This article is part of the People’s World 100th Anniversary Series.
Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was a singer, songwriter, and one of the most significant figures in American folk music. Born in Oklahoma, he was a troubadour of the working class, farmers, and the poor.
For his birthday, we have brought back from our archives a few selections from the column that he wrote for the People’s World from May 12, 1939 to January 3, 1940. In a nod to the Dust Bowl vernacular of his fellow Okies who had arrived in California desperately looking for work, Guthrie called his column “Woody Sez.”
People’s World, which was published in San Francisco at the time, was the West Coast sister publication of the Daily Worker. When it launched, the editors announced the column in this way:
“Woodrow Guthrie or just plain Woody, as he is known to thousands of radio listeners, will be a daily feature in The People’s World from now on.
“Woody calls himself a hillbilly singer. He is one of the 200,000 people who came from the Dust Bowl looking for work and a little food – the people who have picked the fruit and the crops of California – lived in shanty camps, been beaten and driven about by the bank-landowners.
“But Woody came with a guitar on his back and with an eye and an ear sensitive to the suffering of his own people. He sings songs every day over KFVD radio and has many thousands of listeners and people who write him letters. He writes these songs himself. And Woody has gathered a great deal of homely wisdom from his people. Every day he will speak to you on this page in his own way about how he looks at things.”
At the time the column started, Guthrie was just beginning to be known in progressive circles in California via his radio show. Few knew him nationally. While working at KFVD radio, he became friends with Grapes of Wrath author John Steinbeck and Communist Party member and actor Will Geer.
After that, he became involved in several of the peace and economic campaigns of the CPUSA. Though historians debate whether he ever officially joined the party, Guthrie once said: “If you call me a Communist, I am very proud because it takes a wise and hard-working person to be a Communist.” He was also known to claim, “I’ve been in the red all my life,” referring to both his financial situation and his politics.
Guthrie’s radio show and his People’s World column both contributed to his rise to prominence in the 1930s and ’40s and helped him become an inspiration to generations of folk singers that came after him.
Woody Sez
People’s World – May 12, 1939 to January 3, 1940
By Woody Guthrie
The Constitution
WASHINGTON — Boy look what I’m into. Some town Washington. That’s where you go to make laws, break laws, rake laws, fake laws, take laws, and shake laws.
Seen the original copy of the Constitution, which was fine. I was interested to know if they still had it.
It was fading out purty fast, the ink was a gettin dimmer and dimmer, so they waxed it and sprayed it and sanded it and polished it and put it in a case behind some yellow glass.
I’m dam glad they preserved it before it faded plumb out. But you still got to get awful clost to it before you can get the real good out of it.
Kids first. Hoboes second. Rich folks last.
WELL, in the first place, you got to have a definition for “Relief.” And here’s a definition for Relief:
Relief, (noun),: It is 2 people and one of them has accumulated the property of both; and then poses as some sort of a “giver” — when in reality he is only giving back a little at a time, the Life that he took at a single grab or two…
Most like a poker game where the cards is marked — and set and shuffled and “dealt,” and
timed, and framed, and organized and arranged to “relieve” you of what you got — and then turned around and gives you a mess of beans in exchange for your Freedom, – and then make a big speech or two about it and call it “Relief.” They first relieve you of what you got, then
“Relief” you for what you get.
They tell me the rich folks is a gonna give us a little relief quick as they can find a way to do it without a lowerin the standard of a livin – Shux most of us aint never seen no standard yet.
I seen it once over at a friends house. But I coodent appreciate it fer thinkin of the folks that aint got it. The standard of a living is a home, an a car, an a lectric ice box, an clothes, an radeo, an groceries, an wages you can live on, an some spair time to loaf, an some spair money to spend. An some other stuff I forgot.
Anyway, you aint got it an neither have I. But the folks that has got it got it from you an me. An when the highups can invent a way to give you four bits and get back a dollar you will get some relief.
Wall Street
Lots of folks dont know all they is to know about Wall St. Wall St. is the street that runs to the kitchen on the pockit book of ever American home. One stomack ache on Wall St. can empty the pockitbook an kitchen. One case of roomatisem on Wall St. can close down 100 factories.
One bad cold on Wall St. can close down 1,000 shops. One sneeze on Wall St. can put a whole army of workers on the bum. This is a pushbutton civilization an Wall St. is where the button is.
Wall St. is where the workers git worked on an the reapers git reaped an the farmers git plowed under.
Mother Bloor
Mother Bloor is without a doubt the youngest person I ever seen, cause you see she’s done been around and half way back – she’s younger than me, because she’s that way twice. I aint but once.
If I knew setting here looking out into this noisy New York Night that I would be as young and peppy and friendly as Mother Bloor when I have passed that number of summers away — I would be pretty easy to deal with. If I knew that I could use my days to as good an advantage, and my reasons to as fruitful an end, and sow that seeds, and break the good ground, and spread the life and fertility, and bring in the good crops that she has — I would be pretty easy to get along with.
I guess she has always looked away far ahead. She must have. She must have done her best with every one of her days, and always kept an eye peeled on the future. She looks like she comes every day upon something she has been hunting for all of her life. That is because she knew what she was hunting for — and what she was planting — and now to wake up every morning, and look all around her every day and see all of this good movement getting hundreds and thousands of times stronger, the day of her hopes and her dreams must be today.
Today is the only day she really cares about. She looks in her eyes like she knows that if you handle today okay, tomorrow will take care of itself. I was told about Mother Bloor by her granddaughter, Herta, in California last summer — and I drew a picture in my mind of the best all-around grandmother I could draw — and Mother Bloor is just exactly that.
War
War is game played by maniacs who kill each other. It is murder, studied, prepared, and planned by insane minds, and followed by a bunch of thieves. You can’t believe in life and wear the uniform of death.
There are certain men who never think of any other thing besides slaughter. They are blood-soaked butchers and they are believed to be heroes. Three fifths of the people decide to murder the other two fifths, who must take up killing in order to stay alive.
Locate the man who profits by war and strip him of his profits — war will end.
Rather weed out a few flesh eaters from the race than to see ten nations of people hypnotized to murder, and to run over the rim of the canyon of death and chalked up in Wall Street’s banks as so much per carcass.
We feel sorry for the dads, sons, mothers, sweethearts, and all of the little kids that are getting bombed in Britain and Germany. We feel just as sorry for one bunch as the other. A kid is a kid and a bomb is a bomb.
As long as the pore folks fights the rich folks wars, you’ll keep a havin’ pore folks, rich folks, and wars. It’s the rich folks thet makes the pore folks; it’s the pore folks thet makes the rich folks; an’ it’s the two of’em thet makes wars – rich folks ram-roddin’ ’em, an pore folks a fighten’ ’em.
Do away with pore folks. Do away with rich folks. Do away with middle class folks. An’ you automatically do away with wars.
I wood have a lots of fights if I had a nother feller to fight ’em for me. But since I got to do my own fightin, I try not to have no trouble.
Same way with everbody. Make ’em do there own fightin’ — and you do away with fightin.
The warmth of a human being
FORT SMITH, Ark. – Dont know what day it is. Cant find any body else that knows what year it is. Some think the calendar is going back-wards. Judging from these rich folks’ wars, civilization is going that a way. Met some nice friends last night, but the names I forget. They read the Daily Worker. To heck with names, I know they’re friends. Oh yes, we’re arranging that Victor Album into order, playing the test records and writing down the mistakes, and there was so many mistakes per record that they was having some trouble about it, and I said, shucks, fellers, them mistakes is what will make the album, makes it “homey” — and I held out for more money.
I want to apologize for leaving New York and all of you folks that I had dates will just have to be patient till I can get a little further away. Guess you like this green spring weather as good as I do, and if you do, you just cant help a wanting to inhale as much of it as you can. The climate is mighty good here.
Twenty-five of us one night down on the Mexican Border, whistling out of El Paso, Texas, over the mountains, acrost the flats, and down across the mesas, and the wind was as cold as ice, and the train was making 50. And you know them cattle cars aint got near the heating machinery that a pent house has. Well sir, we dern near froze.
We got so cold we had to get up and walk and trot back and forth in the manure on the floor to keep from freezing stiff as a Fifth Ave. face. So we run till we give out, and had to rest. Then we got stiff again. If we started a fire in the cattle car, they’d throw us in jail. So we all commenced to huddle around like a herd of sheep. We would set down. Like this, you would set down, and some body would set down in your lap, and some body in his lap, and some body in his lap, till we formed a big ring, every body setting in every body’s lap. You didn’t know who’s. You couldn’t see who’s.
You dam sure didn’t care who’s. You was just a grappling there in the dark — but there’s a warm heat about a live human being that you are mighty thankful for when you’ve been out in the cold so long.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
Comments