The Popular Wobbly

"With switchblade wit, the great IWW provocateur T-Bone Slim skewered injustice and uplifted the working class."—Tom Morello

"T-Bone Slim was a really impressive person who should be much better known. This anthology shows that his words and ideas are still relevant today."—Noam Chomsky

"This is lost wisdom."—Billy Bragg

"[These writings have] the force of Hemingway plus the sting of Swift."—Lee Taylor

"It remains impossible to reproduce T-Bone Slim’s matchless wordplay and invention of language. . . . We believe his madcap humor and sober truths because his brilliance hews so closely to our everyday experiences."—David Roediger

"T-Bone Slim wrote the way an arsonist sets fires."—Franklin Rosemont

"T-Bone Slim lived his life in North America, but he created a world of his own. This world was rooted in the harsh realities of migrant workers’ lives, but at the same time it was a world of fantasy, black humor, and language play, free from time and place. This world is just as alive and recognizable today as it was in his time."—Kirsti Salmi-Niklander

"[T-Bone Slim] was the laureate of the logging camps."—Harvey O’Connor

The first critical edition of the writings of the prolific radical workers’ newspaper columnist and musician who rode the rails during the Great Depression

The Popular Wobbly brings together a wide selection of writings by T-Bone Slim, the most popular and talented writer belonging to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Slim wrote humorous, polemical pieces, engaging with topics like labor and class injustice, which were mostly published in IWW publications from 1920 until his death in 1942. Although relatively little is known about Slim, editors Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre coalesce the latest research on this enigmatic character to create a vivid portrait that adds valuable context for the array of writings assembled here.

Known as “the laureate of the logging camps,” Slim also composed numerous songs that have been performed and recorded by Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and Candie Carawan, who in 1960 updated Slim’s song “The Popular Wobbly” with Civil Rights–era lyrics. Slim’s witticisms, sayings, and exhortations (“Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack”; “Only the poor break laws—the rich evade them”) were widely discussed among fellow hobos across the “jungle” campfires that dotted the railways, and some even transcribed his commentary on boxcars that traveled the country. Yet despite Slim’s importance and fame during his lifetime, his work disappeared from public view almost immediately after his death.

The Popular Wobbly is the first critical edition of Slim’s work and also a significant contribution to literature about working-class writers, the radical labor movement, and the history and culture of nomadism and precarity. With this publication, Slim’s rediscovered writings can once again inspire artists and activists to march and agitate for a more just and equitable world.

T-Bone Slim (1882–1942), born Matti Valentinpoika Huhta, was a Finnish American humorist, columnist, poet, musician, hobo, and labor activist who was a prominent writer for the Industrial Workers of the World.

Owen Clayton is senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Lincoln in England and author of Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: The Literature and Culture of U.S. Transiency, 1890–1940 and Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850–1915.

Iain McIntyre is honorary fellow with the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne; researcher at the Commons Social Change Library; and author of Environmental Blockades: Obstructive Direct Action and the History of the Environmental Movement.

David R. Roediger is Foundation Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas and author of The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right.