...Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood...
The Reverend Father Thomas Joseph Hagerty (ca. 1862–1920s?) was an American Roman Catholic priest and trade union activist.
Hagerty is remembered as a founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as author of the influential Preamble to the Constitution of the IWW, and the creator of "Hagerty's Wheel," a frequently reproduced illustration depicting the interrelation of the IWW's constituent industrial unions.
Hagerty abruptly abandoned the radical movement shortly after the formation of the IWW, adopting the pseudonym "Ricardo Moreno" and working as a Spanish teacher and an oculist. After 1920 Hagerty lived on the streets of Chicago in conditions of dire poverty, eking out a meager existence as a beggar.
Activist priest
Little is known about the early years of Thomas Joseph Hagerty, prior to his completion of seminary training in 1895. He is believed to have become a Marxist about 1892 and to have spent his early life attempting to rectify the teachings of the church and the socialist movement throughout his early life.
Hagerty's first posting was to St. Agatha's Parish in Chicago in 1895, where he served as assistant to the rector. He was assigned to St. Joseph's Church in Cleburne, Texas in the Diocese of Dallas in 1897 before being promoted to rector of Our Lady of Victory Church in Paris, Texas in 1901. He was transferred to Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Las Vegas, New Mexico later that same year.
As a Catholic priest in the Southwestern United States Hagerty came into frequent contact with Mexican railroad workers, the mistreatment of whom by their employers angered him. Finding little socialist propaganda to be available in Spanish, Hagerty began translating a number of short works from German, French, and English. Hagerty was warned by the railroads to stay out of labor relations, he told a messenger "Tell the people who sent you here that I have a brace of Colts and can hit a dime at twenty paces."
Upon arriving in New Mexico in 1901, Hagerty became associated with the American Labor Union (ALU) and the Western Federation of Miners(WFM). During the summer of 1902, Hagerty went on a tour of mining camps in Colorado with Socialist Party of America (SPA) orator Eugene V. Debs, attempting to recruit the impoverished miners to the ALU and the SPA. This blatantly political activity brought Hagerty into conflict with his superiors, resulting in his suspension by his archbishop.
Despite this fall from grace with the church hierarchy, Hagerty continued to consider himself a priest in good standing, writing in International Socialist Review that
"While it is true that I have withdrawn from the technical work of the ministry, the withdrawal implies no derogation of my sacerdotal character. I am as much a priest today as I ever was. I have not separated myself from the communion of the Catholic Church; and I hold myself as much a member thereof as the Pope himself.
Hagerty remained defiant of his superiors, declaring that "bishops and priests exceed their authority when they use the influence of their position to oppose a movement whose highest purpose is the industrial liberation of the wage slaves of the world." Catholics were "not bound to pay any attention to them in such matters," Hagerty asserted, adding that the papal encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII against Socialism "have no more authority than that which attaches to the opinions of any private theologian."
One chapter of Hagerty's life was at an end. Another was beginning.
Industrial union activist
Hagerty was employed as a touring organizer for the Socialist Party in 1903, traveling the breadth of the United States to deliver lectures on behalf of the party. Hagerty proved of value to the Socialists for his ability to appeal to Catholic workers on the basis of the social gospel, standing in contrast to the conservative church establishment, which remained staunchly and outspokenly anti-socialist. Hagerty proved to be a skillful orator and authored several pamphlets as a written adjunct to his activities as a party lecturer.
Hagerty attempted to instill the idea that radical political ideas and traditional theological conceptions were fully independent. In his pamphlet Economic Discontent and Its Remedy, Hagerty wrote:
"As a matter of fact, Socialism has no more to do with religion than astronomy or biology. Socialism is an economic science, not a system of dogmatic beliefs. It is as much beyond the scope of Socialism to deal with Divine revelation as it is beyond the range of the Republican Party to advance a new exegesis of the Davidic Psalms.
"If there are atheists and infidels in the Socialist Party, it is not the fault of Socialism. They have as much right to membership there as in any of the other political parties under a free government.... No one would dream of censuring the Democratic Party because the founder of that party, Thomas Jefferson, was an infidel in the ecclesiastical sense of the term. There are many physicians who do not believe in God, yet no one is so ignorant as to condemn the science of Therapeutics on that account. One does not enquire into the religion of the architect before admiring some Corinthian structure which he has designed, nor the particular church affiliations of the bricklayer who built the walls of the house which one is about to buy or rent."
Hagerty was further radicalized during 1903 and 1904, a period marked by particular violence among the mining communities of the American west.[1] Hagerty emerged as a leading critic of electorally-oriented socialist gradualists, who sought slow evolution towards the ultimate socialist goal by means of "boring from within" the established craft unions of the American Federation of Labor. Hagerty was not long in moving outside of the Socialist Party's orbit altogether, changing the focus of his efforts to the construction of new radical industrial unions.
In 1904 Hagerty took a position as editor of a short-lived monthly publication of the American Labor Union called Voice of Labor, through which he gave voice to his ideas about organization of workers in industry. It was in this capacity as a leading union magazine editor of the day that Hagerty was invited early in January 1905 as one of 23 industrial union activists from 9 organizations to a secret Chicago conference for the planning of a new national union. Hagerty help to draft the gathering's "Industrial Union Manifesto," a document which was to serve as an intellectual foundation stone for the establishment of the Industrial Workers of the World at a convention later that same year.
At the founding convention Hagerty served as secretary of the Constitution Committee, and as such wrote the preamble to the IWW Constitution — a short and effective manifesto which became a fundamental element of the organization's official doctrine for decades to follow. Hagerty also produced a circular graphic commonly known as "Hagerty's Wheel," which depicted the various industrial unions comprising the IWW as interrelated spokes.
Hagerty favored direct action, as opposed to political action of the Socialist Party and its left wing rival, the Socialist Labor Party, referring to them as "slowcialists." Emphasizing this point during a speech to the founding convention of the IWW, Hagerty declared:
"The Ballot Box is simply a capitalist concession. Dropping pieces of paper into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation of the working class, and in my opinion it never will."
Later years
Shortly after the formation of the IWW in 1905, Thomas Hagerty suddenly dropped out of the radical union movement. Hagerty severed his connections with both the church and the IWW, adopted the pseudonym "Ricardo Moreno," and henceforth earned his living as a teacher of Spanish and an oculist.
From 1920 until the time of his death Hagerty-Moreno lived as a derelict on the streets of Chicago's skid row. The few of his old comrades who located Hagerty in Chicago found him, in the words of Roland Boer, "living in deep poverty, eventually reliant on soup kitchens, a few cents from passers-by, missions for a bed, and free concerts to keep up his cultural interests."
Hagerty-Moreno's death passed unremarked, probably sometime in the 1920s.
~~~
Father Thomas J. Hagerty: A Forgotten Religious Communist
by Roland Boer
In the usual roll call of religious communists, Father Thomas J. Hagerty -- one of the central figures involved in establishing the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or the Wobblies) in 1905 -- seems to have slipped off the radar. As with many religious radicals, Hagerty sought to meld Christian commitment and radical communism.
At the height of his activism in 1903 and 1904, Hagerty drew admiration from all with whom he worked. According to Clarence Smith, Secretary of the American Labor Union, 'Father Hagerty is without a doubt the brainiest and certainly one of the most eloquent speakers in the labor and Socialist movement in the world'. And he was an electrifying orator, as Eugene Debs, Socialist Party and later IWW leader, put it:
Tall, massive, erect, he would command attention anywhere. On the rostrum he is a striking figure, and when aroused is like a wounded lion at bay. He has ready language, logic, wit, sarcasm, and at times they roll like a torrent and thrill the multitude like a bugle call to charge.
Yet, the story of Father Hagerty is a somewhat sad one: a short incandescent burst of radical activity for some three years -- 1902-1905 -- before disappearing into obscurity. His origins are similarly cloudy: he studied theology before becoming a pugnacious and active priest in New Mexico from 1895, serving in a number of parishes, saying mass, hearing confession, baptising children, burying the dead, before turning into a full-time militant in 1902. Addressing rallies for the Socialist Party, editing newspapers, writing articles, he put all of his formidable energy into grassroots activism.
His crowning achievement was a direct and central role in the formation of the IWW. Hagerty had been one of the original six who had met in the autumn of 1904 and agreed to send out invitations to labour radicals in order to form a militant union. He was also at the centre of the conference in June 1905 that launched the IWW in Chicago. He was secretary of the union's constitution committee, helped frame the Industrial Union Manifesto, designed the most comprehensive diagram "Hagerty's Wheel of Fortune" mapping out the various trades and their relation.
He edited and wrote most of The Voice of Labor, the official newspaper of the American Labor Union for the six months of its frantic existence. Indeed, Hagerty is credited with writing the preamble to the IWW constitution, with its slogan that rang around the world, 'The working class and the employing class have nothing in common'.
As quickly as he had come, he was gone. By the middle of 1905, Hagerty dropped out of political activism altogether and gave up his identity as a Roman Catholic priest, a status he had never lost during his militant years, despite church disapproval. One or two old comrades caught up with him in Chicago many years later and found him living in deep poverty, eventually reliant on soup kitchens, a few cents from passers-by, missions for a bed and free concerts to keep up his cultural interests.
But what is so appealing about Father Thomas J. Hagerty? I am less interested in his usefulness as a priest who could persuade Roman Catholic workers to join the movement, but rather in his effort to bridge the antagonism between the church and socialist leaders. He argued consistently in his speeches and articles that the church hierarchy had no business telling workers how to think and act politically. In line with this position, he would often write that religion and socialism dealt with different spheres of life, that religion and politics had no truck with one another: 'It is as much beyond the scope of Socialism to deal with divine revelation as it is beyond the range of the Republican Party to advance a new exegesis of the Davidic Psalms'. 'Socialism', he wrote elsewhere, 'is an economic science, not a system of dogmatic beliefs'. Given these two spheres, there was no problem in combining his Roman Catholic faith and radical socialism.
However, at other moments he sought to bring these two realms together in a somewhat different fashion, drawing on the church fathers -- Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory, Jerome -- to show that socialism was consistent with their teaching. And in response to yet another round of condemnations from the church hierarchy, he responded that any priest who might vote for the capitalist system would make it perfectly clear that 'he has voted for the continuance of the very things against which his Master of yore thundered in the highways of Palestine'.
Was Hagerty's thought inconsistent?
In one respect, yes, in the sense that the tension in his thought may well have played a role, along with sheer burnout, in leading him out of both socialist activism and the church. The fact that he fell out with the bulk of the IWW and fellow socialists through the sheer radicalism of his positions did not help matters, for he advocated immediate revolution, disdained democracy, the ballot box and those he called the 'slowcialists'.
In another respect, the answer must be no; his two positions are not so inconsistent. They may have been in his own mind, but they do reflect an uncompromising honesty in Hagerty's effort to work through the relation between Christianity and politics.
Let me put it this way: in many respects the wavering back and forth between complete separation of the two spheres of socialism and theology and his effort to see their connections embodies an ambivalence that runs through the long tradition of religious radicalism.
For Hagerty could see that his own tradition lent itself all too readily to reaction and the support of exploitation; at these moments he sought to separate his socialist and Christian commitments. But he could see equally well that the two had a good deal in common. It is a shame he was not able to resolve the tension for himself.
~~~
Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I feel real bad.
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Baby, sometimes I'm so carefree
With a joy that's hard to hide
And sometimes it seems that, all I have to do is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
If I seem edgy, I want you to know,
That I never mean to take it out on you
Life has its problems, and I get my share,
And that's one thing I never mean to do
Cause I love you,
Oh,
Oh, oh, oh, baby - don't you know I'm human
I have thoughts like any other one
Sometimes I find myself, Lord, regretting
Some foolish thing, some little simple thing I've done
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Yes, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Yes, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I feel real bad.
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Baby, sometimes I'm so carefree
With a joy that's hard to hide
And sometimes it seems that, all I have to do is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
If I seem edgy, I want you to know,
That I never mean to take it out on you
Life has its problems, and I get my share,
And that's one thing I never mean to do
Cause I love you,
Oh,
Oh, oh, oh, baby - don't you know I'm human
I have thoughts like any other one
Sometimes I find myself, Lord, regretting
Some foolish thing, some little simple thing I've done
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Yes, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Yes, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood