labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW, also known as the "Wobblies"). A native Swedish speaker
, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York
to San Francisco. Hill, as an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular song writer and cartoonist for the radical union.
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.
I'll take the shooting. I'm used to that. I've been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it, again.
Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize.
I die with a clear conscience, I die fighting, not like a coward.
Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights.All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites.Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave?Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?