The IWW Songbook

In the early parts of the 20th century (the exact years are unknown, but seem to range from 1904 to 1935), the Industrial Workers of the World (often also called "Wobblies"), a radical labor movement, published a set of songs called The IWW Songbook. Unfortunately, this book is very difficult to find online; the only copy I was able to find was an old, proprietary document format. So, as of May Day 2002, I'm converting it to a simple HTML format, hopefully so more people can find these songs. This is specifically the 19th edition, published in 1923.

Table of Contents

• All Hell Can't Stop Us
• Big Question
• Commonwealth of Toil
• Count Your Workers Count Them!
• Don't Take My Papa Away From Me
• Dump the Bosses Off Your Back
• Everett County Jail
• Farewell, Frank!
• Fifty Thousand Lumberjacks
• Harvest Land
• Harvest War Song
• Hold the Fort
• I Wanna Free Miss Liberty
• I'm Too Old To Be A Scab
• Industrial Unionism Speaks to Toilers of the Sea
• Industrial Workers of the World
• The Internationale
• Joe Hill's Last Will
• John Golden and the Lawrence Strike
• May Day Song
• Mr. Block
• My Wandering Boy
• Mysteries Of A Hobo's Life
• One Big Industrial Union
• Onward, One Big Union!
• Organize!
• Popular Wobbly
• Preacher And The Slave
• The Rebel Girl
• Remember
• Renunciation
• Scissor Bill
• Solidarity Forever
• The Dollar Alarm Clock
• The Red Flag
• The Tramp
• The White Slave
• There Is Power In a Union
• They'll Soon Ring Out
• Tie 'em Up!
• Up From Your Knees
• We Will Sing One Song
• We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years
• Whadda Ya Want To Break Your Back For The Boss For?
• Workers' Marselllaise
• Workers' Memorial Song
• Workers Of The World
• Workers Of The World, Awaken!
• Workers Of The World Are Now Awaking
• Worker's Plea
• Workingmen, Unite!

This is, as far as I know, the only free copy of this whole book available in an electronic format. Please, please copy them and distribute them. Also, email me if you find any mistakes from OCR or HTML conversion. Union Songs contains a larger list of labor songs, although not all available here are also there, and ones particular to the songbook are not marked.

This document is perpetually under construction, as I find links to provide more historical context for the songs, definitions for Union slang, and so on. If you have any other suggestions of how to improve this version of the songbook, please tell me. I'm also interesting in finding audio files of the songs to accompany the site.

Updated Songbook

You can purchase a modern edition (36th) of the Little Red Songbook from the IWW's store. Since this site's goal is primarily historical, it won't be updated to include these songs.

Authors

Joe Hill is the author of a good number of these songs, and one of the most famous labor songwriters. More information is available on PBS's Joe Hill: Songs of Hope. These is (of course) a song about Joe Hill's efforts as well. His will, available in the song book, is his actual will, written shortly before he was executed. Ralph Chaplin, while less known to most people, was just as prolific a poet and songwriter, and wrote arguably the most famous labor song, Solidarity Forever.

Editorial Discretion

I don't have an original copy of the songbook. I would love one, but I don't have one. So, I'm working off a (poorly) digitized copy, with a lot of typos, and problems. So, I have taken some editorial discretion in formatting the text. I haven't altered any words (as far as I know; the OCR might have broken them originally), but I have replaced capitalized phrases with lowercase italics, put in new lines or combined lines where it seemed appropriate to meter, and so on. So, feel free to trust the content, but not the formatting. As always, if you can give me the "right" formatting, I'd really appreciate it.