Silent agitators

The IWW publication Industrial Worker of Spokane, Washington, advertised stickers as early as April 20, 1911.

[1] Sociologist Eric Margolis has written about the history of such media: Wobbly organizers were revolutionary fish swimming in the sea of bindle stiffs and tramp workers.

"Side door coaches," as box cars were called, were plastered with paper stickers, "silent organizers," that Wobs put up everywhere they passed: "Join the One Big Union," "I Will Win," "Win a World.

[3] Margolis described the way such stickers were used when the Wobblies called a strike in 1927: Bill Lloyd, Superintendent at the Puritan Mine (in Colorado's northern coal field), went to work one chilly Autumn morning to discover Wobbly stickers pasted on every timber and cross beam in the place: "Join the Wobblies, Join the Wobblies," he said indignantly, "From the bottom of the shaft clear to the working faces, see, they had these posters.

"[5] This article related to a United States labor union is a stub.