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The Popular Wobbly – T​-​Bone Slim (1920)

from When We Stand Together by Magpie

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Shortly after the U.S. entered World War I, congress passed, and President Wilson signed into law the Espionage Act, and the next year amendments called the Sedition Act extended its reach and scope. Under these two enactments and by the direction of two attorneys general, Thomas Gregory and A. Mitchell Palmer, IWW offices and meeting halls across the country were raided. From September 1917 until 1921, the IWW was subjected to violent harassment by the U.S. Department of Justice and the newly established Bureau of Investigation. On September 5, 1917, every
IWW office in the country was raided by federal agents. In the raid of the national headquarters in Chicago agents made off with literally five tons of documents and material, which were later used in the prosecution of more than a hundred Wobblies who had been arrested. Arrests and deportations of Wobblies as well as other leftist activists continued right through the rest of the war. This included the arrest and imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs, and the deportation of Emma Goldman. The stories of attacks on the IWW are many, with many involving not just incarceration, but physical violence and murder.
T-Bone Slim (1880–1942) was a humorist, poet, songwriter, hobo, and IWW activist. He was born Matti Valentinpoika Huhta to Finnish parents in Ashtabula, Ohio. During his life as a Fellow Worker, he contributed numerous poems, articles and songs to IWW publications. This comment on the legal persecution of the IWW is one of the best-known of his parodies, set to the 1917 hit song “They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me,” by Joseph McCarthy and Fred Fisher.

lyrics

I’m as mild-mannered as I can be
And I’ve never done them harm that I can see
Still on me they put a ban, and they throw me in the can They go wild, simply wild over me.

They accuse me of rascality
But I can’t see why they always pick on me
I’m as gentle as a lamb, but they take me for a ram They go wild, simply wild over me.

Oh, the bull he went wild over me
And he held his gun where everyone could see
He was breathin’ rather hard when he saw my union card He went wild, simply wild over me.

Then the judge he went wild over me
And I plainly saw we never could agree
So I let the man obey what his conscience had to say He went wild, simply wild over me.

Oh, the jailer he went wild over me
And he locked me up and threw away the key
It seems to be the rage so they keep me in a cage They go wild, simply wild over me.

They go wild, simply wild over me.
I’m referring to the bedbug and the flea
They disturb my slumber deep and I murmur in my sleep They go wild, simply wild over me.

Will the roses grow wild over me
When I’m gone into the land that is to be?
When my soul and body part, in the stillness of my heart Will the roses grow wild over me?

Well then god, he went wild over me
When I went before the throne on bended knee
Did he hear my humble yell? No, he told me go to hell! He went wild, simply wild over me.
He went wild, simply wild over me.

credits

from When We Stand Together, released July 23, 2022
words by T-Bone Slim, melody by McCarthy & Fisher

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James Connolly Upstate NY IWW Albany, New York

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