T-Bone Slim, born on this day in 1880, was an IWW member, working class songwriter, and author. Due to his popular, labor themed tunes, Slim was dubbed the “laureate of the logging camps”.
Born Matti Valentin Huhta to Finnish immigrant parents in Ashtabula, Ohio, Slim became an itinerant worker after leaving his wife and family in 1912. It isn’t known when Slim became a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but he first appeared in the IWW’s press in the 1920 edition of the IWW Songbook.
Slim became one of the IWW’s most famous writers during the 1920s and 30s, and many people would buy the “Industrial Worker” just to read his articles - one ad from the paper read “there’s a lot more in Industrial Solidarity and Industrial Worker than T-Bone Slim’s columns”.
Slim did not presume his working-class readership to be unintelligent people, making use of complex wordplay and experimental writing techniques, playing with ambiguity, satire and surrealism.
Slim was also well-known for his songs, such as the “Lumberjack’s Prayer”, a parody of the Lord’s Prayer about the poor quality of food available for the working class, and “The Popular Wobbly”, which experienced a revival among civil rights activists during the 1960s.
In spite of his renown in radical circles during his lifetime, many details of Slim’s life remain unclear. During the mid-1930s, he settled in New York City, where he worked as a barge captain on the docks.
In May 1942, Slim’s body was found in the East River. His cause of death remains unknown and has been subject to speculation. Following his death, Slim largely faded into obscurity, especially compared to more famous IWW-associated writers such as Joe Hill.
Slim’s songs have been preserved, however, re-published in editions of the Little Red Songbook and covered by musicians such as Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and his own great-grandnephew, John Westmoreland.
Until recently, there was thought to be no surviving photographs of Slim, however, in 2019 two photos were discovered and published by Working Class History in a Newberry Library collection.
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Theory:
I’ve come to realize that my flavor of lifelong crippling ADHD is like the big spinning clockwork blade room from Thirteen Ghosts. When Monk has to jump through the blades to get to the center, he hesitates because he can see no way through, and can only imagine being torn apart. Only on going into some bullshit love trance can he make the leap to the other side.
I spend 95% of my time awake agonizing about things I know I have to do, should do, that would make my life better, unstick it from this rut, but most of the time I can only focus on anticipating the bite of the blade. Only after spending all night alone hitting this pen and spending all my thinking power on trying to beat my record in this resident evil unity clone could I finally enter the fugue state necessary to register effortlessly for college again after not going since the pandemic started. Usually the very thought lays me out with anxiety about wasted time.
Real. I feel for you, comrade.