Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes: Laborlore ExplorationsUniversity of Illinois Press, 1993 - 523 pages In this culmination of his half-century of involvement with American workers and their traditions, Archie Green explores occupational expression - stories, songs, customs, beliefs, artifacts - on the job and in institutions such as trade unions. Combining ethnographic description with analysis drawn from folklore, history, literary criticism, art history, linguistics, and philosophy, Green presents ten case studies in which he reflects on single words as social texts ("Wobbly", "fink") and clustered words within anecdotes, tales, and ballads ("John Henry", Homestead's strike songs, job yarns about cuckoldry and sexual impotence, and pile-driving traditions, for example). Drawing on Green's own experience as a shipwright and carpenter, the book will appeal both to workers curious about their history and traditions and to academicians who study the workforce and labor process. |
Contents
A Shipwrights Journey 335 | 13 |
Tiffany Touch and Talking Back | 35 |
The Visual John Henry | 51 |
Singing Joe Hill | 77 |
The Name Wobbly Holds Steady | 97 |
Streets Docks Factories | 141 |
Copper Bards | 177 |
HomeFront Harassment | 207 |
A Southern Cotton Mill Rhyme | 275 |
Our Ritual Grabbag | 321 |
Pile Butt Pennants | 361 |
Memory and Monument | 445 |
References | 459 |
505 | |
507 | |
Homesteads Strike Songs | 229 |
Common terms and phrases
American anecdote ballad boss bridge California Carolina Carpenters Chicago coal Communist copper Cotton Mill Cotton Mill Rhyme craft crew culture Daily Worker decades Earl Robinson factory film fink Folklore folklorist folksong Fred Thompson Gastonia Geer Grace Lumpkin hall hammer Hayes heard historians Homestead Strike Industrial Worker Interview with author iron IWW members Jack Joe Hill John Henry Kelly's Kiely labor laborlore Let Freedom Ring Let Them Wear Letter to author lore Lumpkin Mac's Marcus Daly maritime Matty memory miners museum narrative nickname noted Paddy Burke Palmer Hayden Pete Seeger Peter Tamony pile buck pile butt pile drivers pile-driving Pinkerton Pittsburgh poem political Press radical recording ritual sabotage San Francisco San Pedro Seeger shipwrights shovel sing Socialist song speech steel story strikebreakers tale Tamony term textile trade tradition turned union unionists University waterfront Wobbly word York