The Preacher and the Slave

One union for workers across all industries organized around the idea that the people who actually produce the wealth should have the power to control their lives and their work.

One of his best-known songs, The Preacher and the Slave, took aim at the idea that hungry workers should simply accept their suffering now in exchange for rewards in the afterlife.

Its most famous phrase was the sarcastic promise of pie in the sky.

You will eat by and by.

Block.

There is Power in a Union.

The Preacher and the Slave.

Songs that were written for workers a century ago continued to be sung by workers who had never met Joe Hill, and never would.

In 1910, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, and began traveling the country conducting organizing drives.

As a songwriter and poet, he wrote a number of classic labor songs in addition to The Rebel Girl, including The Preacher and the Slave, Casey Jones, the Union Scab, and There is Power in a Union.

In 1915, Hill became a martyr and folk hero of the labor movement when he was executed by firing squad in Utah after being found guilty of two murders that he almost certainly did not commit.

Though perhaps apocryphal, it is said that Hill's last words were, "Don't mourn, organize." Joe Hill wrote The Rebel Girl around 1915, and it appears in an early version of The Little Red Songbook, a collection of songs published by the Wobblies to fan the flames of discontent.

He would take a hymn or a popular song and change the lyrics, turning religious promises into jokes about poverty or transforming known melodies into songs about bosses and union organizing.

One of his best-known songs, The Preacher and the Slave, took aim at the idea that hungry workers should simply accept their suffering now in exchange for rewards in the afterlife.

Its most famous phrase was the sarcastic promise of pie in the sky.

[singing] You will eat, by and by, in that glorious land above the sky.

Block.

There is power in a union.

The preacher and the slave.

Songs that were written for workers a century ago continued to be sung by workers who had never met Joe Hill and never would.