![Cover of Ernest Riebe's ironically-titled pro-revolutionary pamphlet, Crimes of the Bolsheviki [1919], ostensibly published by the "All-American Publishing Co." The cover design is intended to simulate an anti-Communist tract. Riebe-CrimesOfTheBolsheviki-cover-1919.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/21/Riebe-CrimesOfTheBolsheviki-cover-1919.jpg/220px-Riebe-CrimesOfTheBolsheviki-cover-1919.jpg)
Ernest Riebe was a German-American cartoonist and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who was known for the slapstick humor he used in his comic strips. He is best remembered for his comics series Mr. Block .
Ernest Riebe was a German-American cartoonist and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who was known for the slapstick humor he used in his comic strips. He is best remembered for his comics series Mr. Block .
He immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century from Germany, and not much is known about his early and later life. However, it is known that he worked for the Spokane Industrial Worker in 1912, and until 1922, IWW publications issued his work. For at least a decade, Riebe helped the IWW, and it is assumed he lived in Minneapolis and possibly later in Chicago.
Ernest Riebe worked as a cartoonist for The Industrial Worker, a weekly newspaper published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). His most famous work was Mr. Block. On November 7, 1912, Mr. Block first appeared in the Industrial Worker, a newspaper owned by the IWW, and the comic strip was also published in Solidarity for three years. [1]
According to historian Franklin Rosemont, IWW cartoonists like Riebe did not profit from their comics. [2] Twenty-four of the strips were compiled into America’s first radical comic book in 1913, and it was advertised by the IWW press. [3] Riebe’s comic strips were anti-racist, and during the early 1920s, he and other similar cartoonists were criticized by the Ku Klux Klan, American Legion, and white-supremacist preachers and politicians. [4]
Through the comic strip, Riebe assailed the AFL, the Socialist Party, and bourgeois values. He portrayed Mr. Block as a man "devoid of class-consciousness" who blindly believes that America is the land of opportunity, hard work pays off, and the boss looks out for the employee. [5] However, in each strip, Riebe has Mr. Block faced with setback after setback. He gets laid off from his job because the company has been overproducing goods, gets abused by the police, is sent to jail, and among other things. Often, Riebe depicts the employers as manipulators of the workers. For instance, in one comic strip, the employer speaks individually with the mixed race employees and makes them work hard by pitting the workers against each other. [6]
Another piece of work was the Crimes of the Bolsheviki: Dedicated to the Interests of the International Proletariat. Riebe wrote and illustrated the forty-seven page booklet, which was published in 1919. Half of the book consists of original illustrations and captions by Riebe, and the other half contains a reproduction of the Constitution of the Soviet Union. The booklet was written in a tongue-in-cheek manner to show the merits of Bolshevism. It also ridiculed the values of the bourgeois and showed that the complaints of the middle class were unwarranted because the Bolsheviks were trying to end World War I and trying to get fair treatment across classes, specifically the working class.
Riebe wrote another booklet, which was titled Mr. Block and the Profiteers, also published in 1919. Like the Crimes of the Bolsheviki, this booklet was an illustrated story, which focused on Mr. Block and further advanced IWW beliefs. Riebe also wrote a poem and play about Mr. Block for the IWW press. [7]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund and also known as Joseph Hillström, was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco. Hill, an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular songwriter and cartoonist for the union. His songs include "The Preacher and the Slave", "The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which express the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers, and call for workers to organize their efforts to improve working conditions.
Franklin Rosemont (1943–2009) was an American poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group. Over four decades, Franklin produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions.
Charles Radcliffe was an English cultural critic, political activist and theorist known for his association with the Situationist movement.
William Ernst Trautmann was an American trade unionist who was the founding general-secretary of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and one of six people who initially laid plans for the organization in 1904.
The Chicago Surrealist Group was founded in Chicago, Illinois, in July 1966 by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, Bernard Marszalek, Tor Faegre and Robert Green after a trip to Paris in 1965, during which they were in contact with André Breton. Its initial members came from far-left or anarchist backgrounds and had already participated in groups IWW and SDS; indeed, the Chicago group edited an issue of Radical America, the SDS journal, and the SDS printshop printed some of the group's first publications.
Penelope Rosemont is a visual artist, writer, publisher, and social activist who attended Lake Forest College. She has been a participant in the Surrealist Movement since 1965. With Franklin Rosemont, Bernard Marszalek, Robert Green and Tor Faegre, she established the Chicago Surrealist Group in 1966. She was in 1964-1966 a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), commonly known as the Wobblies, and was part of the national staff of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1967-68. Her influences include Andre Breton and Guy Debord of the Situationist International, Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons.
Labor aristocracy or labour aristocracy has at least four meanings: (1) as a term with Marxist theoretical underpinnings; (2) as a specific type of trade unionism; (3) as a shorthand description by revolutionary industrial unions for the bureaucracy of craft-based business unionism; and (4) in the 19th and early 20th centuries was also a phrase used to define better-off members of the working class.
Since the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), songs have played a large part in spreading the message of the One Big Union. The songs are preserved in the Little Red Songbook.
The Industrial Worker, "the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism", is the magazine of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It is currently released quarterly. The publication is printed and edited by union labor, and is frequently distributed at radical bookstores, demonstrations, strikes and labor rallies. It covers industrial conditions, strikes, workplace organizing experiences, and features on labor history. It used to be released as a newspaper.
Matti Valentin Huhta, better known by his pen name T-Bone Slim, was an American humorist, poet, songwriter, hobo, and labor activist, who played a prominent role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
Mr. Block is an American comics character, created by Ernest Riebe in 1912 and commemorated in a song written by Joe Hill. He is the protagonist of an eponymous satirical comics series which appeared in left-wing publications to sympathize with the common worker. Decades later Mr. Block gained historical importance for being a predecessor to underground comix.
The Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company is an American publishing company. The company was established in Chicago, Illinois, in 1886 as Charles H. Kerr & Co. by Charles Hope Kerr, originally to promote his Unitarian views. As Kerr's personal interests moved from religion to populism to Marxism and he became interested in the labor movement, the company's publications took a similar turn. During the 1920s Kerr ceded control of the firm to the Proletarian Party of America, which continued the imprint as its official publishing house throughout its four decades of organized existence.
Carlos Cortez was a postwar and contemporary artist who was also a poet, printmaker, graphic artist, photographer, songwriter, editor, muralist, and political activist. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Cortez had an extraordinary life with active political parents who taught him about pacifism and socialism. He followed his parent's path and became active in the IWW.
Charles Harris Kuhn, nicknamed Doc Kuhn, was a cartoonist best known as the creator of the comic strip Grandma. He usually signed his drawings and comic strips Chas. Kuhn.
Wobbly lingo is a collection of technical language, jargon, and historic slang used by the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, for more than a century. Many Wobbly terms derive from or are coextensive with hobo expressions used through the 1940s.
Gerhard Ernest Untermann, Sr. (1864–1956) was a German-American seaman, socialist author, translator, newspaper editor. In his later life he was Director of the old Washington Park Zoo in Milwaukee, a geologist, fossil hunter, and artist.
The Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO), later known as the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, was an organization of farm workers throughout the United States and Canada formed on April 15, 1915, in Kansas City. It was supported by, and a subsidiary organization of, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Although the IWW had advocated the abolition of the wage system as an ultimate goal since its own formation ten years earlier, the AWO's founding convention sought rather to address immediate needs, and championed a ten-hour work day, premium pay for overtime, a minimum wage, good food and bedding for workers. In 1917 the organization changed names to the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (AWIU) as part of a broader reorganization of IWW industrial unions.
"The Rebel Girl" is a song written or completed by Joe Hill in 1915. The song was published in the Little Red Songbook of the Industrial Workers of the World, and as sheet music in 1915. It is said that Hill wrote the song for IWW orator Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, claimed and proven by Gurley Flynn herself in her memoir.
Frederick Willard Thompson was a Canadian-American labor organizer and historian. A member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for 65 years, he was first elected to the General Executive Board in 1928. He served in various capacities for the organization, including as the General Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World from March 1936 to February 1937 and as editor of the IWW's primary newspaper, the Industrial Worker. In a 1987 obituary published by Labour/Le Travail, scholar and poet Franklin Rosemont described Thompson as "the most influential Wobbly since the 1930s."
