Ralph Chaplin
American writer, artist and labor activist
Ralph Hosea Chaplin (1887 — 1961) was an American illustrator, writer and labor organizer. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Quotes
editSolidarity Forever (1915)
- When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
- There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
- Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
- But the union makes us strong.
- CHORUS:
- Solidarity forever,
- Solidarity forever,
- Solidarity forever,
- For the union makes us strong.
- Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
- Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
- Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
- For the union makes us strong.
- CHORUS
- It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
- Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
- Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
- But the union makes us strong.
- CHORUS
- All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
- We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
- It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
- While the union makes us strong.
- CHORUS
- They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
- But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
- We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
- That the union makes us strong.
- CHORUS
- In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
- Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold.
- We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
- For the union makes us strong.
Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin (1922)
- Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth
- lie—
- Dust unto dust—
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who
- die
- As all men must;
- Mourn not your captive comrades who must
- dwell—
- Too strong to strive—
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;
- But rather mourn the apathetic throng—
The cowed and the meek—
Who see the world’s great anguish and its
- wrong
- And dare not speak!
- Mourn Not The Dead
Quotes about Chaplin
edit- As a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Ralph Chaplin did his part to make the organization a success. He wrote songs and poems; he made speeches; he edited the official paper, “Solidarity”. He looked about him; saw poverty, wretchedness and suffering among the workers; contrasted it with the luxury of those who owned the land and the machinery of production; studied the problem of distribution; and decided that it was possible, through the organization of the producers, to establish a more scientific, juster, more humane system of society. All this he felt, intensely. With him and his fellow-workers the task of freeing humanity from economic bondage took on the aspect of a faith, a religion. They held their meetings; wrote their literature; made their speeches and sang their song with zealous devotion. They had seen a vision; they had heard a call to duty; they were giving their lives to a cause—the emancipation of the human race.
- Scott Nearing, Introduction to Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin (1922)
- The Wobbly poet and newspaperman Ralph Chaplin (author of “Solidarity Forever”) recalled being introduced to Anarchist ideas — Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Most, etc — by an “FAS correspondent” on his way to Detroit via the box car.
