We Shall Be All

Description

A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (abridged edition)

By Melvyn Dubofsky
Edited by Joseph A. McCartin
University of Illinois Press

This is the classic history of the Industrial Workers of the World, the influential band of labor militants whose activism mobilized America’s poorest and most marginalized workers in the years before World War I.

Originally published in 1969, Melvyn Dubofsky’s We Shall Be All has remained the definitive archive-based history of the IWW. While much has been written on aspects of the IWW’s history in the past three decades, nothing has duplicated or surpassed this authoritative work. The present volume, an abridged version of this labor history classic, makes the compelling story of the IWW accessible to a new generation of readers.

In its heyday, between 1905 and 1919, the IWW nourished a dream of a better America where poverty would be erased and where all people would walk free and equal. The Wobblies tried in their own ways to grapple with issues that still plague the nation in a more sophisticated and prosperous era. Their example has inspired radicals in America and abroad over the greater part of a century.