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36 was not buried until 1917, when John W. Hayes, the last master workman, retired what was left of the Knights' records and furnishings to a leaky shed in Washington, D.C.

Dissatisfaction with craft unionism and the conservative policies of the American Federation of Labor meanwhile led to the organization in 1905 of the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly called the IWW or the Wobblies. While accepting the Knights' idea of organizing all workers, including the unskilled, the Wobblies repudiated the middle class ideology of the Knights and looked toward "abolition of the wage system" and, therefore, of capitalism. Many among them dreamed of the organization of One Big Union (the OBU) to which all workers everywhere would belong. For their efforts they suffered brutal treatment at the hands of both mobs and officials who cared for neither individual nor constitutional rights.

Trouble, not surprisingly, led the Wobblies to song. Their most famous songwriter was a Swedish immigrant, who evidently was born Joel Emanuel Hagglund but who called himself Joseph Hillstrom and, later, just plain Joe Hill. While awaiting execution before a Utah firing squad in 1915 for a murder he may not have committed, he wired his friend Bill Haywood: "Goodbye, Bill. I die a true blue rebel. Don't waste time in mourning. Organize." After his death he became a legendary figure, a true folk hero of labor. "Casey Jones, the Union Scab," written in 1911, was the first of many songs that he wrote. "Joe Hill," for which Alfred Hayes wrote the words in 1925 and Earl Robinson later wrote the music, has become one of the most famous labor songs of the twentieth century. It was no accident that Hank Ghant of the United Auto Workers sang it in a last goodbye to Walter P. Reuther and his wife at the Reuther funeral in Detroit on 15 May 1970, and that a week later Joe Glazer sang it in Washington at the Reuther memorial service in the National Cathedral.

During World War I the Wobblies, although antimilitaristic, did not take an official stand against the war. They continued to strike, however, despite an opposite policy of the American Federation of Labor, and were accused of trying to hinder the war. This situation led to the indictment of 166 Wobblies, of whom 101 were finally tried in 1918 in a months-long trial in the Chicago federal district court, principally on charges of sabotage and conspiracy to obstruct the war. There were similar trials in Sacramento, California, and Wichita, Kansas. The Chicago trial was presided over by the famous judge and future baseball commissioner,