During the period before the Industrial Unions were killed off by the "business unions" we have today, there were many hard fought battles for worker control. Among those were the "free speech" fights, and one of those was in Spokane, WA, starting around 1909. The Wobblies began to fight against the employment offices who, in league with business owners and their employees mostly in the forestry industry, would cheat workers by selling them phony jobs. The Wobblies took to standing on wooden crates in front of their offices calling the offices out for the thieves that they were. Spoken made such "free speech" illegal. The Wobblies assented for a time, but then noticed the Salvation Army as allowed to speak, preaching a gospel of working hard for the owners on earth, even though one didn't even have enough food to feed themselves, because they would get their reward in heaven. "Pie in the Sky".
To hell with that. Many of their songs came from that period, parodies of the "Starvation Army" songs.
The Wobblies started in again, and were arrested by the hundreds. They got people who travelled the rails to post notices as far away as Chicago, "Men Needed to fill the Jails of Spokane". It was a hard struggle, some died because of conditions in the jail. The town deliberately tried to make them sick with steam and cold. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, arrested back then, reported the women's side was being used as a brothel.
The city relented in 1911, I think it was, and revoked the licenses of the thieving employment agencies.
Just fyi
http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/10/03/joe-hill-and-the-iww/:
The Wobbly songs originated in Spokane, Washington, in competition with the Salvation Army. The authorities opposed the Wobs, so the Free Speech fights resulted. The singing victorious Wobblies rode the rods as the Overalls Brigade to the 1908 Chicago convention, and threw the Socialists out. A debate ensued. One faction felt only the written and spoken word could effectively educate the workers in the class struggle. Joe Hill answered, "a pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over…." In addition to the didactic purpose, songs are politics taking refuge. They calm down beating hearts, or they rouse torpid souls, they cheer a picket line. They fan the flames of discontent, as the sub-title says.
and
http://www.waywordradio.org/pie-in-the-sky-origin/
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