131.-lucy-parsons-to-tramps.pdf
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TO TRAMPS,
The Unemployed, the Disinherited,

and Miserable.

by Lucy E. Parsons
Alarm, Octcher 4, 1884. Also printed and distributed as a leaflet by
the {nternational Working People’s Association.

‘A word to the 3,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with
hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth
and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to
Purchase yourself‘ bit of food with which to appease the pangs of
hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of
thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I
wish to have a word,

Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for
your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not
{oiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all
those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand
‘upon thousands of dollars’ worth of wealth, which you did.not then,
do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own, any part in? Do you
not know that when you were harnessed fo a machine and that
machine hamessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16
hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received
only enough of your labor praduct to furnish yourself the bare, coarse
necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for
yourself and family it always had to te of the chezpest quality’ If you
wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you
receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop fora mament,
as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing,
pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep buta few
days ahead of the wolves of want? And that al last when the caprice of
your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting
production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron
horse to which you had been harnessed was stille¢; the factory door
locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in yeur
stomach and rags upon your back?

Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him
close up. Who cared for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving
wife and helpless children, when you bid them a loving “Gud bless you"
and turned upon the tramper’s road to seek employment elsewhere? I say.
who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to
be execrated and denounced as a “worthless tramp ané a vagrant” by that
very class who had heen engaged all thase years in robbing you and yours
‘Then can you nct see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure
whetever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is
simply robbery? Can you not sce that it isthe INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM,
and not the “boss” which must be changed?



‘Now, wien all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you
have no employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the
inter’s blast sweeps down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in
a shroud of ice, hearken not to the voice of the hyproc-ite who will tell you
that it was ordained of Gnd that “the poor ye have always”; orto the
arrogant robber who will say to you that you “drank up all your wages last
summer when you had work, and that is the reason why ycu have nothing
now, and the workhhcuse or the workyard is too good for you; that you
‘ought to be shot” And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in
too emphatic a manrer. So hearken not to them, but list! Next winter when
the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in your szedy garments,
When the frost is biting your feet throagh the holes in your worn-out shoes,
and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when
misery has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and
existence a mockery, when you have walked the streets by day atid slept
upon hard boards by night, and af last determine by ycur own hand ta take
‘your life, - for you would rather go out into utter rothingness than to
longer endure an existence which has become such a burden - so,
perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the
lake rather than longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last
tragic act in the drama of your simple existence. Stop! Is there nothing you
can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a like fate?
The waves will only dash over you in mackery of yous rasi act; but stroll
you down the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate
‘wirdows into their voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very








identical robbers who have despoiled you and yours. Then le: your
tragedy beenacted here! Awaken them from their wanton sport at your
expense! Send forth your petition and let them read it by the red glare of
destruction, Thus when you east “one long lingering look behind” you
can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language
‘which they have ever been able to understand, for they heve never yet
dcigned to notive any petition from theit slaves that they were not
compelled to read hy the red glare bursting from the cannon’s mouths, or
that wes not handed to them upon the pint of the sword. You need na
organization When you make up your mind to present this kind of
petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of
you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little
methods of warfare which Science bas placed in the hands of the poor
‘man, and you will become a power in this or any other land,

Learn the use of explosives!

Dedicated to the tramps by Lucy E. Parsons.



"move dangerous than
a thousand rioters.



THE
Lucy PARSONS
PROJECT