rial paralysis the iron workers
of Birmingham struck for better pay. I, with a train load of other
strikers, went to Louisiana and the whole bunch of us were practically
forced into peonage. It was a case of "out of the frying pan into the
fire." We had been saying that the mill owners had driven us "into
slavery," for they had made us work under bad conditions; but after
a month in a peon camp, deep in the swamps of Louisiana, we knew more
about slavery than we did before. And we knew that work in the rolling
mills, bad as it was, was better than forced labor without pay. To-day
when I hear orators rolling out the word "slavery" in connection with
American wages and working conditions, I have to laugh. For any man who
has ever had a taste of peonage, to say nothing of slavery, knows that
the wage system is not real slavery; it's not the genuine, lash-driven,
bloodhound-hunted, swamp-sick African slavery. None is genuine without
Simon Legree and the Louisiana bloodhounds. The silk-socked wage slave,
toiling eight hours for six dollars, is not the genuine old New Orleans
molasses slave. He may carry a band and give a daily street parade, but
if he's not accompanied by Simon Legree and the bloodhounds, he is not
a genuine Uncle Tom, his slavery is less than skin deep. You can't fool
me. I know what real slavery is. I know as much about slavery as the man
that made it. He's the guy that taught me. I worked under Simon Legree
in Louisiana.

On the way to New Orleans we paused at a siding, and a native asked me,
"Who are all them men, and which way are they goin'?"

I told him "which way" we were going, and that we were needing jobs. He
replied:

"You-all are comin' down hyah now looking for food and work. In '65 you
was down hyah lookin' fo' blood!"

When we reached the great city on the Mississippi, we scattered over
the town looking for jobs. I saw a pile of coal in the street before a
boarding-house. I asked for the job of carrying in the coal. There were
two tons of it. I toted it in and was paid a dollar. New Orleans was a
popular winter resort where northerners came to escape the severe cold
of the North Atlantic States. I was given the job of yard-man in this
boarding-house. I carried in groceries, peeled potatoes, scrubbed the
kitchen floor and built fires each evening in the guests' rooms. Each
room had a grate, and I carried up kindling and coal for all of them.
For this work I received a dollar a day, with tw