Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture

by Franklin Rosemont, David R. Roediger (Introduction)

A monumental work, expansive in scope, covering the life, times, and culture of that most famous of the Wobblies—songwriter, poet, hobo, thinker, humorist, martyr—Joe Hill. It is a journey into the Wobbly culture that made Hill and the capitalist culture that killed him. Many aspects of the life and lore of Joe Hill receive their first and only discussion in IWW historian Franklin Rosemont’s opus. In great detail, the issues that Joe Hill raised and grappled with in his life: capitalism, white supremacy, gender, religion, wilderness, law, prison, and industrial unionism are shown in both the context of Hill’s life and for their enduring relevance in the century since his death. Collected too is Joe Hill’s art, plus scores of other images featuring Hill-inspired art by IWW illustrators from Ralph Chaplin to Carlos Cortez, as well as contributions from many other labor artists. As Rosemont suggests in this remarkable book, Joe Hill never really died. He lives in the minds of young (and old) rebels as long as his songs are sung, his ideas are circulated, and his political descendants keep fighting for a better day.

Genres: History, Labor, Biography, Politics, Nonfiction, Society

656 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Franklin Rosemont was co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Henry, was a labor activist. His mother, Sally, was a jazz musician.
He edited & wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, & edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, The Rise & Fall of the DIL Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot & Juice is Stranger than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With his wife, Penelope Rosemont, & Paul Garon he edited The Forecast is Hot!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst & Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) & of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biogaphy of Joe Hill.
He is the author of the poetry collections The Morning of a Machine Gun: Twenty Poems & Documents. Profusely Illustrated By the Author, The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye, & Penelope: A Poem, as well as An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers, a book that explores the phenomenon of "wrong numbers" from a surrealist perspective, published by Black Swan Press in Chicago in 2003.
Rosemont and his wife urrently live in the East Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, managing the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, the world's oldest, continuously existing socialist publishing house.

Reviews

[Heronimo Gieronymus]

Rosemont's book proves a not-so-little little pipe bomb. The full weight of the affect it will have had on my life will only be clarified by time, but I imagine it will be considerable. Less a book about Joe Hill, about whom biographical information is dispiritingly scant, this is a book about The Industrial Workers of the World union (the One Big Union) framed around the role Joe Hill played in it as organizer, songwriter, poet, commentator, cartoonist, card-carrying member, and martyr. Rosemont totally convincingly argues that the IWW was far and away the most inspirational and ripe-for-emulation American emancipatory labour movement of the first half of the twentieth century, with tendrils that reach beyond. It strikes me now, having read this exemplary work, that, going forward, I will be unable to engage the world without directly engaging the way labour and toil are disastrous forces of alienation in our world, and that the antidote is in solidarity, art, humour, inclusivity, and collective refusal. I am on fire w/ this thing!

[TheGroundBaby]

This book should have been at least 300 pages shorter! I loved the sections about Joe Hill and the influence, including all of the cultural inspiration, counter-cultural elements, the intellectual life of Wobblies. So good! Joe Hill must have been quite the character, and his spirit is inspiring to organizers now. Some of this was very inspiring, and it caused me to look into a lot of authors, books, poets, etc. that I otherwise wouldn't have found. This was also a good look into the counter-culture of Chicago especially, which I always love - especially for these North side neighborhoods that are cultural dead zones these days. However, many chapters in this book went along this formula - here's something that Joe Hill had in a song or something, here's how other people might have may taken it possibly, and here's how the EVIL STALINISTS IN THE COMMUNIST PARTY did NOT DO THAT because they're EVIL zombie BUREAUCRATS. Some chapters are entirely unnecessary, having nothing to do with the subject matter at all. Seriously, who was the editor? One chapter was just about the Communist Party supposedly breaking into people's apartments or something, had straight up nothing to do with Joe Hill. Rosemont also has almost zero critical eye for IWW strategy - criticizing everyone else as evil boring (yes, boring) and bureaucrats for hundreds of pages while dedicating maybe two pages at most to criticism of the IWW strategy. I've met many old lefty types like Rosemont, people, like how he describes in old Wobbly halls, as old farts chewing the fat about their organization and how everyone else did everything wrong, meanwhile their organization is tiny and irrelevant - 8,000 nationally now? Sure their members who died and struggled lost any gains because the IWW didn't do anything to keep the union in tact, but at least they made poetry! Give me a break!

[Zanden Duncan]

Pretty solid biography but falls into the "idk" lane too much. could probably be condensed but there's a lot of great info and stories and people. not really a bio on Hill but the whole movement.

[Jeff]

Lots of excellent material. But too often was a chronicle of topics for further historical research