Bisbee 17 by Robert Houston, Writers and Readers, 1979, Hbk 15.95 Why do they mount this gatling A thousand miles from ocean, Where hostile fleet could never run - ain't that a funny notion?
If you don't know the reason why just strike for better wages, And then my friends You'll sing this song for ages.
THIS verse from murdered Joe Hill introduces and sets the scene tor a remarkable story about events in the border town of Bisbee, during the jingoist period that swept America in 1917. It covers only a few days in June and July, as America entered the war, but I imagine it was one of the most eventful periods in the history of working class America.
The Industrial Workers of (Wobblies) organised Bisbee and • miners In closed the mine with a strike. 2,000 their leaders arrested. Then most of them were kidnapped, crowded into wagons and taken across the state line. Bawdy The author's grandfather was a Wobbly and the book shows us the rough, bawdy company My family, , there would be no town without says 'Mr Big' Douglass) and the class struggle that climaxed there.
Houston tells the introducing each character separately •gun if you don't dieArizona the the then WELC cattle with the love-making scenes.
town WELCOM Walter working class point of view.
The working class giants, SLUL Y by 1Iww, are all inere JOE HILL was the most prolific of the Wobbly songsters and their most famous martyr. He joined the IWW in 1911 and spent the next three years as a migrant worker and IWW organiser.
In 1914 he was framed on a murder charge, sentenced to death and despite a worldwide campaign was shot by firing squad in 1915. On the eve of his execution he wrote to Big Bill Haywood, general secretary of the IWW saying: 'Don't waste time mourning. Organise.' and attempting to show us events! through the thoughts that they might have held. He takes a bit of licence as mentioned.
The book is a novel — a political but it is based on real to events that have been well-researched but still told with feeling. And from a leaders of the period and organised in the For example examines class. Elizabeth Gurney Flynn, and Big Bill Haywood come to life again, Others, like John Reed and Jack London are The class enemy show themselves ruthless bunch, organised as the state machine that they control.
They are organised inside as well outside the working class movement. ducatnerous spy posei as a working class leader the secret of this person's identity remains a mystery until the end of the book.
An excellent passage in the book