T-Bone Slim’s critiques of early twentieth-century America resonate with contemporary US attacks on healthcare, unions, and immigrants.
Born Matti Valentin Huhta in 1880 to Finnish immigrant parents in Ashtabula, Ohio, T-Bone Slim was a man who lived on the margins – geographically, economically, and ideologically. He was a dockworker, a barge captain, a hobo, and, most enduringly, a writer for the Industrial Workers of the World, known as ‘the Wobblies’.
The editors of The Popular Wobbly want to bring T-Bone Slim’s voice back into the conversation. Owen Clayton is a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Lincoln in England. His academic work has long circled the margins of society – those places where the transient, the dispossessed, and the overlooked dwell. Iain McIntyre is an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and a researcher at the Commons Social Change Library. Their work is not just editorial – it’s an act of cultural recovery, a kind of literary archaeology that dusts off the bones of a forgotten radical and lets him speak again.
T-Bone Slim was a persona, a poetic mask that allowed Huhta to speak truths that were raw, absurd, or too dangerous to say plainly.
The best way to take what is justly due you is to organize to take, the way the employer is organized to retain, the products of your toil – industrially! Once you are organized he will be ‘tickled to death’ to hand it to you. You will not ‘have’ to take it. He will bring it up to the house …
As the editors point out, Slim’s writing style is hard to pin down, and that was part of its power. His columns – often unsigned or signed with a sketch – were filled with paradoxes, puns, and poetic inversions. He wrote of hunger with humour, of injustice with irony, and of solidarity with a kind of sacred irreverence.
His work was published in IWW papers like Industrial Solidarity and Industrial Worker, and his songs – like ‘The Popular Wobbly’ and ‘The Lumberjack’s Prayer’ – became anthems of the working class.
Though he died in mysterious circumstances in 1942 – his body found floating in the East River, unclaimed and buried in a pauper’s grave – his words lived on. They resurfaced in the Civil Rights era, were cited by Noam Chomsky, and continue to inspire artists and activists alike.
Slim’s era saw violent crackdowns on labour movements and immigrants, especially post-World War I. His writings chronicled the illegal suppression of workers’ rights, drawing attention to the systemic exploitation of marginalised communities. He was a fierce critic of corporate power and government collusion against workers. His satire and polemics targeted the elite structures that perpetuated inequality and suppressed dissent.
Tear Gas: The most effective agent used by employers to persuade their employees that the interests of capital and labor are identical.
His words feel strikingly pertinent in the context of the second Trump presidency, and offer a historical mirror to many of the social, economic, and political tensions that have resurfaced in contemporary America: anti-immigrant rhetoric, the rollback of labour protections, and policies that favour corporate interests over working-class needs.
Slim operated in a time when democratic ideals were often undermined by corporate and state interests. His work exposed the myth of American democracy as experienced by the working poor.
Trump’s presidency, particularly his refusal to accept the 2020 election result and his role in the January 6 insurrection, has been widely seen as a direct assault on democratic norms. The undermining of peaceful transitions of power and the politicisation of federal agencies reflect a continuity of authoritarian tendencies that Slim would have recognised and condemned.
Slim’s writing is not just historical – it’s incendiary. His style was meant to provoke, inspire, and mobilise. His radical labour voice – sharp, satirical, and deeply humane – offers a counter-narrative to the authoritarian populism and corporate dominance that define the current political climate. His critiques of inequality, state violence, and the manipulation of truth resonate powerfully, reminding us that the struggles of the early twentieth century are far from resolved.
Solidarity means something. It is the difference between emancipation and slavery. Education without solidarity is ENVY. Organization without solidarity – ain’t! Emancipation without solidarity will never be …
Clayton and McIntyre recommend reading T-Bone Slim’s pieces in short bursts, reflecting their fragmentary and aphoristic style. I found it difficult to contemplate reading them in an extended session.
The introduction, ‘Mysteries of a Hobo’s Life’, offers a compelling portrait of Slim – his enigmatic persona and his place in radical labour history – and is far more interesting. I found it especially illuminating on early twentieth-century American labour politics, and was struck by the clear parallels with the political climate today, a century later.
Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre (eds) The Popular Wobbly: Selected writings of T-Bone Slim University of Minnesota Press 2025 PB 360pp $54.99
Michael Jongen is a librarian and you can find him as @larrydlibrarian on Instagram and Threads.
You can buy The Popular Wobbly from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.
You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.
Tags: anthologies, Iain | McIntyre, International Workers of the World, IWW, labour politics in the US, Matti Valentin Huhta, Owen | Clayton, polemicists, T-Bone Slim, the Wobblies, unions, US writers, workers' rights
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