Jack London?nevermindthemOctober 19 2005, 05:54:21 UTC
Thanks for posting that. I did some browsing on the internet to see if I could identify the source for that poem and discovered The Scab that had been delivered as a speech by Jack London. Other links indicated that the poem you quoted had often been attributed to him but still other links indicated that it may have been something picked up by the labor movement in the early 1900's and polished to look like it had indeed come from him. Did your professor happen to identify the source?
The speech in the link above is lengthy but I thought it was worth my time to read it. In closing, he indicated that he thought that almost everyone and even most countries were 'scabs' to some extent. That it was impossible to be otherwise given the society, economy, and international politics at the time. He even suggested that the U.S. was a 'scab' because we were producing and selling things in the world economy at prices that were far below what other countries and workmen were able to sell them for. From what he had said in that speech I doubted that was actually the source of your quote.
Again, thanks for your post. I wouldn't have discovered Jack London if I hadn't seen what you'd written!
The speech in the link above is lengthy but I thought it was worth my time to read it. In closing, he indicated that he thought that almost everyone and even most countries were 'scabs' to some extent. That it was impossible to be otherwise given the society, economy, and international politics at the time. He even suggested that the U.S. was a 'scab' because we were producing and selling things in the world economy at prices that were far below what other countries and workmen were able to sell them for. From what he had said in that speech I doubted that was actually the source of your quote.
Again, thanks for your post. I wouldn't have discovered Jack London if I hadn't seen what you'd written!
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