IWW organizer and songwriter Joe Hill. (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhile Wobblies wrote original lyrics for classics like \u201cSolidarity Forever,\u201d \u201cPower in a Union,\u201d and \u201cPreacher and the Slave,\u201d they borrowed melodies from the popular songs of their era, choosing songs that average workers already knew. This is a common left-wing folk music evolution, wherein the Christmas carol \u201cO Tannenbaum\u201d became \u201cThe Red Flag\u201d or the traditional Irish song \u201cThe Praties They Grow Small\u201d became the labor song \u201cStep by Step.\u201d The Wobblies took it a step further: true to their reputation as feisty, soapboxing street organizers, they often wrote parodies that deliberately inverted the meaning of an original song.<\/p>\n
These parodies came out of the clash of class enemies and conflicting ideologies that regularly took place at IWW organizing sites. The Wobblies recruited members from among jobless, homeless, and itinerant workers. Unable to find jobs through the existing craft union, the American Federation of Labor, these workers were vulnerable to predatory employers. In Westover-Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s introduction to Starvation Army<\/em>, he describes how in Spokane, Washington, which was home to some of the IWW\u2019s early street battles, unskilled laborers fell prey to employment agencies that would charge them a dollar to place them in logging or construction. The work itself was short term and low paying. Sometimes the agencies would take money for jobs that didn\u2019t even exist. Bosses and employment agencies (\u201cjob sharks\u201d as they were known to the Wobblies) worked in league with each other and would split the money from the workers. The faster the turnover in workers, the more money they made. The high turnover, besides being criminally exploitative, was also designed to prevent workers from forming or joining a union.<\/p>\nIWW organizer J. H. Walsh went to Spokane in 1908 to grow the local chapter and begin a \u201cDon\u2019t Buy Jobs\u201d campaign. He went to the city\u2019s skid row and \u201csoapboxed\u201d directly to the workers outside the offices of the job sharks. Known as a powerful orator who clapped back at hecklers and commanded his soapbox like a general, he speechified right out on the pavement.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the IWW wasn\u2019t the only group on skid row trying to organize the destitute. The Salvation Army, the evangelizing Protestant charitable organization, competed with the Wobblies for the hearts and minds of the working class. Parking themselves near the employment agencies, with their sharp military uniforms and loud brass band, they fought for the same space and the same workers. In his essay, \u201cThe Story of The Little Red Songbook<\/em>,\u201d IWW lyricist Richard Brazier describes how The Salvation Army \u201cdelighted in trying to break up the IWW street meetings with blare of trumpet and banging of drums.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Salvation Army band would place themselves catty-corner to the soapboxing IWW organizers and try to drown out their speeches with hymns played on brass instruments at ear-splitting volumes. According to Brazier, the IWW\u2019s parodies of traditional hymns or patriotic songs came from this context. When the Salvation Army played, the rambunctious Wobblies sang over them, using the band as accompaniment but changing the words of the hymn into a labor anthem. \u201cAt times we would sing note by note with the Salvation Army at our street meetings,\u201d writes Brazier, \u201conly their words described Heaven above and ours Hell right here \u2014 to the same tune.\u201d<\/p>\nTrue to their reputation as feisty, soapboxing street organizers, the Wobblies often wrote parodies that deliberately inverted the meaning of an original song.<\/q><\/aside>\nThe Salvation Army did charitable works, but not without prejudice. According to Tara Forbes in Singing Solidarity: Class Consciousness, Emotional Pedagogy, and the Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World<\/em>, the Salvation Army refused to feed socialists, anarchists, or members of the IWW. Their refusal to feed the destitute if they did not like their politics was how they earned the IWW\u2019s nickname for them: \u201cthe Starvation Army.\u201d<\/p>\nIWW lyricists wrote stinging parodies of some of the Salvation Army\u2019s Protestant hymns. One such song, recorded for the first time on Starvation Army: Band Music No. 1<\/em>, was \u201cChristians at War\u201d by John F. Hendrick. This was the IWW\u2019s take on \u201cOnward, Christian Soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\nThe original hymn begins:<\/p>\n
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, \nWith the cross of Jesus going on before! \nChrist, the royal Master, leads against the foe; \nForward into battle, see his banner go!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The IWW parody recomposes the original as follows:<\/p>\n
Onward, Christian soldiers, duty\u2019s way is plain; \nSlay your Christian brothers, or by them be slain; \nPulpiteers are spouting effervescent swill, \nGod above is calling you to rob and rape and kill<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The IWW lyricists relied on workers\u2019 prior knowledge of the song, with its pounding rhythm and assertive melody, not merely for convenience of singing but also to function as satire \u2014 turning its optimism and ferocious moral righteousness on its head.<\/p>\n
Another popular nineteenth-century hymn parodied by the Wobblies was \u201cIn the Sweet By-and-By,\u201d recomposed by Joe Hill into the raucous \u201cPreacher and the Slave.\u201d The chorus of the original repeats the line \u201cIn the sweet by-and-by \/ We shall meet on that beautiful shore.\u201d Joe Hill\u2019s \u201cPreacher and the Slave,\u201d even more than \u201cChristians at War,\u201d is a direct indictment of all slum missionaries that inserted themselves between socialist organizers and workers:<\/p>\n
You will eat by-and-by \nIn that glorious land above the sky \nWork and pray, live on hay \nYou’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
From out of the clash of IWW street organizing, the Wobblies eventually formed their own brass band, with uniforms deliberately resembling the Salvation Army\u2019s. At last they were able to effectively compete with their evangelizing adversaries for the attention of workers standing in line at the job agencies.<\/p>\n
The IWW lost hold of their organizing territory in Spokane when in 1909 the employment agencies pressured the city council into drafting an ordinance prohibiting street speaking. The city made it illegal for the Wobblies to organize where the workers were. Religious organizations like the Salvation Army, however, were exempt from these provisions. Presenting no challenge to the police or the job sharks, they could continue to proselytize to the destitute.<\/p>\n
Rather than ceding the ground, the IWW undertook a mass civil-disobedience action, openly defying the ordinance. The Wobbly newspaper the Industrial Worker<\/em> put out a notice: “Wanted \u2014 Men to Fill the Jails of Spokane.” Hundreds of IWW members showed up to mount a soapbox on skid row, commit the crime of public speaking, and get arrested. Within weeks the city jails were overflowing with Wobblies who were said to have sung in their prison cells and preached class struggle to the guards. In 1910, the ordinance was rescinded when the Spokane city coffers were overburdened from the cost of jailing so many. The IWW members were released from jail, and the employment agencies were regulated or shuttered. The IWW, through sacrifice and showmanship, won a victory over the job sharks.<\/p>\nReading the grainy newsprint of the Industrial Worker <\/em>can\u2019t compete with the visceral experience of listening to the songs on Starvation Army. <\/em>Through these songs, contemporary union organizers can reach back and touch the organizers of a century ago, and find solidarity and good structural lessons in their work. A contemporary union organizer who has held a picket line for weeks at a time may be familiar with the dramatic clash of humanity that comes through on the album. They are more likely to stand on a folding table than a soapbox, but their fight is one and the same. Like the Wobblies of old, they are compelled by their love of the working-class struggle to lay claim to those inches of pavement for as long as is necessary.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\nThis post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One hundred and eight years ago today, the great songwriter and union organizer Joe Hill was executed by firing squad in Utah after getting framed on trumped up murder charges. On the anniversary of his death, an album of never-before-recorded songs from the Industrial Workers of the World, as they would have been sung on [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340596"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344466,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340596\/revisions\/1344466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}