A Hero Any Way You Spell It

"Wobbly is spelled with a Y," writes the ever-eagle-eyed Saul Schniderman, Library of Congress Professional Guild, AFSCME Local 2910), correcting our 1/10 labor history item on Joe Hill, who Schniderman also notes "did not hang. He was shot by a firing squad." Hill was a radical songwriter, labor activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. The origin of the term "Wobbly" is not clear. Some say it's code for "sabotage" or "direct action at the point of production," some that it comes from the "Wobbly Saw," a special kind of lumber mill saw often used by IWW members. The term may also have been coined as an insult by bosses and adopted by the IWW in defiance, and another popular story is that it originated from a Chinese restaurant owner in IWW stronghold Vancouver who could not properly pronounce the "w" in "IWW". Click here for more on the various theories.