The Undeservedly Obscure Dead

William Dudley Haywood (1869-1928) better known as Big Bill Haywood, was a prominent figure in the labor movement. He was blind in one eye and he was born in Utah and spent time as a homesteader, a cowboy, and a miner in Idaho and Utah and Colorado. Big Bill was ten American men rolled into one, on account of every thing he did was more than one man could do. Haywood was a leader of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), and he went to Chicago to become a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, he was involved in several important labor battles, including the Lawrence textile strike, the Colorado Labor Wars (which culminated in the Ludlow massacre), and textile strikes in Massacheusetts and New Jersey. Haywood was frequently the target of prosecution. His trial for the murder of Frank Stuenenberg in 1907 (of which he was acquitted) drew national attention; in 1918, he was one of 101 IWW members convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
The IWW was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the Western Federation of Miners) who were opposed to the policies of the American Federation of Labor.

Let's read about Big Bill, who fought for working folk and never gave up the fight, from his time in the mines to his time as an organizer and a labor leader, let's read what the Rude Pundit has to say about Big Bill and the world we live in now.

"So, on this great force of the working class I believe we can agree that we should unite into one great organization--big enough to take in the children that are now working; big enough to take in the black man; the white man; big enough to take in all nationalities--an organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries, to obliterate national boundaries, and one that will become the great industrial force of the working class of the world."

Yeah, that's in 1911. He was already advocating for racial integration, before there even was a Civil Rights movement, there was a Labor movement, advocating brotherhood for all folk.

From the current Preamble to the IWW Constitution:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. ... Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work', we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system'."

That's fairly radical, more radical than I am, labor union supporter though I am. But that sort of rhetoric is what got us the minimum wage, the 40 hour week and two weeks of vacation and some time off for a new mother without her losing her job. And that's all on account of Big Bill. Read some of John Dos Passos The 42nd Parallel, wherein Big Bill makes an appearance in a labor camp. So we salute you Big Bill, you went out and stood up, like a man does, for a man's dignity and his labor, and his right to be man itself and not a tool of the boss. Good on you, Big Bill...I have a slug of whiskey for you.

But better than I, let's hear Clarence Darrow (my fellow alumnus) defend Big Bill and the Western Miners in 1907:

"I am here to say that in a great cause these labor organizations, despised and weak and outlawed as they generally are, have stood for the poor, they have stood for the weak, they have stood for every human law that was ever placed upon the statute books. They stood for human life, they stood for the father who was bound down by his task, they stood for the wife, threatened to be taken from the home to work by his side, and they have stood for the little child who was also taken to work in their places--that the rich could grow richer still, and they have fought for the right of the little one, to give him a little of life, a little comfort while he is young."

UPDATE: Enjoy the new Pretty Girls Make Graves album, Elan Vital, featuring the labor song "Parade": "Been talking in the brake room/ Been talking in the parking lot/ Of labor and unrest and eyeing the clock/ Are you okay with what you've got?