Joe Hill was a pseudonym, Joe Hill was a Swedish-American immigrant worker, along with being a labor activist, songwriter, and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, in Gavle, Sweden. He also called, Joseph Hillström. He was born on October 7, 1879 and died on November 19, 1915. In the early 1900s he learned to speak English. He was a songwriter and one of his most popular song was “The Preacher and the Slave,” Some of his other songs were: “The Tramp,” “There is Power in a Union,” “The Rebel Girl,” and “Casey Jones- the Union Scab.” All of these songs were expressing his feelings towards the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers and to call the workers to organize their efforts to improve the working conditions for them. He worked all …show more content…
He wanted to combine all of them to make “One Big Union.” Being a Wobbly, he was very active in the free speech fights, these were in Fresno and San Francisco. This strike came from the Railroad Construction Workers in British Columbia and it even made its way to the Mexican Revolution. Music was not only a centerpiece for the Wobblies, but also to Joe. But this was started a long time before the IWW. Abolitionists and the Gilded Age labor movement really put songwriting, singing, poetry, and other forms of writing a key part of their efforts. Jewish textile workers and coal miners already developed a strong working-class by being poetic and musical. The Knights of Labor also took part in this. So Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie had to be careful, they took the music and poetry to new standards and smartly used singing and chanting as a way to gain attention from workers, the media, and the law. Fifty workers singing makes way more noise at a rally or in a jail cell than one speaker standing at a podium in a park or on a street