the mineral papers an yell for the workin folks to come join the war an its in all the papers.23

While four misspellings of political leaders exist here, only one (“Lamechamber”)

appears to be an attempt to create a political statement. Guthrie's critical of British Prime

Minister Neville Chamberlain’s treaty with the Nazis in 1938 and British inaction during

Nazi aggression is repeated throughout his columns. Furthermore, “Lamechamber” in no

manner can represent the oral pronunciation of “Chamberlain.” Thus it is safe to judge

“Lamechamber” to be a tacit statement regarding the political weakness of the British

prime minister. Other spellings here may not be conclusively determined to be politically

motivated. “Musclini” could be one of Guthrie's contrived attempts at oral representation

and the addition of “y” to Rockefeller is a strategy used elsewhere in Guthrie's column

(as demonstrated with his spelling of “sahara” as “sahary”).24 “Rosevelt” matches the oral delivery of the president’s family name, although it is conceivable that Guthrie considered the image of a rose when determining his spelling – or the image of a muscle

in “Musclini” – nevertheless, it is not possible to determine whether his motivation in the

composition of these names.

As will be discussed in the following chapters, Guthrie considered politics to be a

corrupt exercise where the economically fortunate wield power over the disadvantaged

masses; his very spelling of politics (“plotics”) and politicians (“ploticians”) simply

reinforce this estimation.25 Guthrie's method of representing an opinion with creative

language is also apparent in his discussion and creation of political philosophies, which include his creation of “Randolph-ism” and “thumbism” to complement his discussion of

Marxism and “Faceism.” The concept of “thumbism” is Guthrie's politically amorphous creation that is simply the embodiment of the American migrant:

Two more of my relatives just blowed out here from Texas. They took it the hard way. The thumb route.

I wrote Mr. Hitler a public letter oncet a bout faceism. Well I cood write up a purty good one on ‘thumbism’ too. Faceism is the foreing way. And Thumbism is the american way—at least to a lot of americans.26

Two weeks later, Guthrie invented another political philosophy named for William

Randolph Hearst called “Randolphism”:

Harry Bridges trile is a big education for a lots of folks. See where they called in some professors to tell em a bout Marx ism.

I reckon that was something new to the Hearst gang—they all ways belief in Randolph ism. But the only difference is that he’s all ready a dictator, an hes been for severl years, an he’s all ways th first guy to jump up an cuuss you out if you go to pesterin his play house.27

Guthrie also creatively represented political locales. Because California was the

center of a depression-era Red Scare, Guthrie's Sacramento was deemed “Scarecramento”

or “Scarecrowmento.”28 (The foremost Sacramento red-baiting organization of the era,

the agriculture industry-led Associated Farmers, was deemed the “Asshociated Framers”

in Guthrie's columns, although it is unlikely he coined the term.)29 Outside of California,

Washington, DC was also renamed; “Warshington” is Guthrie's spelling of Washington,

which could represent an anti-war sentiment or be an oral representation similar to

Guthrie's pronunciation in his “White House Blues” recorded in 1940.30 The District of

Columbia component of the American capital is also manipulated in a later column:

“DUMP CROPS, Decaying Citrus, Dirty Cotton, Dustbowl Colic. DC could stand for

lots of stuff.”31 Guthrie’s political frustration most often focused on the failure of

California redistributive policies such as End Poverty in California and the Ham and

Eggs initiative, and his disgust with the lack of assistive legislation resulted in additional

manipulation of term definition. For example, the term “senate” is simply shorthand for

“seen it” in two columns in June and August of 1939, respectively:

When some money is appropriated for relief all of the boys in the House say I aint senate, have you senate? There is a good joke a goin’ around about a Congressman’s wife that woke up in the middle of the night and yelled, John they’s a Robber in the House, and Congressman, said, No, Dear, it must be in the Senate. If all f the robbers was to leave Scarecrowmento it wood shore be a lonely old town.32

A Senator is a man—who has taken a trip to the Capital, to make the acquaintance of a group of men who’ve made the same trip. When some $$ money is set aside fer Relief, a Senator sez, I aint seen it, have you senate? An’ the other Senators say, Nope, we aint senate, have you senate?33

Beyond the manipulation of political spellings and meanings, Guthrie also

confronted social ills with his methods of composition. John Steinbeck’s sympathetic account of the dust bowl migrants, The Grapes of Wrath, is worthy of praise throughout

Guthrie’s newspaper writings but the novel’s title is also subject to manipulation in his columns. In June 1939, Guthrie promotes “Rapes of Graft” is a fictional publication by

Guthrie that features a “certain a mount of good, loud, honest cussin” to inform his

audience about the organizations—“Land Leeches, Finance Friskers, Asshociated

Framers”—that “put the folks under the bridges.”34 The avaricious lenders that borrowed

to migrants were themselves referred to “salary lone men” and “salary loan shirks” in

Guthrie’s column. (While each of these spellings could simply reflect an oral representation, from a fellow-traveler, “lone” and “shirk” were unlikely to be arbitrarily chosen.) Organized labor is also not ignored in Guthrie’s manipulation of terms: following a week-long straw poll conducted by Guthrie to gauge reader support for the

Ham and Eggs initiative, the results are reported as “union-animus.”35

Beyond the Newspaper

While Guthrie’s newspaper writings constitute the largest collection of his

composition during this two-year period, other contemporaneous texts provide further insight regarding his manipulation of language specifically for his newspaper column.

These writings include his personal correspondence, his non-fiction publication Bound

for Glory, which despite being published two years following his tenure at the World,

offers clues to his strategies of composition.

Personal correspondence

Following Guthrie’s introduction to Alan Lomax in February 1940, the two men

maintained a correspondence that Lomax, then the head of the folklore division at the

Library of Congress, archived in Washington. Guthrie’s letters to Lomax during 1940

are most often hand-written, verbose passages that address politics, songwriting and life

in New York. Notable is the lack of punctuation and rambling nature of the passages; a

September 1940 letter contains a 308-word sentence, another letter from the same month

contains a 181-word sentence.36 Most importantly though, in a medium that has a one- person audience, Guthrie’s spelling methods exhibited in the World are absent; simple words that warranted unique spelling in the newspaper are now correctly composed for

62 the professional folklorist. Table 3-8 represents a sample of terms misspelled at least once in the World that are spelled correctly in Guthrie’s correspondence with Lomax.

Table 3-8. Examples of misspellings in personal correspondence and the People’s World Personal correspondence: Get (People’s World: git) Women (wimmen) Different (difrent) Hundred (hundred) Orange (ornge) Little (little) Whole (hole) Minute (minit) Everything (everthing) Business (busness) Hungry (hungery) Thought (thot) Your (yer) Would (wood) Could (cood) Ought (ott) Deserted (deeserted) Washington (Warshington) Guitar (gittar, geetar) Politicians, politics (ploticians, plotics) Listen (lissen) Electricity (lectricity) Freight (frate) Trouble (trubble) Everybody (everbody) Anything (enything)

Bound for Glory

Following Lomax’s personal encouragement and professional recommendations that ensured a book contract, Guthrie wrote Bound for Glory during 1942, concluding the

1,200-page manuscript nearly two years after the appearance of his final People’s World column. The autobiography follows Guthrie from his Okemah childhood to the New

York success that he encountered just prior to publication and its composition often mimics the earlier vernacular exhibited in the People’s World. The mostly positive press reviews noted his unique writing style; the New York Times Book Review noted, “there is no mistaking Woody’s talent for expression, his ability to sling the American slanguage.

There is both the drawl of the South and the twang of the Middle West.”37 Bound for

Glory exhibits the same traits found in Guthrie’s World columns—deliberate misspellings and phrases of regional vernacular—but the texts differ in one important strategy: while his newspaper columns misspelled words regardless of circumstance, Bound for Glory

63 shifts from proper spelling to the improper oral representation most often when directly quoting individuals. When quoting individuals in Bound for Glory many of the spellings and strategies exhibited in the People’s World columns are revisited: “yore” and “yer”

(your), “jest” (just), “shore” (sure), “fer” (for), “purty” (pretty), “git” (get), “wuz” (was),

“ta” (to), “gramma” (grandma), “bumbs” (bombs), “mebbe” (maybe). This is most evident in the opening chapter, an account of men traveling in a train boxcar:

“Well it ain’t a dam bit lonesome in here, is it?” “I counted sixty-nine men in this car.” He squinted his eyes and gritted his teeth and doubled over a little farther. “Might be, I counted wrong. Missed some of th’ ones layin’ down or counted some of them twice. Pretty close ta sixty-nine though.” “Jest like a car load of sheep headed fer th’ packin’ house.”38

“C’n we help how old we are?” The biggest kid spit away into the wind without even looking where it would land. “Me ole man’s fault. Oughtta been bornt sooner,” the little runt piped up. The big one didn’t change the expression on his face because if he’d of looked any tougher, something would have busted. “Pipe down, squoit!” He turned toward us. “Yez hittin’ fer de slaughter-house er Wall Street?” “I don’t git ya.” I looked over at him. “Chi? Er N’Yok?”

Through Guthrie’s attempt to accurately account for vernaculars encountered during his travels, one can reasonably hypothesize his source material for the spellings used in the

People’s World columns. The spellings are not universally applied; instead, unique dialects are represented with unique spellings in Bound for Glory. African-American dialects warrant additional consideration in the text:

A long tall Negro boy walked up and asked us, “You men know what’s makin’ our noses burn?” He was wearing a pair of work shoes that looked like they had seen Civil War service. “Eyes, too?” “What?” I asked him. “Cement dust. This heah cah wuz loaded down wid sack cement!” “Shore ‘nuff?” “I bet I done sucked in three sacks of th’ damn stuff!” He screwed his face up and mopped across his lips with his hands. “I’ve breathed in more’n that! Hell, friend! You’re talkin’ to a livin’, breathin’

stretch of concrete highway!” “Close as we is jammed an’ packed in heah, we’z all gonna be stuck ‘n’ cemented together time we git outta dis hot box.”39

The representation of African-American dialect is not absent in Guthrie’s columns,

though it only appears on one occasion. When comparing the policies of Franklin

Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover in an August 1939 column, Guthrie quotes a “conversation

between to Negro boys on a bus”:

One of em asked the othern, You say mistah Hoovah is fo Wall Street? An the othern says, Man that fellah aint nothing but a ‘mobile’ Stock Exchainge.”40

While Guthrie unlikely realized it, his representations of the “r” following vowels – known as the post-vocalic “r” -- reinforced a common perception during the early 20th

century that African-Americans could not pronounce the post-vocalic “r.”41 Guthrie

method of spelling—“heah,” “mistah,” “Hoovah”—accounted for the dialect by replacing

the “r” of the proper spelling with and “h.”

Notes

1 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez: A New Columnist Introduces Himself,” Daily People’s World, 12 May 1939.

2 Woody Guthrie, “Introduction,” from: Alan Lomax, Hard Htting Songs for Hard-hit People (New York: Oak Publications, 1967), 19.

3 Jan Harold Brunvand, Folklore: A Study and Research Guide (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 61.

4 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 19 July 1939, p. 4.

5 Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd,” from: Alan Lomax, Hard-hitting Songs for Hard Hit People (New York: Oak Publications, 1967), 115.

6 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 9 October 1939, p. 4.

7 Woody Guthrie, “Jesse James,” in Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-hit People, Alan Lomax (New York: Oak Publications, 1967), 114.

8 Alan Lomax (ed), Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-hit People, Alan Lomax (New York: Oak Publications, 1967), 15.

9 Richard M. Dorson, American Folklore & the Historian (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), 76.

10 Justin Replogle, “Vernacular Poetry: Frost to Frank O’Hara,” Twentieth Century Literature 24 (Summer 1978): 137-153.

11 In his 18 October 1939 column, Guthrie calls for a labor union that includes most citizens. He calls it the UMSFBAUGCFNACUSA: “the UNITED MOTHERS, FATHERS, SISTERS, BROTHERS, AUNTS, UNCLES, GRANDMAS, GRANDPAWS, COUSINS, FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, ACQUAINTANCES, CHUMS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

12 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 15 June 1939, p. 4.

13 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 9 August 1939, 4.

14 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 17 August 1939, 4.

15 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 16 November 1939, 4.

16 John C. Wells, Accents of English 1: An Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 127-167.

17 The conflict between American and British interpretation of the number 3 and number 7 categories are best explained in Wells, 8-13.

18 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 12 May 1939, 4.

19 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 7 June 1939, 4.

20 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 24 May 1939, 4.

21 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 18 August 1939, 4.

22 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 22 August 1939, 4.

24 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 7 September 1939, 4.

25 Both terms initially appear in Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 1 August 1939, 4.

26 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 21 July 1939, 4.

27 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 3 August 1939, 4.

28 Initial “Scarecramento” from Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 14 June 1939, 4. Guthrie's spelling was likely influenced by the June 1934 raid of the Sacramento headquarters of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU), which is considered the result of the red scare during the maritime strike of 1934. See Lowell K. Dyson, Red Harvest: The Communist Party and American Farmers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), 92. “Scarecrowmento” from People’s World, 29 August 1939, 4.

29 “Asshociated Framers” from Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 3 August 1939, 4. A letter to the editor in the 14 June 1939 People’s World asks for corrections including referring to the Associated Farmers as the “Associated Framers.”

30 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 1 September 1939, 4.

31 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 3 April 1939, 4.

32 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 14 June 1939, 4.

33 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 29 August 1939, 4.

34 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 10 July 1939, 4.

35 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 6 July 1939, 4.

36 Woody Guthrie, New York, to Alan Lomax, Washington, 25 September 1940 and 19 September 1940, transcript in the hand of Woody Guthrie, The Archive of American Folk Song, Library of Congress, Washington.

37 “Slanguage” from Review of Bound for Glory, by Horace Reynolds, New York Times, 21 March 1943, BR7.

38 Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1943), 21-22.

39 Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1943), 22.

40 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 21 August 1939, 4.

41 Raven I. McDavid, Jr. and Virginia Glenn McDavid, “The Relationship of the Speech of American Negroes to the Speech of Whites,” American Speech 26 (February 1951), 4. According to the authors, some understood this perceived inability to be caused “because his lips are too thick.”

CHAPTER 4 CALIFORNIA

Woody Guthrie's spring 1937 arrival in California began inauspiciously. Unable to find employment as a sign painter, Guthrie settled with his aunt Laura Moore in

Turlock, an agricultural community of 4,000 located 70 miles east of San Francisco. He remained in Turlock for a few days before settling briefly in Sacramento, where he was introduced to his cousin Jack Guthrie. A polished musician who played guitar and sang with a tenor voice, Jack complemented Woody’s unrefined musical style. The Guthrie cousins decided to migrate to Los Angeles, where their prospects as musicians were likely more promising. Once in southern California the cousins performed at a western music jamboree at the Shrine Theater in Long Beach, where they performed with a popular local group, the Beverly Hillbillies.1 Following the appearance, Jack approached

J. Frank Burke Sr.’s KFVD radio station. It was, Jack reasoned, the only radio station

without a country-western program on its schedule. The audition went well and Burke

offered the duo an early morning fifteen-minute slot on the station for the Oklahoma and

Woody Show.

Under Burke’s leadership, KFVD permitted appearances by broadcasters rejected

by other stations, including Ed Robbin. A self-described “radical,” Robbin was involved

in progressive politics, taking part in local labor strikes and working for the Western

Worker newspaper. Following their initial meeting in 1938, Robbin introduced Guthrie

to the socialist cause in 1930s California, specifically through relating the cause celebre during the period: the railroading of labor leader Tom Mooney twenty years earlier.

67 68

Robbin had made Mooney’s wrongful imprisonment case a central issue on his program

and Guthrie inquired about the issue. Shortly thereafter, Guthrie had written a song titled

“Tom Mooney is Free” and introduced the composition on his program by stating “it’s

about the fella Tom Mooney, who’s just got out of jail after spending twenty years for

something he never done.”2 He was soon spending time with Robbin, who became

Guthrie's informal booking agent, often scheduling concerts at local fundraisers that took

place in homes or union halls. Robbin also continued to work at the local communist

newspaper—recently renamed the People’s World under new leadership—and introduced

Guthrie to the newspaper.

People’s World

Robbin and Guthrie had been acquainted for “some months” when Guthrie made

his initial request to write a column for the People’s World.3 Robbin was the Los

Angeles editor for the San Francisco-based publication when Guthrie pulled twenty or

thirty sheets of paper from his pocket for Robbin’s inspection. Each was a short piece of

writing accompanied with an illustration. Robbin was impressed and sent the writings to

Al Richmond, the managing editor of the newspaper.

Richmond entered the newspaper profession in 1934 as an editor for the Daily

Worker in New York City. His initial job was the editing industry laborers’

correspondence to the newspaper, which occupied “almost a full [standard, not tabloid]

page” every day.4 Richmond eventually served as the Washington correspondent for the

30,000-circulation newspaper and managing editor for the Sunday Worker before being

asked to direct the creation of a new San Francisco publication that would replace the

moribund semiweekly Western Worker. Under Richmond, the newspaper underwent a

metamorphosis that included its new masthead—which was realized following a cash-

69 prize contest—and its content, which offered more popular features, including pages devoted to sports and entertainment. On Saturdays, a magazine appeared that published recipes, comics, a teen page and a women’s column written by noted socialist leader

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The six-page newspaper also contained a column by communist

Michael Quin, whose columns were accompanied on the editorial page with cartoons and letters to the editor from the publication’s California readership. Due to Richmond’s age—he was 23 when he assumed leadership of the newspaper—the California

Communist leaders expressed concern about his role and installed mature Wobblies,

Harrison George and Vern Smith, into the executive editor and labor editor posts, respectively. Neither was greatly involved in the direction of the newspaper and allowed

Richmond great latitude in advancing the publication. The first edition of the People’s

World appeared January 1, 1938.

When Robbin introduced Guthrie's material in late 1938, Richmond was suspicious of the authenticity of the material:

Being suspicious of folksiness and words misspelled for comic effect, I wondered at first: is this columnist phony or genuine? I soon met him when he came to perform in San Francisco, a man in his late twenties, slender and wiry, a wild mop of hair and a beard. He might have been called a hippie in later years, except that his Oklahoma speech was authentic and so was his familiarity with the folkways of the open road as it was traveled by uprooted farmers and migratory workers. He was genuine.5

Guthrie was accepted at the People’s World without “serious examination” of his political views or an ideological screening test.6 This was likely a decision that was lamented by the Communist leaders, who disapproved of contributions that were not serious political discussion.7 Nevertheless, Guthrie joined the paper in May 1939 as an unpaid contributor to an overhauled publication.

Guthrie and Prominent California Leftists

Guthrie's association with Ed Robbin led to his involvement with the southern

California Left. Through Robbin, Guthrie was introduced to many in the film industry,

including Robbin’s college friend Will Geer who was actively involved in labor disputes

during the 1930s.8 Perhaps best known for portraying Grandpa Zeb Walton on The

Waltons, Geer was busy starring in the motion picture The Fight for Life when introduced to Guthrie. During the summer of 1939, when his column first appeared in the People’s

World, Guthrie spent days at The Fight for Life set and nights performing at skid row bars or leftist benefits arranged by Robbin. During this period, Guthrie was introduced to both individuals and public policies that shaped his column and corresponding philosophy.

John Steinbeck

Among the individuals Geer introduced to Guthrie during the summer of 1939 was writer John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was living in Los Angeles, having recently published

The Grapes of Wrath, which would sell an unprecedented 420,000 copies in its first year

and win the Pulitzer Prize. Upon its publication, California growers objected to the

depiction of their treatment of migrant laborers and in May 1939 a group of Californians

threatened to frame Steinbeck on manufactured criminal charges.9 Oklahomans were also upset: politicians protested that the fictional Joads would be seen as emblematic of the state’s population.10 However, once Guthrie heard of the novel, “he had to read The

Grapes of Wrath.”11 He read the book in 1939 but his newspaper review of the story was

based on the film version, for which he recorded “Lonesome Road Blues”:

The Grapes of Wrath, you know, is about us pullin’ out of Oklahoma and Arkansaw, and down south, and driftin’ around over the state of California, busted, disgusted, down and out and lookin’ for work.

Shows you how come us got to be that way. Shows the damn bankers, men that broke us and the dust that choked us, and it comes right out in plain English and says what to do about it.

It says you got to get together and have some meetins, and stick together, and raise old billy hell till you get youre job back, and get your farm back, and your house and your chickens and your groceries and your clothes, and your money back.

Go to see the Grapes of Wrath, pardner, go to see it and don’t miss.

You was the star in that picture. Go and see you own self and hear your own worlds and your own song.12

His People’s World column describes meetings of the John Steinbeck Committee to Aid

Farm Workers, promotes a book entitled “Rapes of Graft,” and compares Steinbeck to

Charles Darwin: “Use to say Darwin was right. Now you say Stinebeck was.”13 In a

March 1940 column, Guthrie describes The Grapes of Wrath as a societal panacea:

Grapes of Wrath again. Been a readin the book. It is the real stuff. If you got one of these here cases of angel-wing roomatism, it will ease you. If you have got a touch of superstition it will relieve it. If you got a overdose of hellfire and brimstone, it will comfert you. If you are afraid of cops it will cure you. If you are out of work it will show you your real job. If you are down and out it will lend you some patching. If you are broke and ain’t a havin’ no fun, it will help that. It’s a long book, but it wrote in the puredee, dialect that you talk. It’s a long book, but it takes a long book to tell about the Okies a comin’ to California.14

Following his introduction to Steinbeck, Guthrie utilized his creative interpretation of

language to create a fictional new book called the “Rapes of Graft.” It is the “Rapes of

Graft,” according to Guthrie, that led to the stories published in The Grapes of Wrath:

Rapes of Graft is the name of my new book. It’s so new it aint been printed yet. I aint ben able to get out the first issue yet. ‘Course John Steinbeck will haf to admit that evrything he wrote up in Grapes of Wrath was caused by the Rapes of Graft. I aint no hand to write up them novels like John did, but I can cuss jest as loud as he can.15

During this period Guthrie and Geer regularly performed for the Steinbeck

Committee to Aid Farm Workers, which offered entertainment at rural labor camps near

Bakersfield. To Guthrie, these were “Grapes of Wrath blowouts,” where migrants and

sympathetic Californians would associate:

Bakersfield had a Grapes of Wrath blowout. And was it a whopper! A whole caravan of Hollywood folks lit out up there and flit gayly with the Arkies, Okies, and all the farm workers, and various Steinbeck Committees.

Later, Guthrie would describe the camp experience:

I won 7 tickets throwing darts. I asked the lady what th’ tickets was good for and she said beer. And, by George, shure ‘nuff they was!16

Beyond his involvement with the Steinbeck Committee, Guthrie would defend the

reputation of the author and his relationship with the dust bowl migrants in the People’s

World from a migrant’s perspective. Following an article in the Los Angeles Times that appeared under the headline “‘Grapes of Wrath’ Author Guards Self From Threats at

Moody Gulch,” Guthrie counters his perception of the article’s implications:

I grazed through Johns book – an I say, as the dustiest of th dustbowl refugees – that it aint us refagees that is a chasin him. We wood pat him on th back. Besides, th’ Los Angeles times was all off track when it said th Okies was a chasin John. Johns book cost you $3 – an where is the migeratory worker with $3 to blow on a book?. . . .

. . . . John is out to show you just exactly what th Arkies, an th Oakies, an the Kansies, an th Texies, an – all of th farmers an workers has to go through – so’s somebody can make a profet off of em. . . .

. . . . John, if you git a holt of this artickle – rest assured thet us dustbowlers aint even “about” to come a huntin you.17

Tom Mooney and Harry Bridges

During Guthrie’s initial association with the southern California Left, two martyrs

had emerged to define the leftist movement in California: socialist activist Tom Mooney

and Australia native and labor leader Harry Bridges. While the duo were separated by

decades in their “crimes” and motivated by unique social factors, Bridges and Mooney were central figures in Depression-era California and frequently appeared in Guthrie's

column during 1939.

The Tom Mooney story begins in 1916, when, as a leader in San Francisco labor

circles, he was charged with first-degree murder for the July 22 bombing of a

Preparedness Day rally in which ten people were killed and forty injured. An active

socialist, Mooney had earlier served as a national campaigner for Eugene Debs and was

well known for his militant speeches and texts. By 1916, Mooney was consumed by a

unionizing drive to organize the car men of the United Railroads of San Francisco and his

vocal opposition to the United States’ participation in the First World War. Following

the fatal explosion, Mooney and several associates were arrested; ultimately only

Mooney and Warren Billings were convicted and sentenced to death. During the

following year, evidence began to emerge that Mooney and Billings had been victims of

false testimony and fabricated evidence and by 1918 his railroading was apparent to the

much of American public, including President Wilson, who pleaded for mercy. Despite

lobbying from the Left, a succession of five governors refused to grant a pardon. By the

1930s the Mooney case achieved international attention; protesters interrupted the 1932

Los Angeles Olympics with “Free Tom Mooney” signs and Mary Mooney—Tom’s

mother—made a national tour at eighty-four years old. Mooney’s sole hope was the

gubernatorial election of Culbert Olson, who promised a pardon. Once elected, Olson

made good on his promise and freed Tom Mooney on January 7, 1939.

When Mooney was freed, the People’s World celebrated with its only extra Sunday

edition in its history and the 144-point headline, “Welcome Mooney!” The mammoth

font was from there on referred as the “Mooney type” in the People’s World newsroom.18

There was equal excitement in the streets of San Francisco, where a parade in Mooney’s honor proceeded on Market Street and a 25,000-person rally later occurred in the Civic

Center.

Guthrie's interest in the Mooney case originated with his early discussions with Ed

Robbin in 1938. Shortly after Robbin introduced Guthrie to the story of Tom Mooney,

Guthrie composed a topical song that described the circumstances surrounding the case.

Called “Tom Mooney is Free,” the composition was Guthrie's sole People’s World entry in the October 16, 1939 edition:

Mr. Tom Mooney is Free Mr. Tom Mooney is Free Done got a pardon from the old jail house warden It was Culbert L. Olson’s decree.

How does it feel to be free How does it feel to be free How does it feel just to be out of jail Since Olson has give you Liber-ty?

It was way up in old ‘Frisco town It was way up in old ‘Frisco town Mr. Mooney and Billings was accused of a killin And railroaded jail house bound.

22 years have gone by 22 years have gone by And he spent the 22 for a crime he didn’t do My, my, my, my.

Olson stuck his head in the door Olson stuck his head in the door He cried, them cold clammy walls of San Quentin’s halls Caint hold Tom Mooney any more

The Truth cain’t be tied with a chain The Truth cain’t be tied with a chain Them San Quentin walls will crumble and fall Mr. Mooney is free again.

It was Culbert L. Olson’s decree It was Culbert L. Olson’s decree He took the governor’s chair, and he said I declare, I got to set this state of California FREE…!

Following Robbin’s introduction, Guthrie had clearly gained a fundamental

understanding of the Mooney circumstances. Guthrie's sympathies were not limited to

Mooney, but extended to Mooney’s co-defendant, Warren Billings. In a November 1939 column that proposes ideal replacements for leaders and social circumstances, Guthrie advocates Billings’ release:

Stalin where Hitler was, a parasol where Chamberlain was, Ham and Eggs where hunger was, and an empty cell where Warren K. Billings was, and $50,000 for th’ P. W. where nothing was.19

Guthrie's contrast of Billings’ fate with world politics was not dissimilar from Mooney’s

January 1939 speech following his release, when besides advocating Billings’ release, he

compared the “liquidation of the Jews in Germany and Italy” to the “first liquidation” of

the “trade union movement and then the Socialists and the Communists.”20 Billings was

freed from prison in 1942, the same year Mooney died at the age of fifty-eight.

Like Mooney, Harry Bridges was established a divisive figure in California politics years before Guthrie addressed his case in the People’s World. A leader of the

1934 San Francisco maritime strikes that culminated with the Blood Thursday riots that left two dead and thirty suffering from gunshot wounds, Bridges was long reviled by shippers and the conservative press, which labeled him a communist. The shipping industry, long unsuccessfully attempted to have Bridges indicted on criminal charges, tried to have the Australia native deported as a communist. By 1939 the shippers were joined by the conservative Associated Farmers and local law enforcement officials and secured a deportation hearing for Bridges. Starting in August and lasting for nine weeks,

the Bridges hearings became a focus of Guthrie's column during the period. The “trile is

a big education for a lots of folks,” Guthrie wrote. “See where they called in some

professors to tell em a bout Marx ism.” Likely Guthrie referred to the testimony of

University of California president David Barrows, who spoke about Marx, Lenin, and

communism generally.21 In the same column, Guthrie compares Bridges to Lincoln:

You know one thing a bout Harry Bridges. He said the main thing a bout American izsm was th Union. Well, you know, Mr. Abe Lincoln said that same thing.22

The following day, Guthrie's column devoted a poem to the Bridges case. Like his publication of “Tom Mooney is Free,” Guthrie's poem about Harry Bridges is a sympathetic but accurate portrayal of the circumstances:

July the Fifth was a ‘bloody Thursday’ And that was up in Frisco Town The police gassed, and bombed the workers, And 2 lay dead on the cold, cold ground. . . .

. . . . Then Unions formed around the workers When Harry Bridges said Unite And all of the seamen followed him, Cause they believed he was right.

But th big ship owners – they shook their timbers They moaned and groaned and hung their head; They flapped their fins, and swore to ‘get him’ Because they thought he was a little bit ‘red’23

Beyond the simple circumstances of the Bridges case, Guthrie emphasized the

resiliency of both the labor unions and Bridges himself. Each individual is simply part of

a larger movement, Guthrie emphasizes; no one is irreplaceable, including himself.

Bridges, Guthrie insists, “has said more then oncet to his own self, o well, if they do

deeport me—they’ll be a hunderd other guys jump up that can take my place.”

Meanwhile, if Guthrie were to “fade out of the pitcure, that dont stop th show—they’s a

77 hunderd of each one of us just a runnin a round ready to step right in to our shoes.” As for Bridges, if deported, he would continue his activity no matter the locale:

If you deeport a feller to th south sea ilands—a feller like Harry Bridges wood find plenty to do—he wood be a organisin somebody no matter where he went.24

In the end, Bridges was not deported; no witness could prove he was a member of the

Communist Party. Bridges resumed his post as the president of the International

Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), a position he would hold for the following forty years.

Standard of Living

During his period writing for the Daily People’s World, Guthrie often noted the lack of common goods available to the lower classes and migrants. Likely influenced by the conditions of migrant camps and the destitute areas of Los Angeles where he often performed, Guthrie found the ownership of goods—whether land, shelter, cars, shoes or food—to be often impractical for the poor but abundantly available for those belonging to a more affluent caste. Guthrie's central property rights statement is contained in his most celebrated song—“This Land is Your Land”—in a stanza rarely cited in popular understanding:

As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me.

Despite his ambivalence toward private property here, Guthrie earlier recognized ownership as central to maintaining a basic standard of living in a May 1939 column:

The standard of a living is a home, an a car, an a lectric ice box, an clothes, an radeo, an groceries, an wages you can live on, an some spair time to loaf, an some spair money to spend.25

This standard of living fails to exist for dust bowl migrants in California; in an October

1939 column, Guthrie describes the shortage of goods available to dust bowl migrants:

You seee, we been a hittin’ it hard ever since we can remember, an’ they aint been many groceries and clothes, and shoe, and cars, and houses—fact is, they been awful scarce—but we got by somehow.26

His expression of need for particular goods was not limited to his writing; beginning with the May 24, 1939 People’s World edition and ending June 7, 1939, Guthrie would introduce an individual good with a watercolor depiction. This series of paintings included a car, a house, a shoe, a liquor bottle, a kitchen and a bean and was often complemented with a column devoted to the necessity of the good. Among these basic goods, some were devoted great consideration in Guthrie's column, specifically housing

and the automobile.

Real estate and commercial goods

Affordable housing was made more widely available during Roosevelt’s New

Deal. Prior to the program’s implementation, only about one in four Americans owned

private residences that were often paid full cash or very large down payments. The New

Deal implemented two new agencies that altered the pattern of home ownership: the 1933

Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which insured long-term mortgages, and the

1934 Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which protected homeowners against

foreclosure and refinanced unsound mortgages. Lastly, the creation of Fannie Mae

provided lenders with a means to resell mortgages. Together, the FHA, the HOLC, and

Fannie Mae eliminated much uncertainty for lenders; these institutions have been

credited with the post-war suburban expansion.27

Despite these measures, Guthrie remained antagonistic toward 1939 housing

circumstances. Home ownership remained impractical for the common person and most

were required to rent properties; beneath a watercolor cartoon of a house, Guthrie writes,

Big corporations use houses now days to rob workin’ folks with. They line ‘em up around over town—an’ charge you 2 times too much rent. They let you buy ‘em— an’ you never git ‘em paid out. They even take the one you built yore self.

You can git robbed with a gun … ‘er with a house. Knowin’ thet you’ll work yore fingers to the bone fer youre wife an’ kids—the Landlords take advantage of your highest love, an’ youre hardest luck—an’ git you in a House, like a Rat in a Trap— and Tease you like Cat—‘till the day you die.28

Meanwhile foreclosure remained a practice of the drunk and unscrupulous. In an August

cartoon, Guthrie's page-one cartoon features a man holding a bottle; underneath a caption

reads, “I aint drunk enough to foreclose on a family…..”29 Foreclosure is a reoccurring theme during his August columns and cartoons; eventually Guthrie draws two individuals with houses in the background; the accompanying caption reads, “but they’s nothin left to foreclose on…..,” likely indicating the widespread foreclosure of property that Guthrie

conceived. Beyond foreclosure, his characterization of the housing market is of

competing extremes: on one end, avarice-driven real estate investors; on the other, the

itinerant, sleeping outside:

A real estate feller told me the other day that it was the cock eyed est racket in th countery. Well it shure sucks in a lot of countery, all right. It shure sucks a lot of suckers.

If a good honest Fedral housing deal goes through, it will hurt th racket of these land shirks, an one reason they don’t want no fedral houses is cause they wood be honest.

The only folks that cood hold up a housin deal wood be th ones that belief in a sleepin outside, as long as it aint them.30

Housing was not the sole commercial good unavailable to migrants and the poor;

Guthrie also considered automobiles prohibitively expensive. To counter this, Guthrie

80 proposes legislation that prohibits unused cars to remain on a sales lot, instead these should be distributed to the destitute:

You see whole pastures of used cars a lining our boulevards—an you see whole armies folks that’s a walkin.

Now I am of the notion thet you ott to have a law fixed so’s ever petastrain wood be requierd by law to go to the abused car lot an drive off a car.

Then you wood need a law makin it unlawful for any abused car dealer to have over 3 T-models on hand at any one time.

This wood get all the good used cars out in circulation—an wood also get all of the T’s off of the rode.

An wood help a hole lot to get the pedastrains off of the streets.31

Similar to the Guthrie's perceived dearth of housing, the shortage of automobiles is amendable through redistribution and government oversight to counter the reckless avarice of the “finance friskers.”32 Like the real estate financier, Guthrie's automobile loan “shirk” is established as an irresponsible sot who gets drinks excessively and repossesses cars.33 Other goods and services are unavailable to Guthrie's migrants and poor due to high prices. These include health care (“Aint seen a doctor yet, cause we aint got what the dr. likes to see … the money”), and food (“Feller next door owns a grocer store—you know, stuff you eat—an he tells me he’s a havin to paint his prices on th ceilin—so dern high”).34

Social duality

To Guthrie, the discrepancy in ownership of goods is reflection of a broader relationship in 1930s American society: the exploitation of the labor class by individuals of a more fortunate social class. Like Marx, who described class conflict as a life-or- death struggle where class membership is permanent and a result of heredity, Guthrie sees two social classes, whose conflict defines history.

History is a blow by blow write up of th match between th money folks an workin folks.35

The characteristics of the two classes are often defined by the production and

consumption of goods: the labor class produces the goods and the “money folks” benefit

from the labor:

They’ve come out under a heck of a lot of difrent names, but ever time they was one feller a buildin a house an a nother feller a livin in it. One feller build a car an a nother feller rode in it. . . .

. . . . The guys that makes a livin off of th money game is called a capital and th guys that dont make much of a livin is called a workin man.36

This class distinction is consistent throughout Guthrie's column. While the goods vary

from housing and automobiles to food and clothes, the producers rarely benefit from the

products of their labor. This class distinction between producers and consumers is a

reflection of individual wealth and the privilege that accompanies monetary

accumulation. “Money is power,” Guthrie writes, and beyond the determination of the

producers from the consumers, capital influences behavior:

Hole armies of people will do enything you tell em to, if you can show the ‘long green.’ You can buy you a yatch, an fill it plumb full of Standard gas & oil, an Ralph’s groceriews, an Frankfort’s liquors, an’ well, jest any dern fool thing you want.”37

Guthrie's musical compositions have been noted for the contradictory nature of the

imagery contained in the lyrics, and his columns—at least when addressing this

socioeconomic divide—assumed similar contradictions.38 Rarely did Guthrie refer to the

poor without mentioning the rich, or the rich without discussing the poor: it is a clear

relationship to which Guthrie repeatedly refers.

Billionaires cause hoboes and hoboes make billionaires.39

This world is run by 2 schools of thot— One school believes in a govt of the folks, by the folks, and for the folks—

The other’n believes in diggin th’ folks, robbin’ th’ folks, an profiteerin’ off of th’ folks.40

One bunch of folks is down an out an’ hungery an’ cold an’ miserble—an ain’t got nothin’. An’ another bunch has got a hole lot of stuff they caint use and don’t need, an’ still won’t reduce their pile to help a feller humen out—41

If you show for the money, you are on the rich folks side. If you show for what’s right, you’re on the poor folks side.42

When you sell what you can do, you sell your self, ‘cause you got to be there to do it: ‘less, of course, you’re a moneyed feller. They seldom produce a thing worth producing, and usually make it hard as the devil on the ones that do.43

This duality of social conditions contains characteristics of the two economic

classes. First, there is causation: the poorest of some individuals is caused by the

opulence of others. Second, prosperous individuals are as wasteful as the poor are frugal

out of necessity—Guthrie refers to the eating habits of the poor as the “starvation diet.”44

The conflict is painted as a two sides: either you’re on the “rich folks side” or the “poor folks side”: there is little middle ground in Guthrie's conception of class warfare.

Guthrie as Policy Advocate

Guthrie's frustration with the class divisions during this eighteen-month period influenced his to political opinions expressed in his column. A depressed economy and vast influx of migrants in California prompted the introduction of statewide economic policies intended to redistribute wealth during the 1930s, including the End Poverty in

California (EPIC) and the California Pension Plan Association—better known as Ham and Eggs—movements, both which complemented the federal New Deal program for financial assistance. During Guthrie's tenure at the People’s World, EPIC had long been defeated at the California polls but central ideas in the plan continued to be advocated by migrant leaders, specifically the idea of production for use instead of profit. Meanwhile,

the Ham and Eggs movement reached its apex during 1939 before also being defeated in the statewide November general election. Each of these policies—production for use instead of profit, and Ham and Eggs—represented an alternative to the futility and corruption of politics that Guthrie considered to plague the political process in both

Sacramento and Washington.

Political frustration

To label Guthrie's emotion toward Depression-era politics as “frustration” is likely an underestimation. Politicians—or “ploticians” as he sometimes referred to them—were generally corrupt, drunk, irresponsible, ignorant, lazy, greedy, tightfisted and careless to

Guthrie. So little respect does Guthrie pay politicians that he advocates Jesse James for president in an October 1940 column.45 A representative sample of his comments

includes the following:

We hire fellers to make laws. We hire fellers to change laws. We hire fellers to break laws.46

No wonder ½ of the voters caint see how to vote. No wonder they caint see see whats a goin on—lots of em don’t want to see whats a goin on.47

½ of the laws that’s passed now days helps to put the gangsters in jail. The other helps to get him out again. Goes to show what money can do.48

[Caption in cartoon] I woodent shake hands with 400 congesmen for a job….49

Congress caint go on a set down strike, cause you got to be a workin before you can strike.50

[To senators] What are you guys a tryin to do—make th hole countery a nation of refagees?51

When you see a man that dont know what he wants to do, an’ he dont know when he wants to do it, an never does do it after all—well, you can jest say, There’s a Sanater. If he ain’t one, you cood suggest to him thet he git on the next ticket. In all probability, he’d be elected.52

Despite his disgust with politicians, Guthrie found promise with the Ham and Eggs and

production for use instead of profit initiatives, which both promised to redistribute wealth

and improve circumstances for the migrants and others on the low end of the

socioeconomic scale.

Ham and Eggs

The Ham and Eggs initiative of 1939 was conceived to aid the elderly. Based on

earlier plans conceived by famed geriatric advocate Dr. Francis Townsend, Ham and

Eggs was originally devised by pension “zealots” who met in the Clifton Cafeteria in

downtown Los Angeles during fall 1937.53 These meetings resulted in a pension plan

that promised $30 every Monday—later changed to Thursday—to every needy

Californians over the age of fifty. The initiative had support in local radio through the broadcasts of Robert Noble, a former seminarian who called for $25 weekly allowances for all unemployed Californian over the age of fifty. Following Noble’s introduction, the

California Pension Plan Association presented California Secretary of State with a petition signed by 789,000 voters, one quarter of all registered state voters. As a

statewide phenomenon, the pension association soon had a new name that was initially

introduced by the plan’s opponents: “ham and eggs” was a derisive phrase employed

much like “pie in the sky,” as an unrealistic expectation. Nevertheless, the imagery of

elderly Californians eating a ham and eggs breakfast after receiving their assistance check

proved favorable and rallies soon featured individuals carrying banners reading, “ HAM

AND EGGS FOR CALIFORNIA” and speakers proclaiming “Ham and Eggs,

everybody.”54 Also appearing in the pea-patch press and echoed by camp residents in

interviews, the “Ham and Eggs everybody” statement was popular in the rural migrant camps as well.55 Considered too radical for both Communist and Democratic parties, the

initiative was defeated by a two-to-one ratio in the 1939 general elections but widespread

support continued in the rural work camps.

In his column, Woody often celebrated the Ham and Eggs initiative as

alternatively a reaction to the power granted to financial institutions and a remedy for

hunger among the poor: “Ham and Eggs is a plan to take the makin of money out of the

hands of the bankers … all they need to do now is to take it out of their pockets.”56

These sentiments were echoed in Woody’s cartoons, which often included the “Ham and

Eggs everybody” catchphrase that existed in the rural work camps, as well as “30 dollars

wood help,” a reference to the weekly government assistance. Beyond simply supporting

the initiative, his cartoons often requested action from the audience. An August 1939

front-page cartoon depicts an unshaven man speaking with the caption, “VOTE YES

YES YES YES YES YES yes HAM & EGGS!”57 The Ham and Eggs name, with its

reference to food available to the poor, was reconsidered by Woody his cartoons with a

new food combination proposed by other, less-generous members of society. During a three-day period in June 1939, the “Ham and Eggs everybody” catchphrase becomes

“Bread an’ water everbody” when proposed by a “salary loan shirk” and “Bread ‘n’ beans everbody” when proposed by a banker.58 The initiative was eventually defeated, perhaps

because its opponents were an ideological hodgepodge: the state Republican, Democratic and Communist parties, as well as financial experts all denounced the plan.59

Production for use instead of profit

Muckraking socialist Upton Sinclair had established himself as a champion of labor decades prior to his 1934 California gubernatorial campaign with the publication of

The Jungle, which exposed the conditions of Chicago meatpacking plants and initiated a government investigation following it 1906 publication. Nearly thirty years later,

Sinclair established the End Poverty in California (EPIC) plan in another novel in a

pamphlet format—I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty—A True Story of

the Future—which laid out a twelve-point program. The centerpiece of the EPIC plan

was a socialist vision that established two new administrative bodies. First, the

California Authority for Land would establish agricultural colonies on idle land, where

the unemployed would produce food for consumption. Second, the California Authority

for Production would establish jobs for the unemployed in the industrial sector in idle

factories. A barter system would be implemented between the factories and agricultural

communities, which would be partially funded by state bonds issued by the California

Authority for Money. A redistributive taxation program would eliminate the sales tax

while instituting graduated income and inheritance taxes and increase taxes on public

utility corporations. The goal of Sinclair’s plan was as simple as its name: to end poverty

through state-sanctioned employment, fiscal policy and government assistance.

Guthrie strongly supported this premise and used his column and cartoons to

express his encouragement for what he considered a panacea to homelessness and

widespread unemployment. One front-page cartoon depicts an idyllic hillside

neighborhood, with the caption, “COOD YA PERDUCE HOUSES FER USE!”1 Another portrays two men talking in front of a car lot with the caption, “DID YOUSE SAY

PERDUCTION FER USE?”60 Beyond simple front-page endorsements, Guthrie

theorized the ownership of goods produced by laborers would result in a more peaceful

United States: “If th countery belonged to ever body in it they coodent no fights break

out.”61

Notes

1 Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man: the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (New York: W.W. Norton), 99.

2 Ed Robbin, Woody Guthrie and Me: An Intimate Reminiscence (Berkeley: Lancaster- Miller, 1979), 30.

3 Ibid, 36.

4 Al Richmond, A Long View from the Left (Boston: Houghton Mifflin), 250.

5 Ibid, 280.

6 Ibid.

7 Robbin notes “The general attitude of the top leadership of the Party was that the paper ought to be much more dignified, serious, and pretty rigidly political.” Robbin, Woody Guthrie and Me, 36.

8 In 1935, Geer was credited with gathering weavers in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1937, Geer entertained automobile plant strikers in Flint, Michigan.

9 Luchen Li (ed.), John Steinbeck: A Documentary Volume, vol. 309, Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Thomson-Gale, 2005), 70.

10 Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), 257.

11 Ed Robbin, interview by E. Victor and Judy Wolfenstein, 28 December 1969, in Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man, 154.

12 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 8 March 1940.

13 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 16 September 1939.

14 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 7 March 1940.

15 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 10 July 1940.

16 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 31 October 1939.

17 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 11 August 1939. The Times article appeared 9 July 1939 on page one. While Guthrie is highly critical of its message, the article contains direct quotes from Steinbeck that reinforce his allegiance with the migrants and blames the Oklahoma wealthy for his seclusion.

18 Al Richmond, A Long View from the Left, 271.

19 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 13 November 1939.

20 Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams, 219.

21 Ibid, 221.

22 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 3 August 1939. The Lincoln-Bridges comparison is repeated in the 30 August 1939 column, when Guthrie writes “Sort of like Abe Lincoln, he [Bridges] lived an died with the word Union on his lips.”

23 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 4 August 1939.

24 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 30 August 1939.

25 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 18 May 1939.

26 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 27 October 1939.

27 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press: 1999), 370.

28 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 31 May 1939.

29 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 1 August 1939.

30 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 4 December 1939.

31 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 16 May 1939.

32 Guthrie repeatedly refers to financiers as “finance friskers”; see 6 June 1939.

33 In a cartoon, Guthrie draws two individuals with the caption, “Lets get drunk and repossess a car…..” See: Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 4 December 1939.

34 Expense of doctor visit from: Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 23 June 1939. Groceries quote from Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 2 October 1939.

35 According to Cray, Guthrie attempted to read Marx’s Communist Manifesto but failed to make much progress. See Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man, 172. Block quotation from Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 19 August 1939.

36 Ibid.

37 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 31 July 1939.

38 See John R. Gold, “Roll on Columbia: Woody Guthrie, migrant’s tales, and regional transformation in the Pacific Northwest,” Journal of Cultural Geography 18 (1): 83-98.

39 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 7 July 1939.

40 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 28 June 1939.

41 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 2 December 1939.

42 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 11 March 1940.

43 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 16 October 1940.

44 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 12 July 1939: “The docters say the starvation diet is one of the best remedies on the market.”

45 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 23 October 1940. Jesse James was not the sole historical figure Guthrie nominated for the presidency; his song “Christ for President” contains the following: “Let's have Christ our President / Let us have him for our king / Cast your vote for the Carpenter / That you call the Nazarene”

46 Ibid.

47 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 22 July 1939.

48 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 26 June 1939.

49 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 29 July 1939.

50 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 25 August 1939.

51 Ibid.

52 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 29 August 1939.

53 “Zealots” from Starr, Endangered Dreams, 202.

54 Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams, 206.

55 Gregory, American Exodus. 153.

56 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 14 July 1939.

57 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 12 August 1939.

58 The three phrases occurred in consecutive editions: Woody Guthrie, People’s Daily World, 23 June 1939, 24 June 1939, 26 June 1939.

59 Gregory, American Exodus. 153.

61 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 26 September 1939.

CHAPTER 5 WAR

During Woody Guthrie's term at the People’s World international crises that were mounting during the 1930s had finally erupted. In Europe a fragile peace between Nazi

Germany and other European powers—Russia, France and Britain—unraveled with the

German invasion of Poland during September 1939. In East Asia, the late-1930s Sino-

Japanese conflict progressed from a regional to a worldwide concern when Japanese leaders begun negotiations for a formal alliance with Hitler and Mussolini in 1940.

Isolated by oceans and public sentiment, the United States would be only peripherally involved until the bombing Pearl Harbor; nevertheless, Guthrie commented on the international episodes that led to the Second World War regularly in his column, revealing both an awareness of international affairs and judgments that concerned the fiscal, economic and moral dimensions of war.

This chapter discusses certain occurrences during this period and Guthrie's reaction to the circumstances in his newspaper writings. Specifically, Guthrie was concerned with four components of the building conflict during this period. First is the European conflict, precipitated by Nazi Germany and, according to Guthrie, encouraged by the actions of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and specifically his policy of appeasement. Second, the Pacific theater that involved the conflict between Japan and

China, which frequently sided with the “peace-loving” Chinese. Third is the cost of war in financial terms, which Guthrie considered exorbitant, given the simultaneous

91 92

conditions of America’s migrants and destitute. Lastly, in his People’s World writings we begin to see Guthrie's rejection of war as an ignoble, immoral and largely unnecessary activity.

The Buildup to World War

As Hitler assumed greater power during the late 1930s, Western powers demonstrated little commitment to obstruct his murder of Germany’s Jewish population or restrict his assumption of greater territorial control. The Nazi mistreatment of Jews had been published in both book and article form by New York Post Berlin bureau chief

Dorothy Thompson, who unsuccessfully challenged the American public for intervention prior to her expulsion from Germany in 1934. Nevertheless, American public opinion reflected an ignorance of the severity of persecution during this period and an unwillingness to confront Nazi Germany. Internationally, agreements on the resettlement of Jewish refugees suffered defeat due to political divisions at the 1938 Evian-les-Bains refugee conference following Hitler’s promise to permit the relocation of Germany’s

Jews. Even following the Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), when Nazi thugs looted Jewish homes, destroyed synagogues, killed dozens of Jews and arrested twenty thousand Jews, accommodation of German Jews in foreign countries was less than ambitious.

Hitler was emboldened by the reluctance of foreign powers to assist German Jews and his territorial expansion likely furthered his resolve. During the spring and summer of 1938 Hitler grabbed neighboring Austria and during the September 29 Munich conference Britain’s Chamberlain agreed to the German incorporation of Czech

Sudetenland. Celebrations ensued in the streets of London, but not everyone was content with the agreement. Roosevelt compared the British and French diplomats who signed the agreement to Judas Iscariot and Winston Churchill said the agreement was a “total

and unmitigated defeat.”1 By March 15, 1939, Hitler completed his conquest of

Czechoslovakia and allied Italy invaded Albania on April 9.

Hitler’s final major provocation during this period was his signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet leaders on August 23 and his subsequent invasion of Poland nine days later. The pact included secret protocols agreeing to the partition of Poland and the

Soviet absorption of the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Bessarabia. The signing of

the nonaggression pact was a blow to the anti-fascist Left in America which found Stalin

suddenly allied with Hitler; the American Left immediately moved from being

interventionist to isolationist. Despite the short-lived nature of the treaty, at least one historian of the Left considers this about-face to be damning to the movement’s long- term credibility to those outside of its ranks.2 Hitler’s Blitzkrieg consumed western

Poland in three weeks and Stalin quickly assumed his territory promised in the

agreement. Following September, however, Nazi aggression gave way to a six-month

period of calm – a Sitzkrieg or “sitting war” that allowed Hitler to consolidate his

armament without making any further advances. It was not until the Blitzkrieg conquest

of the Netherlands and France in 1940 when Hitler resumed his Europe aggression.

Meanwhile, in East Asia, the Sino-Japanese conflict had escalated during a

coinciding three-year period (1937-1940). Central to the conflict was Japan’s control of

Manchuria, which was gained during 1931 and provided raw materials to the islanded

country during the Great Depression. To maintain control of the region, Japan installed a

puppet regime and inflicted hardships on the native Chinese. The promise of regional

autonomy was prevented by Chinese resistance, to which the Japanese responded with

military action. The United States during this period maintained relations with both

countries. The Japanese remained an economic trading partner to whom the United

States could export steel and petroleum, which in turn were used to supply the Japanese

military. Meanwhile the Chinese region remained a political ally, which Roosevelt

provided with financial assistance in its fight with the Japanese. American primary

interests remained in Europe and would not focus on East Asia until the bombing of Pearl

Harbor.

During the eighteen-month period that he wrote for the People’s World (May 1939

– November 1940), Guthrie focused not only on domestic issues but foreign affairs as well. While he looked at the United States as beset by the social inequalities, his gaze

also discovered injustice being committed by the Germans and Japanese. The abuses by

the Germans and Japanese, Guthrie found to be exacerbated by the prospect of European

appeasement and the practice of American-Japanese trade.

Guthrie and the European Conflict

Guthrie's column often discusses the European conflict in terms of participants. On

one hand, there was Hitler, who is the aggressor, the exploiter of “wimmen” and

“childern,” the occupier of foreign lands.3 On the other is British Prime Minister Neville

Chamberlain, who is the passive to a fault, the talker who refuses to act. In the context of

European conflict, Guthrie simplifies many complex factors to create an understanding

represented by the two principle actors in the Munich saga. Chamberlain is often

renamed “Lamechamber” for his refusal to confront Hitler and his reliance on

negotiation.4 In a column that mimics what he would write as a reporter at the Daily

Worker, Guthrie submits “6 very short artikles” in an article appearing after the Munich

conference:

Chamberlain is still a talkin. –Woody Chamberlain is still a talkin. – WOODY Chamberlain is still talkin. –WOODY Chamberlain talkin. – WOODY5

But it is not simply the act of speaking, but the effects of Chamberlain’s speaking that

concerns Guthrie:

They’s a number of things that can cause a derail—it might have been bad trackage, it might have been too mutch speed, it might have been old locamotivs— and maybe th engineer an fireman was a listening to Chamberlane talk.6

Ultimately it was the Munich conference of 1938 that Guthrie considers to be

Chamberlain’s failure. Likening the conference to a real estate deal, Guthrie provides the

reader with a question—“I keep hearin about Munich, what took place over there

enyway?”—followed by his explanation of events:

I understand Mr. Chamberlain was in th real estate business there for a while.

It was sort of a Hitler & Chamberlain Real Escape Company. Mr. Chamberlain listed Schezoslovakia, an sold it at a commission.7

Three front-page cartoons during July and August 1939 also depict a similar sentiment;

In one, Guthrie draws Chamberlain as a talking umbrella—a reference to the prime

minister’s characteristic parasol, while another shows Britain as a bull restrained by a

1000-volt holding pen. The sale of real estate via appeasement is expressed in another

front-page illustration, which posits Hitler as a company marketing appeasement.

Following the Nazi invasion of Poland, Guthrie's column reflects a commitment

to the anecdote to explain recent events. As a summary news report, a football game or

as alternative stanzas to “Midnight Special,” the European conflict need not be expressed in conventional editorial terms. His description of war as a football game incorporates individual positions, teams, plays, and broadcasting into an explanation of events.

I see Football Season is here again . . . Chamberlain kicked off an Hitler made a run thru Poland. Mussilini is on the side line.

Warsaw got tackled behind the goal post, and lost the ball. Russia is in the huddle and seems to be gaining several yards. Every European radio is broadcasting the game, and every Dictator says his side is wining.

German big guns are throwing passes over the French Lines . . . and French guns are knocking holes in the German Lineup.8

In the People’s World, Guthrie would sometimes manipulate the original lyrics of a song and publish the new rendition in his column. His treatment of Leadbelly’s “Midnight

Special” is similar to that of his own “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You,” which he altered to reflect current events and having the subject flee southwestern dust storms or be soldiers leaving for war. With “Midnight Special,” Guthrie alters a song originally describing a jailhouse-bound locomotive into an anthem of German-British relations:

O’ I woke up this mornin I heard th’ ding dong ring Turned on the radio, heard the same old thing: Them big guns a boomin Way over the sea I’m glad I’m here in the USA. (Chorus)

Now Mr. Chamberlain is a good old man He fed th dictaters with appeasment plans Czechoslovakia is all up set And she aint got back – to gether yet. (Chorus)

They tell me Mr. Hitler he needs more room So over in Poland they got a real estate “boom” This Hitler-ism is funny to me Youre under his boot heel, even when youre free. (Chorus)9

Guthrie and the Pacific Conflict

While his criticisms of actions in the European theater were generally directed at

Chamberlain’s reluctance to confront Hitler, Guthrie's discussion of the Sino-Japanese

conflict is addressed to the American public and its trade practices with the Japanese.

Perhaps in part due to American economic circumstances, Roosevelt allowed trade with

Japan to continue with little restriction during 1939 and 1940 despite the potential for steel and petroleum to be used in the Far East conflict against the Chinese. Guthrie found all involved parties guilty in this respect: the Japanese for attacking the “peace- worshipping” Chinese, the American traders and merchants for their lack of ethical business practice, and the American government for failing to prohibit trade with the

Japanese.10

Guthrie's discussion of the Far East conflict is an indictment of Japan as a powerful

and abusive neighbor to the Chinese is established in both cartoons and columns.

Sometimes the relationship between the nations is described as an analogy using figures

from the American South. As with earlier comparisons between the rich and the poor and

the workers and the financiers, Guthrie uses an analogy familiar to the American public

to describe a more complicated circumstance. Here, Guthrie uses two analogies to

describe the China-Japan conflict: first, the Japanese as a powerful bull that will emerge a

powerful adversary; second, the Chinese as a schoolyard bully and the Japanese as an

“Alabama Boy” who is the bully’s victim.

That reminds me of China—if Japan keeps on a droppin them bombs around over there, China’s gonna come out of the hay like Brahma Steer—and I wood say put up the most surprising fight the civilized countries has seen.

Well, they used to be an old Alabama Boy down where I come from that was good natured, easy satisfied, asked fer very little, diden’t much care, never put on no show, jest sort of smiled all of the time, in a quiet, easy goin’ way—an’ one afternoon, on th’ way home from school, the village “bully” singled this old boy out for some plain and fancy insultin’—an’ the old boy jest grinned, an’ took it. . . .

Till after a while they got him started, an’ sir, the hair and hide really flew around there for about a hour; and they was bullies, would-be bullies, has-been bullies, an’ bully-worshippers—a kickin’ up dust in ever direction!

An’—(I aint no prophet)—but, with a equal break, with powder an’ shot, I wood not bet 1 red cent that Japan, or 3 more like Japan, cood conquer th’ Spirit of the August an’ Noble, Peace Worshipping China.11

During August 1939, Guthrie's front-page cartoons featured illustrations of the

Japanese bombing China in air raids. In doing so he appeals to the People’s World audience, pondering the newspaper’s response and stating that the American public can stop the bombing, likely through economic activity and rejecting Japanese goods. His appeal for consumer action to prevent the sale of Japanese goods is not unusual for

Guthrie during this period, as demonstrated in a May 1939 column that discusses the purchase of Japanese silk hose.

Ruther then wear Japenese silk hose, ‘course, I ruther see the wimmen paint their legs with wagon paint.

Ever time you buy a pair of Japenese silk hose, you drop a Chinese dead in his tracks.

They is more then one way of skinnin’ a cat.

An’ they is more then one way to kill a pore defensless Chinese.

One way to kill one, is shoot him. The other way is to cut his head off. The other way is to bomb his wife and kids. And the other way is to buy a pair of Japanese silk hose.12

Economic responsibility is not limited to the consumer, however. Guthrie is

strongly critical of the merchants that traded iron and steel with the Japanese, which

helped to invigorate the Japanese assault on China. Likely due to its material support to

the European conflict during this period, Roosevelt was reluctant to restrict trade with the

Japanese, with whom Roosevelt’s advisor William Bullitt urged a conciliatory tone.13

With the trans-Pacific steel trade functioning during the Eastern conflict, Guthrie reacted with additional front-page cartoons and columns critical of the economic partnership.

Two cartoons criticize iron traders as unethical businessmen: The first features an

individual stating “to ‘ell with life” and a caption asking, “Is this you”; the second depicts

iron dealers hoping to finish a job prior to attending a peace conference. Both depictions

are similar to Guthrie's criticism of business people in other subject areas; whether

“moneyed folks” or “finance friskers,” those with financial resources are unscrupulous

avarice-driven individuals.

Economic Considerations and War

During the eighteen-month period that Guthrie wrote for the People’s World—from

May 1939 to November 1940—the build-up to the Second World War helped lift the

United States out of the decade-long economic slump that started with the stock market

crash of 1929. In part because of British weapons purchases, by November 1940 almost

3.5 million more workers were employed than during the low point of the Roosevelt

Recession (1937-1938) and the unemployment rate stood at 14.6 percent, the lowest level

in ten years. Nevertheless, strategies employed by Roosevelt and Congress to fund the

war was considered controversial by supporters of New Deal reforms. Large

corporations were recipients of more military contracts as the war progressed and these

companies—including Ford, U.S. Steel, General Electric and Dupont—collected larger

profits (from $6.4 billion in 1940 to almost $11 billion in 1944). To finance this material

production, tax raises were required; of the $304 billion cost of the war, 45 percent was

paid by taxation during the period.14

Meanwhile, Guthrie considered the financial sacrifice required for war to be better

spent elsewhere, specifically aiding migrants and individuals occupying the bottom of the

socio-economic ladder. While his column reflects little reluctance to increased taxation,

the distribution of the resulting revenue is misguided. As with his discussion of class divisions, Guthrie contrasts the slight costs of common goods with the costly expense of

100

wartime investment. In a July 1940 column he compares the cost of a sixteen-inch

cartridge to other available expenditures while reminding the audience of its function in

democratic society:

See where it take 800 pounds of powder to shoot the big 16 inch guns at Fort Tilden, Queens. The bullets just weighs 2,100 lbs. Cost you $3,000 (Yes, I mean YOU).

That $3,000 would buy a mighty good house and lot for your family to live in for a minimum of 2,100 months and would get you 60,000 pounds of pinto beans or 2 brand new 1940 automobiles, or send you kid to college.15

Similar comparison of finances appears in an early front-page cartoon contrasting the

costs of a five-thousand-dollar bomb with a sixty-dollar farm.

The culprit for these misspent resources is consistent with other societal ills: As

elsewhere, the war is driven not by ideology but financiers who hope to use the wartime

build-up to ensure profit. The war is to determine “who owns what” but the soldiers

involved gain neither from the conflict or choosing to fight; both the benefits and

decisions are generated by the financial community.16 Speaking about financiers on Wall

Street, Guthrie writes:

Maybe they get to gambling and drinking and get to arguing about it, and decide to have a big war…

And, maybe we’re the soldiers and folks that go and get killed.17

It is the war between the “forces of force” that builds a “war machine” that intimidates neighboring countries and causes unnecessary conflict.18 The solution,

according to Guthrie, is for the soldiers to make the “rich folks” take up arms against

each other:

It scares your neighbors into jumping on you, and then of course they them selves have to use force, so you are against their force, and they’re against yours…The millionaires has throwed their six hats and last set of drawers in the ring…I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet,

101

unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns.19

Guthrie's concept of a soldier’s strike is more formally called for in an earlier column

where he compares soldiers to other common laborers:

Laborin folks is on th march all over the countery. I wood like to see all th soldiers in the world go on a strike an quit a fightin.20

Similarly, Guthrie frames wartime opinion was class warfare, where individuals are

“either against the war profiteers or for them. You’re either for the working folks or

against them.”21

Economic considerations are perhaps the primary source of Guthrie's opposition to the “profiteer war” in Europe and East Asia, however, economics represent only one

source of his opposition to international conflict, which he considers an ignoble act

practiced by “maniacs.”22 His discussions of broader objections establish Guthrie as an

early Second World War critic.

Guthrie’s Anti-War Message

In November 1939, having written for the People’s World for six months, Guthrie

writes what may be considered his central statement that concerns the practice of warfare:

War is game played by maniacs who kill each other. It is murder, studied, prepared and planned by insane minds, and followed by a bunch of thieves.

You can’t believe in life, and wear the uniform of death.

There are certain men who never think of any other thing besides slaughter. They are blood soaked butchers and they are believed to be heroes.

Three fifths of the people decide to murder the other two fifths, who must take up killing in order to stay alive.

Locate the man who profits by war—strip him of his profit and war will end.

102

Rather weed out a few flesh eaters from the race than to see ten nations of people hypnotized to murder, and to run over the rim of the canyon of death and chalked up in Wall Street’s banks at so much per carcass.23

Beyond revisiting his criticism of the economics of war, there are statements here that summarize Guthrie's arguments about the cause of war and the potential to avoid conflict.

Foremost, war is caused by individuals that Guthrie refers to as “maniacs,” who are

“blood soaked” “flesh eaters” who wear the “uniform of death” and “never think of anything but slaughter.” These individuals are the cause of war and Guthrie advocates their elimination (“weed out”). Guthrie is likely referring to Hitler and Mussolini, who are subject to similar language in a song co-written with Pete Seeger and Millard Lampell in 1941. Sung to the tune of “Old Joe Clark,” the song “Round and Round Hitler’s

Grave” wishes for a violent demise for both fascist leaders:

I wish I had a bushel, I wish I had a peck, I wish I had a rope to tie Around old Hitler's neck.

Chorus: Hey! Round and round Hitler's grave, Round and round we'll go. Gonna lay that poor boy down. He won't get up no more.

Mussolini won't last long Tell you the reason why We're a-gonna salt his beef And hang it up to dry.

I'm-a going to Berlin To Mister Hitler's town I'm gonna take my forty-four And blow his playhouse down.

While Guthrie hopes for soldiers to disarm he recognizes the primary responsibility lie with national leaders, whether Hitler or Mussolini. And while Guthrie had called for

103 soldiers to “quit a fightin” in 1939, by mid-1940 he recognized the ability of propaganda to influence the masses and generate violent soldiers:

You take a good hard-hitting fist fighter and don’t poke his head full of the darn war hysterics, and he’ll take a notion once in a while to take a swing at you, but in all probability he wouldn’t think of a ramming a bayonet through you or cramming a hand grenade down your throat.24

When Guthrie was widely recognized more than twenty years after writing for the

People’s World, his name was often associated with songwriters who protested the

Vietnam War. Among these artists was Bob Dylan, whose early publicity photos mimicked Guthrie’s attire and expressions and his songs often drew on Guthrie’s progressions. It is also possible to see Guthrie’s influence on Dylan’s writing, as in

“Masters of War,” where Dylan assigns blame for wartime brutality to the leaders of sovereign nations. Guthrie had assigned similar blame during the build-up toward World

War Two.

Notes

1 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), 419.

2 James Weinstein, The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left (Cambridge: Westview, 2003), 175.

3 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 22 September 1939.

4 Guthrie names a dance performed by Will Geer at a labor camp as the “Lamechamber Crawl”; another is named the “Dipsy Danzig Jig Danse.” Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 12 October 1939.

5 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 9 November 1939.

6 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 5 October 1939.

7 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 4 December 1939.

8 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 8 November 1939.

104

9 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 23 March 1940.

10 “Peace-worshipping from Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 30 November 1939.

11 Ibid.

12 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 25 May 1939.

13 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 502.

14 Ibid, 464.

15 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 9 July 1939.

16 “Who owns what” from Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 26 September 1939.

17 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 27 March 1940.

18 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 12 July 1940.

19 Ibid.

20 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 27 September 1939.

21 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 14 November 1939.

22 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 17 November 1939.

23 Ibid.

24 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 23 July 1940.

CHAPTER 6 NEW YORK

Woody Guthrie gradually tired of southern California. His radio program was redbaited by a fellow KFVD broadcaster and later was cancelled by station owner Frank

Burke likely due to Guthrie's alignment with the Communists following the Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939.1 His friend and companion at California migrant camps, Will Geer,

had relocated to New York City, where he assumed the lead role in a Broadway stage

production of Steinbeck’s Tobacco Road. Without consistent employment in Los

Angeles, Guthrie drove east and settled in Pampa, where his stay was brief. Residents

were wary of Guthrie's leftist turn and reacted with suspicion and rejection.2 Shortly

after New Year’s Day, Guthrie sold his vehicle and hitchhiked to New York City to

rejoin Geer. On February 16, 1940, Guthrie arrived in New York City, where he resumed

his association with Geer and musician Burl Ives, who earlier accompanied the duo on trips to the California migrant camps. Guthrie spent nights performing at the Bowery before retiring to available housing, which would usually be Geer’s Manhattan apartment or a shoddy motel.

New York was a new and promising environment for Guthrie in 1940. The physical reality of living in crowded Manhattan with its subway and skyscrapers were a sharp contrast from the sweeping, wide-open western United States. Culturally, Guthrie

was exposed to a diverse range of styles in the community where the foreign-born

population represented one-third of all residents. Professionally, Geer booked Guthrie at

several leftist benefits, including the Forrest Theater concert that would prove central to

105 106 his recording career. New York City and the surrounding area would remain Guthrie’s home for much of the rest of his life, whether at his Coney Island home during the late

1940s or the Brooklyn apartment where the Guthrie family lived during the early 1950s before his admission to the Brooklyn State Hospital.

The transition from California to New York was witnessed in the frequency his

World columns, which offered only one submission between December 20, 1939 and

March 4, 1939. Following his settlement in New York, Guthrie resumed the column by occasionally sending a collection of columns to Al Richmond in the San Francisco

People’s World offices. Many of these columns were reprinted in the New York-based

Daily Worker, which was also published by the United States Communist Party. The columns appear far less frequently during 1940; Guthrie submitted only 77 columns between March and November, in addition, he submitted nine large cartoons that occupy several column inches.

The “Woody Sez” columns during this period are often a reflection of his transition from Los Angeles to New York; often these writings contain an introductory phrase reminding the reader that Guthrie is “still in New York.” Unlike his California columns, which rarely included a dateline, the 1940 columns usually contain a New York dateline. Many of these columns are committed to physical and cultural descriptions of

New York City, while others reflect an individual committed to non-aggression as an alternative to world war. However others simply reinforce Guthrie’s strongest convictions demonstrated in earlier columns, such as his criticism of financial inequality, for which he blamed financial institutions generally and Wall Street in particular.

107

Wall Street

Prior to his reaching New York, Guthrie repeatedly scorned the financial

institutions that he considered responsible for fiscal inequalities witnessed in California;

central to these institutions was Wall Street, which, like other financial figures and

institutions, was greatly criticized by Guthrie. His Wall Street discussion is defined by

three premises: first, the ignorance of the American public with financial matters; second,

the avarice and irresponsible practices of Wall Street; third, the physical dimensions of

Wall Street, which Guthrie discusses in his 1940s column composed in New York. In

discussing Wall Street, Guthrie revisits themes addressed in his discussion of living

conditions of California migrants and other victims of the Great Depression.

When discussing Wall Street and its influence on the American public, Guthrie

often references the ignorance of the public—and perhaps his readership—before

describing the detrimental economic influence Wall Street wields. Specifically, the

public is unaware of the impact of Wall Street activity on everyday activity:

Lots of folks don’t know all they is to know about Wall St. Wall St. is the st. that runs to the kitchen on the pockitbook of ever American home. On stomack ache on Wall St. can empty the pockitbook an kitchen. One case of roomatisem on Wall St. can close down 100 factories. One bad cold on Wall St. can close down 1000 shops. One sneeze on Wall St. can put a whole army of workers on the bum. This is a pushbutton civilization an Wall St. is where the button is.3

To Guthrie, the sway of financial institutions allowed a minor event on Wall

Street to have a severe impact on the pocketbooks of common Americans. This undue influence on the American public requires an educator for information, and Guthrie briefly attempts to fill the void in his column and cartoons. Because the public is

108 ignorant of actual financial activity, according to Guthrie, Wall Street can cause public panic as demonstrated with the Black Thursday market crash of 1929.

Guthrie's description of Wall Street during 1939 is not limited discussing its impact, he also describes the individual bankers as driven only by avarice, unconcerned with the larger impact on society. Wall Street denizens are sub-human to Guthrie, who sees individuals allied only with profit and with little concern for laboring individuals. In an August 1939 front-page cartoon, Guthrie portrays bankers as pledging their allegiance to a flag resembling a large dollar bill “an to Wall St., for which it stands…..one dollar, ungettable.”4 In the same edition, Guthrie continues his criticism on page four:

What Wall Street is a lookin fer is a humen being to put out in front—to front for em—the reason for this is cause you caint hardly find none on Wall St. I mean no humens.

When youre mind gits to where it rangs like a cash register ever time you think, why you wood make a good hand on Wall St., but you woodent make a good enything else.5

Perhaps due to the avaricious nature of Wall Street, Guthrie considered its denizens to be on the wrong side of his class struggle. An early, June 1939 column calls on the laboring classes (“you workin’ folks”) to confront Wall Street and refuse to accept contemporary conditions – specifically having to consume beans three times daily.6 The idea of Wall Street also has political implications for Guthrie, who considers the

Republican-Democrat division one of political representation:

1940 here I come. Looks like it’ll be Wall St. against us worken folks. Hoover stands hand in pockit with Wall St. Rosevelt stands hand on sholder with the worken folks.7

With political and social implications being so grave, Guthrie suggests the purging of

Wall Street and affiliated institutions:

109

Down with Wall Street. Down with salary loan sharks—down with the rape made finance fiends—We are civilized to the brink of poverty, slavery an slaughter. If this be treason—make the most sof it.8

Despite his sentiments about financial institutions in general and Wall Street in

particular, Guthrie had yet to visit Wall Street. With his relocation to New York in

February 1940, Guthrie was capable of adding a physical understanding to his general

criticism of its institutions. His New York columns often incorporate descriptions of

Manhattan street life with social-political observations and a March 1940 column describes Wall Street to his California audience by juxtaposing a dark and foggy Wall

Street with a theory regarding the origins of war. With a New York dateline, Guthrie writes:

Wall Street is here in New York. It’s a little old narrow street, and no matter how hard the sun shines, its still dark on Wall Street. Its tight and jammed up closet together in a bunch of old cold gray buildings that just look like a bankers smile. On a foggy day it looks like a ghost town. Mist and vapors a floating around between all of the trust companies and banks. Fellers that’s down there must just sorta take on that look, and they must kinda think that way—like a cash register in a fog. Maybe they aint like us. Maybe they get to gambling and drinking and get to arguing about it, and decide to have a big war. . . . And, maybe we’re the soldiers and folks that go and get killed. Maybe that’s why old Wall Street looks so ghostly tonight.9

The use of natural conditions to describe the heartlessness of financial institutions witnessed here echoes Guthrie's discussion of the weather in an earlier March 1940 column, where he notes the weather is “colder then a bankers heart.”10 As with his

discussions of the living conditions of California migrants and criticism of war, Guthrie creates a divide between his audience and the financial institutions.

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Physical Disorientation

When Guthrie arrived in New York, he encountered a city very different from his

native Pampa or his adopted Los Angeles. With a population exceeding seven million,

New York City contained nearly five times the population of Los Angeles, despite it having fewer than 300 square miles while Los Angeles had nearly 450 square miles. The

difference of population density was therefore great—24,933 per square mile versus

3,356 per square mile—and New York’s urban geography reflected this relationship. The

world’s two tallest buildings—the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building—had

been constructed in Manhattan during the previous ten years and served as symbols of the

city’s greatness. New York City’s subway, largely built between 1900 and 1936, was a

modern system of mass transit. The city also maintained a considerable immigrant

community, with nearly 30 percent of its residents being foreign-born.11

As Guthrie settled in Manhattan and resumed his World column, his writings often reflected on these characteristics from the perspective of an Oklahoma native (“I’m an

Oklahoma dust bowler in New York. That’s Me.”)12 In his characteristic written dialect,

Guthrie describes the height of buildings, the lack of space, and diversity of the

population and music as a concept novel to the native Westerner. Case in point is his

initial New York-based column, where Guthrie notes the height of the Empire State

Building relative to the distance to Oklahoma:

Here in New York they got the highest building in the world. Call the Empire State Building. Hundred and ten stories up off of the ground. Thousand and ten feet, I think. You get up there and look off and the world looks like a head of cabbage. You could jump at Oklahoma City and hit within walking distance.13

The skyscraper serves as a symbol of disorientation in Guthrie’s first New York-based

columns, whether the sentiment is genuine or reflection of his rural persona exhibited in

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his People’s World columns is impossible to ascertain. Nevertheless, when explaining

his futile attempt to find a point of reference, the skyscraper again is a source of both

humor and novelty:

Howdy everbody. I’m still in New York, trying to find out where I’m at. Boy they got buildings so dam high that a married couple could jump off and 17 grand kids would hit the ground.14

While the skyscraper provided an element of confusion above ground, the subway

beneath was also vexing for Guthrie. The modern New York subway was still a

twentieth-century novelty to the average urban dweller; to Guthrie the notion of going

beneath ground for transportation a confusing discovery that he reported to his California

readership. “Seems like two or three times a day I get lost down in the old subway.

Electric train comes down the link. I catch out wrong most every time.” Even the

regulation of schedules and the process of purchasing tickets are worthy of reporting; in

this case Guthrie uses lyrical language:

One runs east, two go west, and I wonder how to catch on best. Six go south, and nine run north, and you dang sure get your nickels worth. You put a nickel in the slot and grab you a train thats good and hot; sail out down a hole in the ground and ride that train across this town.15

Beyond its potential for confusion, the subway serves as a symbol of the city’s financial divide. Just as Wall Street symbolized the wealth of the financial district, the subway— especially the “hole” one needs to enter to ride the train—is the domain of the common laborer attempting to get to a job.

Looks like all of the workin’ folks are a goin in the hole here. Call ‘em subways. You pay a nickel and go down and then you come out after a while and see if you’re at the right address.16

I have remarked elsewhere, that everybody has got to go in the hole every morning to get to work. You might say the workin’ folks had to go underground to get anywhere.17

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Music in New York

New York during the first half of the twentieth century embodied a music industry conflict between the established publishing houses that featured the music of Tin Pan

Alley composers and unlicensed musicians that sought financial gain through alternative

means such as live or recorded performances. Guthrie belonged in the latter camp.

Having learned to play by ear—he called this method “ear music”—Guthrie was never a

formal composer in the Tin Pan Alley signification.18 His financial support during 1940

came from CBS broadcasts and many of his close friends were singers ignored by

traditional publishing houses: Huddie Ledbetter, Sarah Ogan, and “Aunt” Molly Jackson.

Beyond his musical associates Guthrie was exposed to the diverse New York music on

the streets, the music halls and taverns in Manhattan. In his column Guthrie discusses the

styles encountered and the individual musicians that were often a reflection of the diverse

city they inhabited. In one column Guthrie relates an encounter with Earl Robinson, the

composer of “Joe Hill,” a song commemorating the radical labor leader, and other leftist

anthems. Robinson receives admiration from Guthrie years before Robinson was

blacklisted during the 1950s. Besides Robinson, Guthrie recounts an encounter with

Cecil Anderson, better known as the Duke of Iron.

Like many of the city’s residents, Anderson immigrated to New York during the

early 1900s. Following his 1923 arrival from Trinidad, the multi-instrumentalist became

one of the best-known calypso singers in the United States from the thirties to the fifties,

during which the Duke of Iron appeared frequently at the Village Vanguard, the Apollo,

and Carnegie Hall while recording several albums and singles. When Guthrie met

Anderson he reported the occasion to his World readers, similar to his earlier California-

based columns where he wrote about meeting musicians on the street of Los Angeles’

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skid row and the rural migrant camps outside of the city. His discussion of the encounter

with Anderson is a reflection of contrasting cultures coalescing in the city; a dust bowl migrant meets a Trinidadian émigré:

He had a funny lookin’ outfit called a quatro. I had a guittar. We put our nickel in the slot, put our feet up on the porcelain, tuned up to key, and sung and sung. . . .

. . . . The Duke’s a mighty good feller. Sings like a genius. If you go high he goes low. If you swing low he swings high. And you can sing any kind of song and he’s right there where he ought to be, harmonizing.

That’s just plumb natural for them. Music is like breathing, singing like walking, or harmonizing is like making love on the beach—and you caint beat the Negroes for that.19

Guthrie’s reference to sex in relation to calypso music echoed sentiments later expressed

in the 1950s New York press, which deemed the genre too sexually explicit for general

American audiences. Anderson was aware of and often embraced this perception. When

a journalist asked him about the sexual connotations, Anderson responded that he was

simply a poor Trinidadian responding to American public demand.20

Meanwhile Guthrie’s visibility as a songwriter benefited from his association

with Alan Lomax, the 23-year-old assistant director of the Archive of Folk Song at the

Library of Congress. Despite his age, Lomax was experienced as a collector of folk

songs, having joined his father during the summer of 1933 traveling to prisons in the

Deep South in the search of songs by black inmates. During this expedition the Lomaxes

encountered Guthrie’s future associate Leadbelly in Louisiana and shortly thereafter won

clemency for the musician. Lomax continued to collect songs and record musicians for

the Library of Congress when, in 1940, he was scheduled to appear at a Forrest Theater

“Grapes of Wrath Evening” alongside among others, Woody Guthrie. Guthrie performed several of his dust bowl songs before commenting on life in New York with observations

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that echoed thoughts expressed in his column: “The buildings are so high the sun don’t

come out until one-thirty in the afternoon.” Later he observed, while playing a talking

blues progression on his guitar, “I believe there’s more of New York underground than

on top … Seems like two or three times a day I get lost down the wrong subway …

Electric train comes down the line, I catch out wrong most every time.”21 The presentation impressed Lomax, who asked Guthrie to come to the Library of Congress to record his dust bowl songs. Guthrie agreed.

Washington

Guthrie joined Lomax and his wife, Elizabeth, in late March 1940 in Washington to record songs and interviews that would not be widely released for twenty-five years.

Conducted March 22, 25, and 27, 1940, the Library of Congress Recordings were unique to the Library’s folk-song collection in two regards. First, Guthrie was granted unusual interview time; often spoken introductions consumed more time than the actual song.

Second, most of the songs were original Guthrie recordings, instead of traditional folk songs that are by definition not composed by a single individual. Of the forty songs, eleven are “traditional” and the remainder is credited, at least in part, to Guthrie. The freedom granted to Guthrie, it has been speculated, was a reflection of Lomax’s fondness for his subject. The recordings covered a range of subjects—personal anecdote and history, Western “outlaws,” the Okie identity and the banker—and are considered among

Guthrie’s most influential recordings.22

When Guthrie was not recording at the Library of Congress, he toured

Washington. These excursions provided material for one week’s worth of columns in the

People’s World during late March and early April that allowed another opportunity for

Guthrie to confront the avaricious and callous nature of politicians. Washington, Guthrie

115 explains, is “where you go to make laws, break laws, rake laws, fake laws, take laws and shake laws” but most troubling to Guthrie is the lack of aid provided to Oklahoma and the migrants.23

As with other observations in his columns, Guthrie begins uses analogy to comment on the lack of assistance to impoverished individuals. In his initial Washington entry, Guthrie first comments on the geographic size of Delaware—“I missed a seeing

Delaware it was so little, you see we was a driving about 40 miles an hour, and I shut my eyes and rared my head back to sneeze, and whiz went Delaware”—before noting the ability of the legislature to miss the financial needs of a much larger state.

But after I got to Washington I seen how easy it was to miss a state. Oklahoma’s a big one, but the senators have so far managed to sneeze completely past it. Oklahoma has been shot at and missed, spit at and hit, chopped at and chipped, laughed at and left.24

Guthrie also uses common folklore to demonstrate the cupidity of Washington legislators, specifically the myth of George Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac

River, which Guthrie considers before making his political statement:

Here in Washington theys a river called the Potomac, it’s the one that George throwed the silver dollar acrost. I think it was up at the head where the river is littler, or either he caught it when it was dry, or froze over, and took three or four throws at it.

I’m a gonna sneak off down there some warm day and try a dime—but not one cent more. I’m a workin on a Silver Dollar Club, with a good net strung under the river, and make all of the senators throw the relief dollars at the bank, and they’ll light in the middle of the river, and then let the old folks and relief folks pull in the net.25

Guthrie’s columns about Washington do include more lighthearted moments where he becomes the disoriented Southwest native, unable to navigate government buildings.

His attempts to find Lomax in the Department of Interior—the location of the Library of

Congress in 1940—was a vexing experience, as was his attempt at understanding the role

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of the department. “Got lost in the halls of the Department of Interior,” Guthrie writes in

an early April column. “I dont know what that means. I spose it’s a bunch of decorators.”

But this is part of a larger pattern of disorientation: “Boy they got buildins here with more

buildins inside of em. They build up a building and then when it is so old its about to fall

down they pitch in and build a marble one around it to hold it up.” But in the column

appearing two days later, Guthrie answers his earlier inquiry. “Found out what the

Department of the Interior was. That’s all inside stuff, you know—they take care of

everything here in the United States, like Oklahoma oil and Pittsburgh iron, and

California gold, and Arizona silver, and stuff you grow, crops, and stuff you eat—you

remember that.”26 As witnessed in his New York columns and earlier in his California

entries, Guthrie succeeds in portraying himself as the ignorant bumpkin with simple

explanations for simple concepts.

Notes

1 Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1980), 137.

2 Ibid., 138.

3 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 19 May 1939.

4 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 23 August 1939.

5 Ibid.

6 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 5 June 1939.

7 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 21 August 1939.

8 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 25 June 1939.

9 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 27 March 1940.

10 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 9 March 1940.

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11 The population and density statistics are available at U.S. Bureau of the Census website; available from http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0027/tab17.txt; Internet. The immigrant population statistics are also available at U.S. Bureau of the Census website; available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab22.html; Internet. The subway information is from Reuter, Lawrence G. “Some 4.5 million people use the 100-year-old New York City Subway every business day.” City Mayors website: http://www.citymayors.com/transport/nycsubway_100.html.

12 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 9 March 1940.

13 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 4 March 1940.

14 Ibid.

15 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 21 March 1940.

16 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 9 March 1940.

17 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 2 May 1940.

18 Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004) 34.

19 Woody Guthrie, Daily People’s World, 14 March 1940.

20 For a discussion of sexual messages within the calypso genre and journalist and public perception, see Michael S. Eldridge, “Bop Girl Goes Calypso: Containing Race and Youth Culture in Cold War America.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 3 (Fall 2005) [journal on-line]; available from http://anthurium.miami.edu/volume_3/issue_2/eldridge-bop.htm; Internet; accessed 27 April 2006.

21 Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1980) 150.

22 About the freedom granted Guthrie, see Cray, who writes, “that freedom suggested just how much Guthrie the songwriter had impressed his host.” Rounder Records most recently reissued in 1988 (Rounder CD 1041/2/3).

23 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 29 March 1940.

24 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 28 March 1940.

25 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 1 April 1940.

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26 These columns appeared in the People’s World 1 April 1940 and 3 April 1940, respectively.

CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION

Woody Guthrie’s year in New York was among the most productive of his career.

He composed many of his most celebrated songs, including “This Land is Your Land,” his famous retort to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” that was written in a “grimy hotel” in midtown Manhattan.1 His radio presence had been developed as a regular

contributor to CBS programs that included Pursuit of Happiness, Back Where I Come

From and Pipe Smoking Time; the latter earning Guthrie the substantial salary of 180

dollars per week. His association with Alan Lomax resulted in the Library of Congress

recording sessions and his contribution to a songbook, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-hit

People. Meanwhile Guthrie’s newspaper column resumed publication following a brief

hiatus and was printed in the Daily Worker in addition to the People’s World.

However prior to contracting Huntington’s disease, Guthrie rarely lived in one location for long and just as he departed Los Angeles, he returned to California from New

York on a whim. In December Guthrie formally abandoned his column with the two newspapers, a decision that was mutual between Guthrie and the former Wobbly party hierarchy that found Guthrie’s column less than refined and incompatible with serious ideological discussion.2 More important was his departure from Pipe Smoking Time,

which had provided comfortable income for the first time. Disgusted by the formality

and opulence of the CBS studio, he quit following the 1940 New Year’s Eve broadcast.

Guthrie packed up the family and drove to Washington D.C., where he recorded seven more songs for Lomax at the Library of Congress, before driving to Los Angeles. He

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would remain there only briefly before accepting work as a songwriter for the Bonneville

Power Administration, which oversaw the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in central Washington. This would prove another productive songwriting venture before his

eventual return to New York in 1941.

Before concluding his eighteen months as a contributor to the Communist press

Guthrie provided many insights toward his self-representation and personal convictions

that later earned him iconic status in American culture. His composition of idiomatic

vernacular expressed a unique interpretation of the language, countering linguistic

convention and providing an unrefined voice to the People’s World. His expression of

lived experience of the dust bowl migration presented an authentic voice of the

dispossessed migrants moving to California. His rejection of international conflict during

the pre-Second World War build-up demonstrates a pacifistic Guthrie, years before his

service as a merchant marine during that conflict. However additional insights exist

regarding his newspaper writings; foremost is his role in relation to the media and its

audience.

As a contributor to the People’s World, Guthrie was more than the resident dust

bowl migrant who deliberately misspelled words and wrote in characteristic

Southwestern drawl. His contributions included cartoon advertisements for the

publication that periodically appeared on the front page. Guthrie became an outspoken

critic of the more established newspapers of California, chiefly the Hearst-owned San

Francisco Examiner and the conservative Los Angeles Times. Guthrie also cultivated a

dialogue with his audience, who came to know him as just “Woody” through

correspondence that appeared in the newspaper’s letters to the editor.

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Relationship with Audience

When Al Richmond accepted Guthrie as a People’s World contributor, his expectation was a genuine reflection of a migrant everyman, relatable to a wide audience, not only the party overseers. Beyond his folksy composition, Guthrie accomplished this with techniques that included a casual introduction to his column often directed from the first-person voice (“Howdy everbody”) and personal entries that include narratives about family life and parenthood.3 Meanwhile his narratives were never so overtly ideological

as to upset his Los Angeles editors or party leaders. Thus Guthrie’s columns were rarely the source of controversy, however when his column criticized modern art, readers responded with combating editorial page letters.

Guthrie’s modern art criticisms were only two in number, but were drawings that involved symbols of labor politics and characteristics of modern artwork. His April 18,

1940, cartoon modified the symbol of the National Recovery Administration—the blue eagle—to become a crow. The cartoon contained the caption:

Crow flying over the river with a raw lump of liver in his mouth … price $1000. Symbolic of NRA Blue Eagle that was crucified by a turkey dealer in Milwaukee, also resembles Hoover taking meat across the waters.

Beneath the cartoon, Guthrie lambastes the idea of modern art and artists: “I always did think that all of us was good for something—and now I see what it is. We’re painters.”

The simple cartoon and column generated numerous letters, most criticizing Guthrie’s perspective. One letter demonstrates one reader’s conception of progression in artistic work, whether Guthrie’s songwriting or the painting of modern artists: “Cultural phalanxes of any period move abreast, though often ignorant of their common cultural front—their integration is the crying need of our time.” Following this criticism, more

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readers joined the chorus, one saying Guthrie’s “intolerance of a progressive movement

would fit in better with The Los Angeles Times.” Another reader, however, agreed with

Guthrie for having “the ‘guts’ to say anything about it for fear of not being ‘refined.’”

Guthrie’s reaction to this discussion was to draw another critical illustration of modern art. This time the drawing depicts a laborer working a machine; underneath, the caption reads: “MODERN ART MEDIUM: Human sweat. TITLE: “I just got to heaven an’ I caint set down.” ARTIST: All of Us”. While the letters largely subsided, one writer noted, “Heck, some of Woody’s drawings look pretty modern to me.”4

In retrospect, the protests regarding Guthrie’s dismissal of modern art could have

been predicted; many art critics on the left hoped modern art to eventually become a

valuable expression of proletarian art during the popular front period of American

communism.5 It would be less obvious that Guthrie would encounter criticism for his

account of the unsavory Wall Street environment in a Communist newspaper, but

following a series of his Wall Street columns Guthrie addressed a distressed reader in a

rare Daily Worker column that was not offered in the People’s World. Beneath a

headline that states, “Woody Is Called To Task on His Wall St. Column,” Guthrie

counters the reader’s claims:

A. S. writes to me and bawls me out because I said that I’d been down on Wall St. three times and didn’t see nothin’ I liked. And I think he was right because I like all of the picket lines down there. I’d be glad when the speculators go to picketing each other. He says they was picketing a brokerage house and I’m sure that the Wall St. bosses has broke more houses than the burglars at Sing-Sing. So much obliged, A. S., fer bawlin’ me out which I needed.6

While the modern art and Wall Street feedback both occurred during his tenure in

Manhattan, Guthrie maintained a relationship with his Los Angeles audience as well and often across multiple mediums.7 Having both a newspaper column and radio program at

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his disposal proved complimentary in Guthrie’s advance of California’s Ham and Eggs

proposal. To exhibit public support for the initiative Guthrie ran a straw vote from the

KFVD studio to measure public attitude and used his newspaper column to publicize the

ballot. Direct instructions were provided in his column: “You take a penny pistol postal

card, put yes or no on it, and male it to WOODY, KFVD, L. A. and let’s make this a real

advance test of the Ham and Eggs question … and see if the real election goes like my

Straw Vote.”8 Unfortunately for Guthrie, his reportedly unanimous straw vote supporting the initiative was not mimicked at the actual polls, where Ham and Eggs was

defeated. But Guthrie’s vocal support for the policy reflects his commitment to the dust

bowl migrants, who largely supported Ham and Eggs despite its rejection by established

political parties and the California popular press.

Guthrie’s Media Criticism

Judging by his column, Guthrie was a close reader of newspapers. While in

California, he often discussed the popular press—chiefly, the Los Angeles Times and San

Francisco Examiner—in critical tone while promoting the People’s World either through

direct solicitation of funds or through congratulatory tone. Guthrie was aware of the

primary function of the press—to inform readers—and devoted columns to individual

journalists or stories he considered impressive.9 But like other enterprises, Guthrie found

the popular press to be a reflection of the capitalist culture it served. This resulted in its

allegiance to “money folks” and rejection of populist policies such as Ham and Eggs and

Sinclair’s EPIC plan, and what Guthrie considered a portrayal of the dust bowl migrant as

burden on public resources. To combat this portrayal, Guthrie used his column to counter

the negative perception, sometimes disputing individual articles.

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One such article appeared in the Times’ Sunday Magazine with the headline,

“Career Men – in Relief.” Written by Kenneth Crist, a regular contributor to the

magazine, the article is an examination of a particular type of migrant, one who loiters in

Farm Security Administration camps while collecting government assistance. While

Crist attempts to distinguish between migrants who are “genuine job hunters” and

“deliberate loafers,” his use of generalized language often fails to clearly make this distinction.

Some 10 camps have been built to accommodate these people. The places have running water, hot and cold showers, and parade under a fair stab of sanitation. They stand now as mute evidence that your paternal Uncle Sam will not forsake his children even if they forsake all—and if they have anything to forsake.

They can leave the Mississippi Delta, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas; they can escape the rigors of the dust bowl or the disappointments of share-cropping and come out to California’s sunshine if they want to; they need not be able to support themselves on the theory and fact that American freedom is not predicated on upon a dollar sign. Still, less than 4 per cent of those migrants hale from the industrial States!10

Crist’s article then provides interviews and observations supporting his central thesis

before concluding the article by noting, “It’s just another gold rush to the West—but not

for gold in the hills. It’s the rush of career men in relief.”

Guthrie’s People’s World rebuttal appeared May 23, 1939, eleven days following the appearance of Crist’s article. “The Times carried quite a story,” Guthrie begins. “The tale, written by Kenneth Somebody, an’ paid for by Mr. Somebody Else, was wrote up for the one purpose of givin’ the Refugees another black eye.” The concept of individuals completing a cross-country migration and living in FSA camps simply to collect relief is outrageous to Guthrie, and his discussion addresses Crist personally:

No, Kenneth … it ain’t the “Easy Relief Money Us Folk Is After”—it’s jest a chanct to work an’ earn our living’ … sorta like you earn yore livin’. You’ve got your Gift of Writin’—an’ that’s the way you work an’ earn yore meal ticket here in

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this old world. An’ each one of us has got our little Job thet we hope to do in order to pay for our keep.

Guthrie’s discussion of an individual article appearing in the Times is repeated in August

1939, following a report that John Steinbeck—a central figure in the refugee debate

following the publication of Grapes of Wrath—was sequestered in his Los Angeles-area

ranch, in part because of being threatened by dust bowl migrants. Despite the only

source of this information being “some Los Gatos folk and others” and Steinbeck

denying the threat in the article, the article claims it is one of two “versions” why

Steinbeck rarely left his ranch (the other threat, supported by Steinbeck, was the threat

posed by wealthy Oklahomans threatened by the portrayal in Grapes of Wrath). In

response, Guthrie again speaks on behalf of the migrants, in this case to Steinbeck

directly: “John, if you git a holt of this article—rest assured thet us dustbowlers aint even

‘about’ to come a huntin’ you. (If you see anybody a comin, it’ll just some more Hearst

reporters).”11 Despite mistaking the ownership of the Times—it was a Chandler family

publication—Guthrie’s criticism allowed a counter argument from a non-conventional

source.

While the above column addressed a single article, Guthrie may have been disturbed by the Times’ coverage of the migrants earlier in the decade, when the newspaper

accused the migrants and the EPIC organization (End Poverty in California) of stealing

the 1934 gubernatorial election and 1937 editorials warned of migrants influencing the

1938 election. But Guthrie was not concerned with the editorial content; the news

articles—or “tales” to Guthrie—were simply inaccurate. His cartoons lampooned the

Times as being so glaringly mistaken that informed readers required sunglasses to view

the content.12 The theme of ignorance of the Times’ readership is referred to repeatedly,

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as in a cartoon featuring a silhouette of a nude man, who “lost pants by reading the Times

and believing it!”13 As in his column, Guthrie criticizes the Times’ coverage of the

migrants. One cartoon features a bearded man reading a newspaper labeled “TIMES”

with the caption, “IT SAYS US RELIEFERS IS ROBBERS!”14

While his cartoons focused on the Times, Guthrie’s criticism of Hearst was

equally contemptuous. Guthrie conceived of a dogma named “Randolphism” established

by Hearst and followed by his underlings (“He’s got more slaves than Mr. Lincoln turned

a loose. White coller slaves. Limosene slaves. Moovie Star Slaves. News boy slaves.

All most ever kind”)15 – Hearst rules by fear and his goal is to keep people “ignernt” to

the inequalities perpetuated by the upper classes. This, to Guthrie, is the antithesis to the

true conception of what is “American”: “Everthing that aint American, Mr. Hearst says

is. An ever thing that is American, he says it aint.”16 The coverage in the Examiner is a reflection of Hearst’s anti-communist beliefs, as reflected in one of Guthrie’s cartoons, which depicts two migrants—their belongings tied to a stick—standing at a railroad crossing reading the Examiner with the caption, “HEARST SAYS WE AINT A

TREATIN HIM RIGHT!”17

Guthrie as Adman

Prior to becoming a songwriter or columnist, teenaged Guthrie produced visual

advertisements in Pampa, Texas. Working at a drugstore that doubled as Jamaica Ginger

bootleg joint, Guthrie painted the establishment’s mirrors and windows with prices and

advertisements. His “Harris Drugstore” painting that appeared on the store’s brick façade

lasted nearly 50 years before being sandblasted off in 1977.18 It is not surprising then,

that in 1939, as Guthrie was becoming familiarized with the conventions of socialism and

communism, his People’s World cartoons drew upon this earlier experience. Guthrie’s

127 use of the advertising form for the newspaper was both formal and informal. It is unknown whether is was Guthrie or the People’s World editors who conceived of his advertisements since little remains of their correspondence, but in June 1939, Guthrie started a series of front-page advertisements for the newspaper. Many were explicit advertisements for the People’s World, usually depicting a powerful figure demanding a copy of the newspaper. Others cartoons were not explicit advertisements but contained the form of advertisements to generate Guthrie’s statement on an issue or policy.

Guthrie’s first advertisement for the People’s World appears in a six-inch hole on the lower right corner of page one. Depicting two men speaking in the foreground and one man appearing in the background of the image, a caption reads: “Th’ duke wont speak till he reads his ‘World’.”19 The propitious idea of high-ranking British officials or the British public reading the People’s World is repeated during the final half of 1939. A

June cartoon depicts a crowned man appearing before a large crowd of soldiers and a general who tells the king, “Sorry – higness! Th’ army wont march till they get the

‘World.’” Later, a crowned individual refuses to sign a treaty before reading the World.20

It is likely not coincidence that Guthrie chose British officials to wishfully depict as readers of the newspaper; his judgment of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is reflected in the deliberate misspelling of the leader’s name, “Lamechamber,” and his criticism of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement with the Nazis, who were largely reviled by American communists for their threat toward the Soviet Union. The Japan-

Sino conflict that persisted during 1939 was featured as well in a front-page illustration depicting Japanese planes dropping bombs; underneath, Guthrie’s caption asks, “I wonder what Peoples World will say ‘bout this?”21

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When not endorsing People’s World’s reporting on foreign events, Guthrie used

the representation of the male head-of-household as a reader of the newspaper to serve as

an advertisement. In a June advertisement, one man explains to another, “No poker

tonite Bill … ‘Readin’ my ‘World.’”22 In the next day’s edition, Guthrie’s illustration of

a man reading a newspaper is accompanied with the caption, “FATHER’S DAY: For

him, a World sub!”23 Another advertisement explains, “John wont go home till he gits a

World!”24 While it was unusual that a fellow traveler would be active in the design of

advertisements for an official newspaper of the Communist Party, Guthrie’s folksy front-

page enthusiasm for the newspaper apparently earned him this rare opportunity.25

Guthrie was keenly aware of the potential for media promotion, as he demonstrated with earlier radio work, and his cartoon allowed the promotion of his mimeographed songbook, On a Slow Train Through California. In a format resembling his sign paintings, his 5 August 1939 cartoon encourages readers to “READ! ‘ON A SLOW

TRAIN THRU CALIF…..’ WOODYS NUTTIEST AND TRUEST BOOK! 25¢.”

Later, when promoting another mimeographed book, $30 Wood Help, Guthrie promises an “auto graft pitcure, post card size, with ever copy of Woody’s new book.”26 The

relationship between People’s World and Guthrie was complementary: the newspaper

received free content while Guthrie was granted exposure. Guthrie also offered

performances for the newspaper, which he advertised in his column “Remember if when

you want entertainment of eny kind for eny thing,” Guthrie writes in a November 1939

column, “all you got to do is get in touch with me thru th People’s World”.27

The use of the advertising form to generate statements regarding policy was a

common approach employed by Guthrie. When international relations, national

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elections, and local referendums emerged as issues, the cartoon often promoted the idea

as a product to be bought or sold. Prior to the reelection of Roosevelt in 1940, Guthrie

used the sign advertisement form to declare “4 MORE YEARS OF ROOSEVELT: A

BARGAIN FOR 1940” on the front page.28 Likewise, during the period of British-

German appeasement, an August 1939 cartoon depicts of promotional sign declaring,

“HITLER UND CO.: FRESH PICKED APPEASMENT PLANS 98¢.”29 Beyond

employing the simple form of advertising, one cartoon criticized the enrollment

advertisements of an unspecified military. Two soldiers, with a battlefield backdrop,

hold open a magazine displaying an advertisement containing a shapely woman wearing

only a brassiere. Underneath, the caption explains the soldiers’ confusion: “Must have

th’ wrong handbill, I aint seen a woman since war started.”30

Future Research

With his idiomatic composition, his criticism of the popular press and his voice of

advocacy, Woody Guthrie was an unusual journalist during the age of professional

journalism. As such, classification of Guthrie into a specific journalistic category proves

difficult. Present scholarship most closely identifies Guthrie’s contributions as civic

journalism, which attempts to directly integrate the audience with the newsgathering

process by addressing public interests and encouraging public participation. Often using

audience polls to discover salient issues and engaging the public with the community’s

political figures, civic journalism—sometimes referred to as public journalism—is an

attempt to “reconnect with the real concerns that viewers and readers have about the

things in their lives they care most about.”31 Guthrie’s encouragement of audience

participation through polls and letters and his use of personal stories from the migrant

community similarly incorporated the California public. Social reform has also been

130

considered an aim of civic journalism and Guthrie’s advocacy on behalf on the migrants

and policies he deemed beneficial was an attempt to promote social reform through his newspaper column.

But while civic journalism addresses some of the characteristics found in Guthrie’s column, important dissimilarities exist, including the fact that civic journalism was first conceived during the 1990s. While most contemporary civic journalism experiments take place at professional newspapers that adhere to industry norms of composition—such as the Associated Press style of writing—Guthrie rejected such guidelines in favor of his deliberate misspellings. Meanwhile Guthrie’s column permitted more than simple connection with the California public, it served as a representation of a segment of the

California public, specifically the 350,000 dust bowl migrants that recently arrived from the Southwest. This is also a critical shortcoming of the civic journalism label: simply because a newspaper attempts to gauge public interest and encourage participation does not engender it to become a member of a population segment. But this is what Guthrie accomplished. As the “dustiest of the dustbowlers,” Guthrie became a representative of the community, a culture broker for the dust bowlers.

With its use of oral vernacular, appeals for social change, and representation of an isolated and culturally independent community, Guthrie's People’s World column suggests a unique concept: folk journalism. Folklore is commonly understood to represent “‘special groups’ – age groups, occupational groups, groups living in certain regions of the country and groups identified by national or ethnic origin” through “an artistic process…in any communicative medium; musical, visual, kinetic, or dramatic.”32

Through these media, folklore maintains tradition in the group’s social reality. Because

131 folklore is often created independent of a written record, usually through oral transmission, it would initially appear that folklore is incompatible with newspaper journalism. But, with the exception of the existence of a written record, Guthrie's column clearly qualifies as “folklore.” With his illustration of the dust bowl migrant through the employment of vernacular and anecdote, Guthrie and his newspaper column represents a

‘special group.’ His newspaper column simply allows the larger public access to this population’s culture, unlike other folklore that is usually confined to that group.

Naturally, the concept of folk journalism requires further exploration. But other publications and contributors offer uncommon language use and a niche audience that would qualify. For example, contemporary online leftist publications use inventive language while addressing a socialist audience; in this passage, the Maoist International

Movement website misspells “America”, “Canada” and “U.S.” when addressing its position on imperialism.

We exclude Mexico when we say "North Amerika," because "k" stands for the decadence of imperialism. Yes, we lump Quebec, Anglo-Kanada and U.$. Amerika together as one imperialist entity. We also exclude the indigenous peoples who are not benefiting from U.$. minimum wage laws and the welfare state.33

However, elements of folk journalism need not be limited to niche publications. Will

Rogers, the “cowboy philosopher” who influenced Guthrie’s column, composed thousands of newspaper columns that were nationally syndicated; these writings also did not adhere to the standard language of the Associated Press and often used unique language and phrases similar to Guthrie’s. Because of the duration of his column, Rogers represented many communities during his career—his native Oklahoma, Washington and political institutions, the entertainment industry in Hollywood—and often his column contained a political opinion.

132

New technologies—specifically weblogs contained on the Internet—provide

additional opportunities to explore folk journalism. Because weblog contributors are not

subjected to the traditional journalism gatekeepers, their writing need not adhere to a

predetermined set of rules and the resulting writing style often reflects this freedom.

Meanwhile weblogs are by nature niche publications intended to address a narrowly

defined subject matter to a restricted online community and subject matter is regularly

political in nature. For now, though, the folk journalism concept will remain in

association solely with Guthrie.

Notes

1 Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 165.

2 The Daily Worker editor during this period was Sender Garlin, who told Cray that Guthrie’s writing was beneath the Party overseers’ dignity (Cray, 200).

3 For example Guthrie writes a series of columns from the perspective of Bill Guthrie, Guthrie’s third child born in October 1939. Written during late October and through November of 1939, these writings address family life and American society from a newborn child’s perspective. Guthrie’s column would also address the experiences of his extended family, usually fellow migrants in California.

4 Each of the quotes is from letters to the editor during late April and early May 1940: “Cultural Phalanxes” from April 26, 1940; “Intolerance” from April 29, 1940; “The guts” from May 10, 1940; “Heck” from May 17, 1940.

5 Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement 1926-1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 121.

6 Woody Guthrie, Daily Worker, 4 October 1940.

7 Guthrie reports in his 1 August 1939 column that he receives “a lots of letters from folks that ask all sorts of questions.”

8 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 6 July 1940.

9 For example, in his 10 July 1940 column Guthrie was particularly impressed by a news photographer he refers to only as “Pops,” who covered the Bloody Thursday maritime

133

strike of 1934. Guthrie also credits the press with useful information about Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron during 1939 (see his 29 July 1939 column).

10 Kenneth Crist, “Career Men – in Relief,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, 14 May 1939.

11 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 11 August 1939.

12 In one cartoon, Woody draws a man with sunglasses saying, “I wear ‘em readin’ th’ Times!” See Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 13 September 1939.

13 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 21 September 1939.

14 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 30 June 1939.

15 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 3 August 1939.

16 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 8 August 1939.

17 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 1 July 1939.

18 Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1980) 47.

19 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 8 June 1939.

20 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 7 July 1939.

21 Woody Guthrie, “Woody Sez:,” People’s World, 3 August 1939, 1. During the summer of 1939, Japan and the Soviet Union fought a small war on the Siberian- Manchurian border. See Alvin D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1985).

22 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 12 June 1939.

23 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 13 June 1939, 1. It appears some coordination occurred here between Woody and the editors, since the advertisement occurred six days prior to Father’s Day.

24 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 28 June 1939.

25 Despite his association with members of the Communist Party, Guthrie never joined. It has been argued that his political independence resulted from his personal aversion to commitment and his lack of direct involvement with political organizations. See Koppelman, Robert S. (ed). Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love! The Writings of Lee Hays. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

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26 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 25 September 1939.

27 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 2 November 1939.

28 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 18 August 1939.

29 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 22 August 1939.

30 Woody Guthrie, People’s World, 15 April 1940.

31 Edward M. Fouhy, Civic Journalism: Rebuilding the Foundations of Democracy (Richmond: Pew Partnership for Civic Change, Spring 1996); available from http://www.cpn.org/topics/communication/civicjourn.html; Internet; accessed 15 May 2006.

32 Leach, Maria, ed. Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, Vol. 1. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1949.

33 “Huey Newton: North Amerikan of the Century?” in Maoist International Movement [database on-line]; available from http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/im/hueycentury.html; Internet; accessed 23 May 23, 2006.

APPENDIX PRIMARY SOURCES

Newspaper (columns)

Guthrie, Woody. 1939. Woody Sez: A New Columnist Introduces Himself. People’s World, 12 May 1939, p. 4.

The “Woody Sez” column appeared in the People’s World on the following dates. The column appeared on page four unless noted otherwise.

May 1939: 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 (p. 5), 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31

June 1939: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

July 1939: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31

August 1939: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31

September 1939: 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29

October 1939: 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31

November 1939: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30

December 1939: 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 18, 19

January 1940: 3

March 1940: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

April 1940: 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 18, 26

May 1940: 2, 3, 10, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31

June 1940: 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26

July 1940: 1, 2, 9 (p. 6), 10 (p. 6), 11 (p. 6), 13 (p. 6), 15 (p. 6), 16 (p. 6), 17(p. 6), 20 (p. 6), 22 (p. 6), 23 (p. 6), 24 (p. 6), 25 (p. 6), 26, 27, 29, 30

135 136

August 1940: 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 14, 15, 19 (p. 6), 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

September 1940: 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 25

October 1940: 3 (p. 6), 5, 7, 8 (p. 6), 9 (p. 6), 21 (p. 6), 22 (p. 6), 23 (p. 6), 28 (p. 6), 29 (p. 6), 30 (p. 6)

November 1940: 1, 8, 9, 25 (p. 6),

Newspaper (cartoons)

May 1939: 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31

June 1939: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30

July 1939: 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31

August 1939: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29

September 1939: 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 20, 21, 25

April 1940: 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, 24

May 1940: 7, 9, 13, 14, 15

Sound recordings

Guthrie, Woody. 1988. The Library of Congress recordings. Rounder 1041/42/43. Compact Disc.

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Standard dictionary of folklore, mythology and legend. 1949. Edited by Maria Leach. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

Bettimer, Ted Relph; Yi-Fu Tuan; Anne. 1977. Humanism, phenomenology, and geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67, no. 1: 177– 183.

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Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1976. Folklore: A study and research guide. New York: St. Martin’s.

Cohen, Edwin. 1980. Neither hero nor myth: Woody Guthrie’s contribution to folk art. Folklore 91, no. 1: 11–14.

Coox, Alvin D. 1985. Nomonhan: Japan against Russia, 1939. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Cray, Ed. 2004. Ramblin' man: The life and times of Woody Guthrie. New York: W. W. Norton.

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The “Woody Sez” column appeared in the People’s World on the following dates. The column appeared on page four unless noted otherwise.

May 1939: 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 (p. 5), 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31

June 1939: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

July 1939: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31

139

August 1939: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31

September 1939: 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29

October 1939: 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31

November 1939: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30

December 1939: 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 18, 19

January 1940: 3

March 1940: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

April 1940: 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 18, 26

May 1940: 2, 3, 10, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31

June 1940: 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26

July 1940: 1, 2, 9 (p. 6), 10 (p. 6), 11 (p. 6), 13 (p. 6), 15 (p. 6), 16 (p. 6), 17(p. 6), 20 (p. 6), 22 (p. 6), 23 (p. 6), 24 (p. 6), 25 (p. 6), 26, 27, 29, 30

August 1940: 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 14, 15, 19 (p. 6), 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

September 1940: 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 25

October 1940: 3 (p. 6), 5, 7, 8 (p. 6), 9 (p. 6), 21 (p. 6), 22 (p. 6), 23 (p. 6), 28 (p. 6), 29 (p. 6), 30 (p. 6)

November 1940: 1, 8, 9, 25 (p. 6),

On these dates Guthrie contributed cartoons to the People’s World newspaper.

May 1939: 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31

June 1939: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30

July 1939: 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31

August 1939: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29

September 1939: 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 20, 21, 25

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April 1940: 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, 24

May 1940: 7, 9, 13, 14, 15

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Matt Blake was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1976. His adolescence was spent in

Madison, Wisconsin, and his teens were spent in Missoula, Montana. He attended the

University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1998. He earned his

Master of Arts in mass communication from the University of Florida in 2003. Blake is currently an assistant professor of journalism at California State University, Chico.

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