proven bum prophets, there is no denying the facts that our task did appear to be almost a hopeless one, for the conditions in the harvest fields were indeed pitiful.
The long hours of hard work, the uncertainty of the job lasting any length of time, the poor food, and the poorer pay, together with the brutality of the small town marshal, hostile railroad shacks, the dangers from unscrupulous and merciless hi-jacks (hold-up men), all tended to weaken the stamina of the habitual harvest worker.
Nevertheless the job of organizing him was undertaken and none knew better the hard and difficult task it was to be than those that met at the first convention in Kansas City and those who first took out credentials in the new union of Agriculture Workers No. 400 at a time when the I. W. W. was almost financially and numerically bankrupt. It was under these most adverse conditions that the A. W. O. was launched.
No money in the treasury, the members almost penniless; but while there was a lack of finances, there was an abundant supply of courage and a will to do or die possessed by those who tackled the job and said it could be done.
With pockets lined with supplies and literature we left Kansas City on every available freight train, some going into the fruit belts of Missouri and Arkansas, others spread themselves over the states of Kansas and Oklahoma, and everywhere they went, with every slave they met on the job, in the jungles or on freight trains, they talked I. W. W., distributed their literature, and pointed out the advantage of being organized into a real labor union. Day in
