Page 12 — April 28, 1945

By H. W.
¢<] SUPPOSE you are going to be marching on May Day,’
I suggested to Mr. Hangers the other day.
He was sitting contentedly against the corner of the float-

house, his legs stretched out on

the warm boards, with a fish-~

ing-pole resting over his
erossed ankles, and from time
to time he signified his benign
aproval of the weather and his
surroundings by inhaling the
sun-cleansed salty air so deep-
ly that his jersey buttons quiv-
ered across his chest and so
audibly that the gulls hoped
in alarm from the floathouse
ridge only to settle back again
disdainfully when they realized
it was only Mr. Hangers.

“Marehin’- No. I will
be marchin’” he replied, with
a distinct emphasis on the pro-
noun.

not

I was astounded. Mr. Han_
gers, to my knowledge, has al-
ways marched with the unions
on May Day, even after he had
gone into business for himself
and ceased to be a unionist.

“What’s the matter with you ?
Getting bourgeois in your -old
age, or is it just old age?” I
taunted him. :

“Tis neither,” he replied, un-
ruffled, staring; out over the
water at Grouse Mountain, “Ye
just don’t understan’. I’ve never
marched on May Day, but we’ve
marched, and we’ll be marchin’
again.”

I was genuinely puzzled.
“What's the difference? If
we've marched, then you cer-
tainly have—I mean I have—
oh, what the hell!”

“°Tis hard fer ye to express
yerself, now. isn’t it?” he said
patronizingly. “It’s all very
simple. There’s just a slight
ideological difference atween ‘I’
and ‘we’.”

“A numerical difference too,”
I returned to try to steal the
lead away from him, but he
slipped me.

“Ay,, “tis the numerical dif=
ference makes the ideological,
if ye can get what I mean.

Wy
y

y,

There’s a guy in the Trades
and Labor Council brought that
out very plainly last year.”

“How ?”’

‘Well, te said he’d raised
plenty bunions on his feet
marchin’ in depression May

Days with the soles off his
shoes, an’ he wasn’t goin’ to do
it any more when he got good
shoes at last, or words to that
“gineral” effect. The shoes
don’t matter anyhow. What
signifies is the way he said ‘I
marched,’ ‘my feet,’ an’ that
sorta thing.”

“What on earth are you talk-
ing about? Can’t yor come to
the point?

“Sooner fish,” he retorted; by
drawing up his knees he éant-

ed the pole so he could reach

-it without bending his back.
Then he slowly raised the line
from the water to examine the
bait.

The bacon-rind looked wash-
ed-out but unnibbled. so he
Pivotted on his seat 30 degrees
to the right, reversed the rais-
ine process, and the line sank
again about four feet to the
east of its former location. He
was sublimely happy, perfectly
lazy, and I couldn’t take it.

“VWATBAT do you mean?” T in_

sisted, and he leaned back
further and tilted his hat over
his eyes to talk:from under the

brim.
“Well, he said I-I-I. He
didn’t say ‘we marched.” To

listen to him, he was the only
man in the parade, an’ his the
only sore feet. I don’t march.
you see; WE march, the work-
ers, an’ I’m just a part o’ them.”

“TI see. I’m glad you’re not
quite crazy after all,’ I told
him. :

“T don’t believe ye do see.”
he charged. “What I mean is,

WE Willi March On Ma

“Ye just don’t unnerstan,”’
Day, but we’ve marched, and we'll be mar ching again,”
marchers in Chicago will be with us Mr. Hangers.

ye can’t build any society or
any movement on ‘I’s’, or even
on a collection of ‘I’s?. until
they’re shaken up an’ pushed
around an’ pounded into
“we’s.” 33 :

“A sort of Buyan’s ‘Hvery-
man’, eh?”

“Mebbe. -I never read Bun-
yan, an’ “tis to my shame, fer
I understan’ he was a good
Wobbly tinker an’ a bindle-
stiff what spent his time
atween pogies, jungles. an’
jail-houses. But ye’seem to be
gettin’ the idea. On that march
to Stanley Park I’m not one
with millions around me. I’m 2
part of millions.”

“Millions? Oh, yes, everyon{
marching everywhere: else.”

“Not only ‘that? His ha.
dropped lower, and maybe that
was why his diction seemed dig-

ferent as his words rumbled
from beneath it. I also had an
idea he was slightly embar-

rassed. He continued in a low-
pitched voice that grew tensed
with emotion as he developed
his theme.

.

“See here, laddie’ on the road
to Stanley Park there march
with us millions dead, and mil-
lions yet unborn. Marchin’ on
my right may be Wat Tyler,
an’. on my left the poet Piers
Plowman, or the liberator Boli-
var.”

“The negro from the ship-

yards, in front of me, marches
with Tristran L’Ouverture and
with Douglas; John Brown’s
friend; that Capilano Indian
with Sitting Bull and Pontiac.
All who’ve fought and suffered
for freedom, all who’ve died, go
with us. Therb’s the 5,000
Sparticists whose _ tortured
bodies writhed on the crosses
of the Appian Way, striding:
bold and free ati last with the
gaunt forms clinkered in the
fires of Hitler.
than bunions on our feet, we
have the stripes. of the knout
and bastinado. the bruises of
the boot and maiden, we have
the nail-holes of the crucifix
on hands and feet.”

We have more

HAD never heard him so
stirred, and I remembered
I had once heard that in his
wobbly days Mr. Hangers had
been an orator of considerable
ability and repute. I held my
peace for fear the mood would
pass, and listened.

“Aye, and there’s the mil-
lions still to come, the happy
laughing children and the men
and women strong -and proud
in the dignity of the clean free
world we are building. They
are all colors and all races, and
they speak all tongues and

_praectice many arts and lores

strange to us, but they meet as
brothers with the Sparticists of
yesterday and the martyrs of
today_ to’ blend into mankind,
and all march, march as one
strong even flowing tide, and
the road to Brockton Point is
hut the tiniest of pin-points on
the tortuous upward path from
cave to civilization.”

“There’s poets go with us,
Burns with his sturdy indepen-
dence, and Shelley with his
sweet, lilting defiance. There’s
sound Walt Whitman, and a
troubadour you never heard of,
Marcobrun. who hated kings
and barons and loved the peo-
ple with savage bitter song.”

“There’s the philosophers,
Paine and Plato, Rosseau and
Hegel, and they march with the
leaders for they helped to free
the minds of men. In the fore-
front is a man ealled Lenin,
joking with a man ealled Marx,

and they are the jokes of men ~

who have the time and the free-
dom to be happy, who had little
enough of either before. There’s
the writers who penned the
truth, and the story _tellers
who told it to the children be-
side peasant hearths, there’s
the artists who have painted it
and carved it.”

“They are all there, all of
us, marching to Stanley Park
on May Day. No ‘I’, just we
and us. a power of humanity
that has endured and will con-
quer at last, and around us the
sea and the mountains, the sky

said Mr. Hangers, «Ive never marched: on May
—— and the first May Day

y Da:

and the kind fruitf.

above
eayth beneath, all us—nus 5
men. and women, the fr

sea and the unruled aix, we al
all marching. .. ~? :

H's VOICE trailed off, and
knew that he was finishe)
and also that he would yn.
Want to speak again after th
display of emotion, so T slippe
away. i

But WE will be marchings
MAY DAY. Q

Resolved by th e
Federation of Organ- |

ized Trades and Lea-
bor

Unions of the
United States and
Canada, that eight
hours snail constitute |
.a@ legal day’s labor |
from May Firsea4
1886, and that we
recommend to {fa-
bor organizations 4
throughout their jur-
isdiction that they so |
direct their laws as |
to conform to this
by the

time named. (Fourth

resolution

Convention, Ameri- _
Ole
Loe

Federation
October

can
Labor,
1884).

3