"Through our house there came the dissidents, the brave exploded root, the radicle. I think the IWWs had the greatest influence on me: They believed that only from the working class could come the poets and the singers, the prophets, the heroes, and the martyrs. They rode the trains with their red membership cards and gathered wherever there was an attack upon their fellow workers. When they came to our house to recuperate, eat, and take a bath, they told hair-raising tales about riding the freights, the wheat fields, the docks of San Diego, the timber workers, the free speech fights in Seattle. They knew which were the best prisons to stay in all winter to learn, read, and eat till spring."