I found another early reference to I.W.W. stickerettes from The International Socialist Review dated February 1917 (Vol. XVII, No. 8, page 455). An article called “Hitting the Trail in the Lumber Camps” by Harrison George states, “WHILE the Lumber Workers’ Union, the bull-pup of the Industrial Workers of the World, was in convention at Portland, Ore., during the last week of December, the rumblings of revolt began half way across the continent among workers of that industry in Minnesota. North and westward of the Mesaba Iron Range lies millions of acres of swamp lands. In the primeval state, these swamps…
I made another trip to Cornell last month to look at the I.W.W. stickerettes in the Kheel Center for Labor Management Documentation & Archives at the Catherwood Library. Cornell has quite a collection of I.W.W. materials, in fact. I was particularly interested in the collection 5210G (Boxes 1 and 9). One of the pages in the scrapbook below called the little adhesives “dodgers,” too, but I’ve never seen that term used before. Some were printed by an I.W.W. office at 308 Stewart Avenue in Ithaca, NY. The librarian told me that “Vernon Briggs Jr. donated the materials in 5210G, but…
[Note: a shorter version of this essay first appeared as “Silent Agitators: Early Stickerettes from the Industrial Workers of the World” in Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics & Culture. Volume 6 (February 2018), PM Press. See also the timeline I put together of early advertisements and newspapers articles about I.W.W. stickerettes.] Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W. or “Wobblies”) fought for economic justice for the working class using many tactics, including the widespread use of cartoons, slogans, leaflets, poetry, and songs that appealed to uneducated, immigrant, and itinerant workers. As early as…
Special thanks to DJ Alperovitz and the I.W.W. Materials Preservation Project for sending me the earliest example of a stickerette from 1906 and for the advertisements from the I.W.W. newspapers Solidarity and Industrial Worker (primarily 1910-1917 with some later ads done in 1933). The other newspaper articles reported on Ralph Chaplin, who designed many of the first stickerettes, and the over 100 I.W.W. members who were arrested by the U.S. government in September 1917 for alleged acts of sabotage under the Espionage Act of 1917. Ralph Chaplin edited Solidarity from March 10 through September 6, 1917, according to the Sacramento…
Someone who asked to remain anonymous kindly sent me a gift out of the blue last month of the May 1937 edition of the I.W.W. publication, The One Big Union Monthly. Featured on the back cover is an advertisement for stickers on sale for $2.00 per thousand. It still surprises me how prolific these stickerettes/stickers were in the early 1900s and how rare they are to find today. While I recognize most of the images, the two black and white cartoons featured here are completely new to me. These are some of the actual stickers. This was also on the…
Today is Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary, so it’s a good time to share some of my recent Wikipedia activities. For the past couple of years, I’ve been adding images of I.W.W. “stickerettes” to various Wikipedia pages. The stickerettes, which were published before 1925, are in the public domain, so copyright is not an issue. Here is how I add images to Wikipedia: You will first need to create an account or log into an existing account on Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. After logging in, click on either the “Upload file” under “Participate” on the left – or on the blue “Upload”…
Some time ago, I learned about I.W.W. “stickerettes” that are in the University of Arizona’s Special Collections as part of the Bisbee Deportation Legal Papers and Exhibits AZ 114. I had taken screen shots of them to do additional research, but the website they were found on is now no longer active. What is useful, however, is that I can now identify the original 15 designs that were the earliest I.W.W political stickers in the United States (women’s suffrage stickers and stamps were also produced at this time). I’m pretty sure I.W.W leader and commercial artist Ralph Chaplin designed most…
Compiled by Catherine Tedford with assistance from McKael Barnes, SLU Class of 2020 Abbott, Lyman, Ernest Hamlin Abbott, and Hamilton Wright Mabie, eds. “The I.W.W. on Trial: Special Correspondence.” The Outlook, Vol. 119. United States, Outlook Publishing Company, 1918. 448-450. Print.[1] Botkin, Jane Little. Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family. University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Bubka, Tony. “Time to Organize! The IWW Stickeretts [sic],” American West 5, no. 1. January 1968: 21-22, 25-26, 73. Print. Chaplin, Ralph. Wobbly, the Rough and Tumble Story of an American Radical. Da Capo Press, 1972. 194-195, 199-200, 205-207,…
I can finally confirm dates of some of the earliest I.W.W. stickers in my collection. The August 31, 1918, edition of The Literary Digest ran an article called “Branding the I.W.W.” that features three stickers with the caption, “Typical I.W.W. Propaganda—Stickers Circulated in the Northwest.” Unfortunately, the article doesn’t say anything about the stickers themselves, but it describes the conviction of 100 I.W.W. members for treason soon after the beginning of World War I and the subsequent passage of the U.S. Espionage Act. The artist and poet Ralph Chaplin, whom I’ve written about in previous posts and for the People’s…
This is the first image I’ve ever seen of someone putting up stickers. I found it in two issues of an I.W.W. newspaper called Solidarity published in Cleveland on September 9 and 16, 1917. Stickerettes were advertised in Solidarity between at least June 24, 1916, and August 25, 1917, though I’ve seen a reference that they might have been advertised as early as November 20, 1915. In 1916, one could buy stickerettes in packages – 110 per package cost 15 cents, or a box of 1,100 cost $1.00. I’ve been trying to find photographs of stickerettes put up on buildings or…