FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 189Guthrie was a political activist, a folk musician, and the inspiration for genera-
tions of singers and protestors to come, especially Bob Dylan. He was born in
Oklahoma and wrote songs of the people who had been left on the margins–
like the characters in Steinbeck’s plays, the farmers, the homeless, the “Okies.”
Guthrie was deeply immersed in labor politics and culture, and his music
reflected that. He made a working class hero out of Jesus Christ, who “said
to the rich, ‘Give your money to the poor,’” and so the “bankers and the
preachers” and the “cops and the soldiers” did him in, they “nailed Him in the
air.” As noted, in “1913 Massacre,” he wrote of over 100 workers and their
family members being killed when company thugs incited a stampede at a
party at the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan. Wall Street was one of his
favorite targets and “Jolly Banker” was one of his most biting songs. “Tom
Cranker” is the jolly banker, and Guthrie mocks his pitch: “When your car
you’re losin’, and sadly your cruisin’/I’m a jolly banker, jolly banker am I/I’ll
come and forclose, get your car and your clothes/Singin’ I’m jolly banker, jolly
banker am I.” Guthrie even made a folk hero out of the outlaw Pretty Boy
Floyd, turning him from a criminal into a Robin Hood figure who helped the
poor. Taking another swipe at bankers, he wrote, “but a many a starving
farmer/ The same old story told/How the outlaw paid their mortgage/And
FIGuRE 4-9 Woody Guthrie