"A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at either end."

[Stephen Goranson]

"A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end." "Slogan of English pacifists, 1940" appears on p. 87
in  A New dictionary of quotations on historical principles from ancient and modern sources / selected and edited by H.L. Mencken.      New York : A.A. Knopf, 1942. Confirmed on paper.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Garson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 3:31 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at either              end."

The following 1966 reference has a version of the saying, but it does
not connect it to John Maclean.

Cite: 1966, "Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations" edited by
Robert Debs Heinl, Category: bayonet, Page 31, Column 2, United States
Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland. (Verified on paper)
[Begin excerpt]
A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.
Socialist slogan, early 20th century
[End excerpt]

The marxists.org website has a collection of speeches and articles by
John MacLean. I tried a quick Google search in the marxists.org domain
and could not find an instance of the quotation about bayonets. The
saying may be worded differently, or I may have missed it:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/maclean/index.htm

Garson

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at either end."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There is also the possibility he said them in Russian, which Maclean
> had learned by 1918.
> DanG
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      "A bayonet is a weapon with a working man at either end."
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Tens of thousands attribute this quote to the Scottish Socialist John
>> Maclean (1879-1923: he even got on a Soviet postage stamp in 1979).
>>
>> Maclean supposedly uttered the words in 1917 or '18, but the Wikipedia
>> article doesn't mention them.
>>
>> Real? Or Memorex?
>>
>> JL
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>>
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>
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