‘I
Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Nighf ^
67
our contemporary version of bread and circuses. The history textbooks
essentially still perceive the IWW as a violent manifestation of an early
twentieth-century class conflict which has little relevance for today. And the
establishment media ignored the centennial of the IWW.
Nevertheless, as Howard Zinn suggests, there is an oppositional culture
which keeps the legacy of the IWW alive. In literature, history, film, and, most
importantly, music, the dream of the IWW in a common humanity free from the
dread of war and fear of want in a democratic society remains as alive as Joe
Hill.
Sandia Preparatory School
Ron Briley
Notes
' Buhle, Paul and Nicole Schulman, eds., Wohblies!: A Graphic Histoty o f the Industrial
Workers o f the World (New York: Verso, 2005), 2-3.
" Alan Brinkley, American Histoiy: A Survey (Boston: McGraw-Hill College, 1999),
741-742.
^ Jeanne Boydston, Nick Cullather, Jan Ellen Lewis, Michael McGerr, and James Oakes,
Making a Nation: The United States and Its People (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
Prentice Hall, 2002), 604.
^ David M. Kennedy, Thomas A. Bailey, and Mel Piehl, The Brief American Pageant: A
Histoiy o f the Republic (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1996),
466 and 478.
^ Paul Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Sandra McNair Hawley, Joseph F. Kelt, Neal
Salisbury, Harvard Sitkoff, and Nancy Woloch, The Enduring Vision (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1998), 482.
Howard Zinn, A People's History' o f the United States: 1492-Present (New York:
Harper Co llins Publishers, 2003), 330-338.
^ Ibid., 688; and Bob Batchelor, “Wobblies,” in Tom and Sara Pendergast, eds., St. James
Encyclopedia o f Popular Culture, Volume 5 (Detroit: St. James Press, 2000), 165.
^ Franklin Rosemont, Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making o f a Revolutionaiy Working Class
Counterculture (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2003), 590.
Wallace Stegner, The Preacher and the Slave (New York: Doubleday, 1950); reprinted
as Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 11-12.
Wallace Stegner, “Joe Hill: The W obblies’ Troubadour,” The New Republic, 5 January
1948, 20-24.
" Joyce Kornbluh, ed.. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology’ (Ann Arbor: University o f
Michigan Press, 1964), 2-3.
Philip S. Foner, A History o f the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 4, The
Industrial Workers o f the World, 1905-1917 (New York: International Publishers, 1965);
Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies: The Story o f the IWW and Syndicalism in the United
States (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1967); and Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall
Be All: A Histoiy o f the Industrial Workers o f the World (Chicago: Quadrangle Books,
1969).
Melvyn Dubofsky (Joseph A. McCartin, ed.). We Shall Be All: A Histoiy o f the
Industrial Workers o f the World, Abridged Edition (Urbana: University o f Illinois Press,
2001), vii-viii.