Many classic union songs were written to the tune of religious songs. In a time when only the Salvation Army were legally allowed to speak on the street, Wobblies on soapboxes drowned them out by singing revolutionary lyrics over the Salvation Army band’s tunes.
Which is not to say that the IWW was anti-religious, or inherently atheistic. In fact, our modern IU numbering system descends from a chart made by Father Thomas Haggerty, a Catholic priest and founding IWW member (he also wrote the Preamble!). But many IWW songwriters – and Joe Hill in particular – certainly took a nonserious approach to religion, especially with regard to heaven and hell.
Hill’s first known IWW song is probably also still his most famous: “The Preacher and the Slave.” It is a parody of the Christian hymn “In the Sweet By and By,” and in no uncertain terms declares that heaven – “that glorious land above the sky” – is “a lie.” (It also notes that the Salvation Army tells fellow workers like you and me that we’re “sinner[s]” and “when you die you will sure go to hell” … so that “glorious land above the sky” was never for us, anyway.) Another Christian hymn parody, “There Is Power in a Union,” urges workers to fight for better conditions here on earth, and not wait for “mansions of gold in the sky” or “wings up in heaven to fly.”
Hill continued his career in lyrical satire with “Casey Jones, the Union Scab.” Inspired by a 1911 strike against the Illinois Central Railroad company, “Casey Jones” sees the eponymous engineer die and go to heaven – where Saint Peter encourages him to scab on the heavenly musicians. Casey is then sent to hell by the angels’ union. The Devil punishes Casey, and notably *not* for “scabbing on the angels” – the Devil says “that’s what you get for scabbing on the S.P. Line.”
“Mr. Block” (Hill’s song based on Ernest Riebe’s IWW comics about a block–headed, anti–IWW worker), features the eponymous Block dying and telling Saint Peter that he would “love to meet the Astorbilts and John D. Rockefell[er].” Here Peter does not encourage Block’s anti-union behavior and simply tells him that “you’ll meet them down below.”
Other Hill songs feature a less worker–friendly heaven – and hell. In “The Tramp,” our hobo hero has already been told to get out and “keep on trampin'” all over earth when he dies and is kicked out of heaven for the same reason. The original published version of the song ends here, but a final verse, in which the Devil also refuses him entry to hell, can be found in later editions of the IWW songbook and elsewhere. It’s unclear if Hill wrote it. In the 1960s, Wobbly Hugo T. Hansen wrote his own final verse, where instead a friendly Devil happily allows the tramp in.
Joe Hill died too young, murdered by the state of Utah in November 1915. He only wrote Wobbly songs for about five years. Many remember “Don’t waste any time mourning – organize!” among his final words, or, more humorously, “Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.” But another of his final letters from prison says “When you get to heaven you will find me on a front seat,” so perhaps he did believe, after all, that that’s where good, class-conscious Fellow Workers go. (In “Scissor Bill,” another song about an anti-IWW worker, Hill declares that “if Scissor Bill is going to heaven, I’ll go to hell.”)
KJ Choi is an organizer from Philly celebrating the Eagles’ win at their parade in downtown Philadelphia today. “Go Birds!”