What Is A Scab?

 Recently on a social media group of which I am a member, I saw someone post a photograph of a group of scabs being guarded by Kentucky National Guard soldiers in order for them to cross a picket line in a historical Harlan County strike in order to assist the coal company to break the strike.  This person had described the scabs and their activity in this manner: "1939 Harlan County Kentucky. Miners being escorted to work by the National Guard. This is how the name Bloody Harlan mostly came about among other reasons."  This was obviously an attempt by someone with anti union sentiments to make the scabs appear respectable and normal as if they were ordinary coal miners which is the furthest thing from the truth.  I immediately confronted the anti union nature of the description in this manner: " You are partly correct but you forgot the most important word. Those were not miners. They were SCABS, the lowest form of life in the mining world."  I attached a link to Jack London's famous description of a scab from over a hundred years ago.  Jack London died in 1916, and I have no idea exactly when he initially published that beautiful piece of writing.  But it just as accurate today as it was when Jack London first sat down to write it.  I am including a small portion of London's description so none of you can ever say you haven't known about at least part of it.   

"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.  When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn't." (Jack London, "Ode To A Scab")

 

This is a fine little story about a scab from a speech Mother Jones, the great female union organizer, told during a speech to striking miners in 1912.  

"An old Irish woman had two sons who were scabs. The women threw one of them over the fence to his mother. He lay there still. His mother thought he was dead and she ran into the house for a bottle of holy water and shook it over Mike.  “Oh for God’s sake, come back to life,” she hollered.  Come back and join the union.” He opened his eyes and saw our women standing around him. “Sure, I’ll go to hell before I’ll scab again,’ says he." (Mother Jones, "Autobiography", Chapter 11, from the website of The International Workers of The World)

 

Although John L. Lewis did not specifically use the word "scab' in the quote I am using below, he definitely was talking about scabs, gun thugs, all other forms of vermin which follow on the heels of corporate managers hoping to pick up some small bone or crust which these greater vermin leave behind for doing their bidding all the way up to murder and robbery, and they know in their small, black hearts that they are unfit to sleep in an honest woman's bed, eat a meal at an honest man's table, or father a child capable of becoming a decent, hard working human.  

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”  (John L. Lewis) 

 

I must say here, in the interest of total honesty, that I have never spent one day as a member of  a labor union.  But I grew up in a home and a community where nearly everyone knew the important work that labor unions have done and will always continue to do for the good of all working men and women.  The hundreds of benefits which have been won for the working class have been won by the blood, sweat, and tears of good, fearless union men and women who have faithfully stood their ground against corporations, their officers, and their scabs until all those parties realized the error of their ways and stopped resisting union efforts to improve the world.  Several members of my extended family have spent their lives as union members.  As child by the time I was 9 or 10, I was allowed to read the "United Mine Workers Journal" each month after my uncle Mabry Hicks, an electrician at a tipple in Wheelwright, Kentucky, was done with his copy.  I often spent long winter evenings sitting in my parents' grocery store listening to the union members in our community talk about their efforts to organize, and how much they benefited from union membership.  As an adult, I came to know several men and women who had spent their lives fighting as union organizers all over Central and Southern Appalachia.  They served as my mentors and professors, teaching me on a daily basis just how important trade unions are to the success of America. I came to know at least four people who had been hauled in front of Fascist Senator Joseph McCarthy's committee in the 1950's and who stood their ground against his efforts to destroy their lives.  I attended the funeral of my brother Hewie Hicks who was killed in a nonunion punch mine in Floyd County Kentucky and knew full well that he might have lived a much longer life if he had been working in a union mine.  I know full well the danger that scabs have helped coal operators perpetrate against the working class of  Appalachia and other coal producing states.  I also know that labor unions all across America, in all forms of industry, have saved thousands of lives with the contracts they have won and the laws and government regulations they have brought into existence.  You should recognize these truths also and support unions wherever they are working for the betterment of working conditions for men and women in America.  Union, Yes!