American history in "memoirs of a wobbly” by henry mcguckin essay

They had immense financial constraints. The writer lists several instances where financial constraints were witnessed in running the activities of the union. Although he does not directly proclaim it, the evidence is clear from the excerpt. Effective revolutions can only succeed if resources are sufficient enough to facilitate the actions of the union; it is prudent that a wide and stable resource base is established, this provides a firm pillar for the agitation process. The writer narrates how it became hard to fund raise for hiring an attorney to defend the members arrested (Chaplin 1948).

Revolutions can be brought through peaceful means. In the memoirs, the workers organized peaceful strikes lacking military belligerence (Chaplin 1948). The writer posits that reactions of the workers would be non confrontational and peaceful, not based on life-threatening behaviors. When accused of arson, he responded that their activity was not meant to harm life or destroy property

Another aspect of the revolution was the fact that they were less than formal. An incisive look at the book depicts a less organized yet almost efficient manner of running their activities. The actors lacked formal and distinct roles and responsibilities to play. This is an outstanding aspect of the struggle witnessed throughout the excerpt. The unions had a random manner of carrying out their activities without being directed by a distinct code of ethos and action plan.

An instance is his activity in Minneapolis dye factory. He says that his counterpart was largely unreliable. Their activities were mostly stochastic.

The resilience of the union members-especially leaders is an outstanding spectacle that can easily be noticed from the memoirs. In pursuing changes in any deviant social attitude, resilience forms a core foundation (Chaplin 1948). Throughout the book, the writer has established himself as a resilient and ardent defender for what the workers believe in. The agitators of change were jailed on several occasions, intimidated in numerous circumstances and persecuted recurrently, but they continued to fight for the course that they believed in. Their endurance gradually bred fruits.

An outstanding aspect the writer has portrayed in his memoir is the fact that trade unionism goes beyond the classroom education levels of the leaders. The writer had very little work experience. A little background check on the writer reveals a man with a less than modest education level. He dropped out of school at a very tender before he finally got engrossed in trade unionism. This infers that activism needs more than just classroom education to be executed. It rather requires an inherent self sacrifice-voluntary. The writer left school to seek employment; he, however, ventured into trade unionism.

The book exposes the role of the security officers or law enforcers in suppressing unrest among the agitated and oppressed working force. It is an open secret that the law enforcers invariantly unleashed their brutality against the workers who were demanding for a just and fair working condition (Brettel 1999).

The local administrators displayed biases in solving employment issues. An assumption can be made that the law enforcers worked at the behest of wealthy employers.

Brettell, R. R. (1999). Modern art, 1851-1929: capitalism and representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chaplin, R. (1948). Wobbly: the rough-and-tumble story of an American

radical. Chicago: University of Chicago Press