<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">Vivas to those who have fail'd!</i></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!</i></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">And to those themselves who sank in the sea!</i></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!</i></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!</i></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Walt Whitman</i></span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I. The Red Flag</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The newspapers said the strikers would hoist</div><div class="">the red flag of anarchy over the silk mills</div><div class="">of Paterson. At the strike meeting, a dyers' helper</div><div class="">from Naples rose as if from the steam of his labor,</div><div class="">lifted up his hand and said here is the red flag:</div><div class="">brightly stained with dye for the silk of bow ties</div><div class="">and scarves, the skin and fingernails boiled away</div><div class="">for six dollars a week in the dye house.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">He sat down without another word, sank back</div><div class="">into the fumes, name and face rubbed off</div><div class="">by oblivion's thumb like a Roman coin</div><div class="">from the earth of his birthplace dug up</div><div class="">after a thousand years, as the strikers</div><div class="">shouted the only praise he would ever hear. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">II. The River Floods the Avenue</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">He was the other Valentino, not the romantic sheik</div><div class="">and bullfighter of silent movie palaces who died too young,</div><div class="">but the Valentino standing on his stoop to watch detectives</div><div class="">hired by the company bully strikebreakers onto a trolley</div><div class="">and a chorus of strikers bellowing the banned word scab.</div><div class="">He was not a striker or a scab, but the bullet fired to scatter</div><div class="">the crowd pulled the cork in the wine barrel of Valentino's back.</div><div class="">His body, pale as the wings of a moth, lay beside his big-bellied wife.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Two white-veiled horses pulled the carriage to the cemetery.</div><div class="">Twenty thousand strikers walked behind the hearse, flooding</div><div class="">the avenue like the river that lit up the mills, surging around</div><div class="">the tombstones. Blood for blood, cried Tresca: at this signal,</div><div class="">thousands of hands dropped red carnations and ribbons</div><div class="">into the grave, till the coffin evaporated in a red sea.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">III. The Insects in the Soup</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Reed was a Harvard man. He wrote for the New York magazines.</div><div class="">Big Bill, the organizer, fixed his good eye on Reed and told him</div><div class="">of the strike. He stood on a tenement porch across from the mill</div><div class="">to escape the rain and listen to the weavers. The bluecoats</div><div class="">told him to move on. The Harvard man asked for a name to go</div><div class="">with the number on the badge, and the cops tried to unscrew</div><div class="">his arms from their sockets. When the judge asked his business,</div><div class="">Reed said: Poet. The judge said: Twenty days in the county jail.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Reed was a Harvard man. He taught the strikers Harvard songs,</div><div class="">the tunes to sing with rebel words at the gates of the mill. The strikers</div><div class="">taught him how to spot the insects in the soup, speaking in tongues</div><div class="">the gospel of One Big Union and the eight-hour day, cramming the jail</div><div class="">till the weary jailers had to unlock the doors. Reed would write:</div><div class="">There's war in Paterson. After it was over, he rode with Pancho Villa.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">IV. The Little Agitator</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The cops on horseback charged into the picket line.</div><div class="">The weavers raised their hands across their faces,</div><div class="">hands that knew the loom as their fathers' hands</div><div class="">knew the loom, and the billy clubs broke their fingers.</div><div class="">Hannah was seventeen, the captain of the picket line,</div><div class="">the Joan of Arc of the Silk Strike. The prosecutor called her</div><div class="">a little agitator. Shame, said the judge; if she picketed again,</div><div class="">he would ship her to the State Home for Girls in Trenton.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Hannah left the courthouse to picket the mill. She chased</div><div class="">a strikebreaker down the street, yelling in Yidish the word</div><div class="">for shame. Back in court, she hissed at the judge's sentence</div><div class="">of another striker. Hannah got twenty days in jail for hissing.</div><div class="">She sang all the way to jail. After the strike came the blacklist,</div><div class="">the counter at her husband's candy store, the words for shame.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">V. Vivas to Those Who Have Failed</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Strikers without shoes lose strikes. Twenty years after the weavers</div><div class="">and dyers' helpers returned hollow-eyed to the loom and the steam,</div><div class="">Mazziotti led the other silk mill workers marching down the avenue</div><div class="">in Paterson, singing the old union songs for five cents more an hour.</div><div class="">Once again the nightsticks cracked cheekbones like teacups.</div><div class="">Mazziotti pressed both hands to his head, squeezing red ribbons</div><div class="">from his scalp. There would be no buffalo nickel for an hour's work</div><div class="">at the mill, for the silk of bow ties and scarves. Skull remembered wood.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The brain thrown against the wall of the skull remembered too:</div><div class="">the Sons of Italy, the Workmen's Circle, Local 152, Industrial</div><div class="">Workers of the World, one-eyed Big Bill and Flynn the Rebel Girl</div><div class="">speaking in tongues to thousands the prophecy of an eight-hour day.</div><div class="">Mazziotti's son would become a doctor, his daughter a poet.</div><div class="">Vivas to those who have failed: for they become the river.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- MartÃn Espada</div></div></body></html>