JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
- I’ve been mostly on a sabbatical this summer. The blog will return to its normal output of 20-40 posts per month by September.
This is fantastic artwork is for the cover of the pamphlet The General Strike for Industrial Freedom which was printed in Chicago in January 1933 by the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies). The IWW was pretty far left–okay, very far–and was founded in 1905 by Eugene V. Debs, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood, Daniel De Leon, Thomas Hagerty, Lucy Parsons, and others. By the ’30’s membership in the organization was off probably an order of magnitude, its heyday more “day” than “hey”, its flash gone. Also the Great Depression hurt membership, as well as the coming and fighting of WWII. In this instance, there was no one particular “general strike” that was being advanced, but (so far as I can tell) the idea of a general strike itself was being explained. Not only was the strike about a general work stoppage across multiple industries, but also advocated the seizure of industries/factories/properties by the workers to fight oppression and Fascism.
The artwork for this work, though, was terrific.
