Populism’s Poet
Jacob Huff was born 1853, in Pennsylvania. A populist, writer, poet, and satirist; Huff called the Grand Valley home for just four years, from 1892 to 1896. He met and married his wife here, and had a son here. Even after Jacob Huff returned to Pennsylvania he continued to write to, and for the Sentinel. The western mountains and deserts always held a special place in his heart.
Jacob Huff, often writing under the nom de plume Faraway Moses and Jake Haiden, gained a national following and notoriety.
He published a book of western and cowboy poetry in 1895 while living here in the Grand Valley, titled “Songs of the Desert.” That has been forgotten and is quite good.
“I have seen the western farmer
Stripped as bare, or even worse
By the frosty money-lender
and his cruel mortgage curse;
I have seen bare limbs of children
In poverty’s exposure,
When the homestead was frost-bitten
By the mortgage’s foreclosure.
Jacob Huff, “Frostbites” from his book of poetry, Songs of the Desert 1895.
Huff was active with the populist party here in Grand Junction, running for local office, and being part of the senatorial delegation to the state populist convention. A strong sense of justice for working folks permeates much of his surviving works, but none so much as a poem he published during the height of the tumultuous summer of 1894. At the time the Pullman Strike and Boycott was gripping the nation and the Grand Valley. Federal troops were breaking the strike by force, and US Marshals were patrolling the streets of Grand Junction.
Stand Up, Americans!
When monopolies grind the poor man in the dust,
In spite of our so called “just laws,”
When our Congress is bought by the wealth of the trust,
And the poor man is crushed in wealth’s jaws
When labor goes out in a justified cause,
It stirs up the scum of the town
The “hobos” and gamblers are armed by our laws
And sent forth to shoot lab’ring man down.
There are fools and fanatics spread over our land,
Who think that the poor have no rights;
While organized capital seems to them grand,
They spit on the organized Knights.
It is those who encourage the scab and the sneak,
And call on the scum of the town
To help our monopolies oppress the weak
And shoot the poor lab’ring man down.
I’d rather be honest, tho’ the rich we despise,
And own scarce a nickle or dime.
Then have the great fortunes our millionaires prize,
Built up by the oppression and crime.
I would ten times rather eat one meal a day–
Go begging in village and town,
Than to go out to murder my brother for pay,
And shoot the poor lab’ring man down.
This is no time for prejudice, no time to fight
Over politics or public men;
Stand shoulder to shoulder, each man for the right,
and shout this o’er valley and glen;
‘Tis the land which our fathers have died to make free
From the grasp of old England’s crown;
If we stand up like men for our own liberty,
They dare not shoot the lab’ring man down!!
Jacob Huff, Grand Valley Star-Times, July 7th 1894.
Jacob Huff died in 1910, less then a month after visiting the Grand Valley. His passing was front-page news. Huff started his writing career here in the Grand Valley.
A writer of wit, and compassion Huff deserves to be remembered. Check out Huff’s “Songs of the Desert” here:
Hobo Armies, Chain Gangs and Wobblie: The Grand Valley and the Golden Age of Vagabonds - Peoples History of the Grand Valley % %
[…] his wife was feeding them out of the back door. Populist poet, and one-time Grand Valley resident, Jacob Huff, wrote about Mrs. Shores’ well known generosity in his nationally syndicated column “The […]