Harry Targ (a relevant repost from December 24, 2021)
The banks are made of marble
In times like these I recall, the songs that shaped my thinking. I still listen
to the music that makes me mad, makes me cry, and makes me want to hit the
streets. I forget the fine-tuned lectures I listen to and political tracts I
read and start humming a tune.
The “deficit battle” and cutting government “waste” today (except for the
military and domestic repressive police forces), which is a farce except for
the pain the outcome will cause working people, reminded me of the Weavers
blasting out “The Banks Are Made of Marble.” They sang of travels around the
country seeing all the suffering that the capitalist system was causing; “the
weary farmer,” the idle seaman, the miner scrubbing coal dust from off his
back, “heard the children cryin” as they froze in their shacks, and the
suffering of workers everywhere.
Why does the song suggest there is so much suffering all across America? The
answer is so simple:
...the
banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the miner sweated for
The
song, written by Les Rice in 1948 said the antidote to this situation was
workers getting together and together making a stand. He predicted that the
result would be a good one:
Then
we’d own those banks of marble
With a guard at every door
And we’d share those vaults of silver
That we have sweated for
Pretty Boy Floyd and
Christmas
I also
was thinking about an old Robin Hood song written by Woody Guthrie in the 1930s
about an Oklahoma legend, Pretty Boy Floyd. According to Woody’s rendition,
Pretty Boy Floyd got into a fight with a deputy sheriff and killed him. Floyd
was forced to flee and allegedly took up a life of crime. At least authorities
and journalists blamed Floyd for every robbery or killing that occurred in the
state of Oklahoma. “Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name.”
But in true Robin Hood fashion Pretty Boy Floyd stole from the rich and gave to
the poor. Floyd, the outlaw, paid the mortgage for a starving farmer. Another
time when Floyd begged for and received a meal in a rural household, he placed
a thousand-dollar bill under his napkin when he finished dinner. One Christmas
Day Floyd left a carload of groceries for starving families on relief in
Oklahoma City.
And in these days of massive unemployment, cuts in healthcare and
education, brutalizing the environment, mortgage
foreclosures, criminal wealth, and staggering poverty, through the voice of
Pretty Boy Floyd, Woody Guthrie tells the wrenching story of capitalism that
today is not too much different from during his time.
Yes,
as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Maybe
we ought to revisit the old songs and sing them as we hit the streets, get out
the vote, organize workers, and build a vast and powerful peoples’
organization.
(An early version of this essay
was published in The Rag Blog August 10, 2011.)
