Helen Keller - Why I became an IWW
An Interview, written by Barbara Bindley, New York Tribune, January 15, 1916
I asked that Miss Keller relate the steps by which she turned into the
uncompromising radical she now faces the world as Helen Keller, not the sweet
sentimentalist
of women's magazine days.
"I was religious to start with" she began in enthusiastic acquienscence to my
request. "I had thought blindness a misfortune."
"Then I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the
blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human
control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial
conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the
social
evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame
that ended in blindness.
"Then I read HG Wells' Old Worlds for New, summaries of Karl Marx's philosophy
and his manifestoes. It seemed as if I had been asleep and waked to a new
world - a world different from the world I had lived in.
"For a time I was depressed" - her voice saddened in reminiscence- "but little
by little my confidence came back and I realized that the wonder is not that
conditions are so bad, but that society has advanced so far in spite of them.
And now I am in the fight to change things. I may be a dreamer, but dreamers
are necessary to make facts!" Her voice almost shrilled in its triumph, and her
hand found and clutched my knee in vibrant emphasis.
"And you feel happier than in the beautiful make-believe world you had
dreamed?" I questioned.
"Yes," she answered with firm finality in the voice which stumbles a little.
"Reality, even when it is sad is better than illusions." (This from a woman
for whom it would seem all earthly things are but that.) "Illusions are at the
mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from
a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men - and of that I have more t+han I
ever had."
"And all this had to come after you left college? Did you get none of this
knowledge of life at college?"
"NO!" - an emphatic triumphant, almost terrifying denial - "college isn't the
place to go for any ideas."
"I thought I was going to college to be educated," she resumed as she composed
herself, and laughing more lightly, " I am an example of the education dealt
out to present generations, It's a deadlock. Schools seem to love the dead past
and live in it."
"But you know, don't you," I pleaded through Mrs. Macy and for her, "that the
intentions of your teachers were for the best."
"But they amounted to nothing," she countered. "They did not teach me about
things as they are today, or about the vital problems of the people. They taught
me Greek drama and Roman history, the celebrated the achievements of war,
rather than those of the heroes of peace. For instance, there were a dozen
chapters
on war where there were a few paragraphs about the inventors, and it is this
overemphasis on the cruelties of life that breeds the wrong ideal. Education
taught me that it was a finer thing to be a Napoleon than to create a new
potato."
"It is my nature to fight as soon as I see wrongs to be made right. So after I
read Wells and Marx and learned what I did, I joined a Socialist branch.
I made up my mind to do something. And the best thing seemed to be to join a
fighting party and help their propaganda. That was four years ago. I have
become an industrialist since."
An industrialist?" I asked, surprised out of composure. "You don't mean an IWW
- a syndicalist?"
"I became an IWW because I found out the Socialist party was too slow. It is
sinking into the political bog. It is almost, if not quite, impossible for
the party to keep its revolutionary character so long as it occupies a place
under the government and seeks office under it. The government does not stand
for the interests the Socialist party is supposed to represent."
"Socialism, however is a step in the right direction," she conceded to her
dissenting hearers.
"The true task is to unite and organize all workers on an economic basis, and
it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must
grow strong." Miss Keller continued. "Nothing can be gained by political
action. That is why I became an IWW."
"What particular incident led you to become an IWW" I interrupted.
"The Lawrence strike. Why? Because I discovered that the true idea of the IWW
is not only to better conditions, to get them for all people, but to get them
at once."
"What are you committed to - education or revolution?"
"Revolution." She answered decisively. "We can't have education without
revolution. We have tried peace education for 1900 years and it has failed. Let
us try revolution and see what it will do now."
"I am not for peace at all hazards. I regret this war, but I never regretted
the blood of the thousands spilled during the French Revolution. And the workers
are learning how to stand alone. They are learning a lesson they will apply to
their own good out in the trenches. Generals testify to the splendid initiative
the workers in the trenches take. If they can do that for their masters you can
be sure they will do that for themselves when they have taken matters into
their own hands."
"Don't forget the workers are getting their discipline in the trenches," Miss
Keller continued. "They are acquiring the will to combat."
"My cause will emerge from the trenches stronger than it ever was. Under the
obvious battle waging there, there is an invisible battle for the freedom of
man."
Again the advisability of printing all this here set forth. And this finally
from the patience-exhausted, gentle little woman:
"I don't give a damn about semi-radicals!"
Gradually, through the talk, Helen Keller's whole being had taken on a glow,
and it was in keeping with the exalted look on her face and the glory in her
sightless blue eyes that she told me:
"I feel like Joan of Arc at times. My whole becomes uplifted. I, too, hear
voices that say 'Come', and I will follow, no matter what the cost, no matter
what the trials I am placed under. Jail, poverty, calumny - they matter not.
"Truly He has said, woe unto you that permits the least of mine to suffer."
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Source:
http://www.iww.org/history/library/HKeller/why_I_became_an_IWW
