The Socialist Labor Party (SLP), established in 1876, is the oldest socialist political party in the United States. Our SLP collection contains campaign literature, meeting and rally announcements, platform pamphlets and flyers, programs, ballots, and reports documenting the Party’s activities in Massachusetts from 1884 to 1903. You can read more about the SLP in the
collection finding aid and in
this previous blog post. For now, I’d like to focus on something that piqued my interest within this collection as I worked to answer a recent reference question – that is, the Scandinavian musical influence on U.S. labor movements.
Pictured above are the flyers for the annual Labor Day Grand Joint Picnic at Amory Grove in Roxbury hosted by the SLP and the Scandinavian Socialist Club of Boston. The 1899 and 1900 picnics featured a concert performed in part by the Swedish Glee Club (featured on the flyer shown below) and the Scandinavian Socialist Singing Chorus.
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A flyer for a charity concert given
by the Swedish Glee Club of Boston
at Dudley Street Opera House
in Roxbury on December 3, 1899 |
This unexpected subject matter caught my attention for very personal reasons. My great-grandfather John immigrated to the United States from Northern Sweden in 1928. He married my great-grandmother, Florence, the daughter of Swedish immigrants. I’ve come to appreciate the unmistakable Scandinavian influence on my upbringing, something I took for granted in childhood. I also serve as the union steward for State Library staff members of SEIU Local 509 and am deeply interested in labor history. Until diving into Ms. Coll. 176, I had no idea there was a Scandinavian influence on Massachusetts’ own labor history, let alone a musical influence.
According to historian and archivist
Ulf Jönson, Scandinavian immigrants to the U.S. from the 1850s to the 1920s, particularly those who found industrial jobs in cities, organized themselves mainly within the SLP and the Socialist Party of America. Scandinavian workers most often chose to establish all-Scandinavian ethnic sections of trade unions and political parties, rather than national subgroups. It appears Scandinavian immigrants organized themselves similarly within the Swedeville area of Norwood, Massachusetts outside of Boston.
A People’s Guide to Greater Boston describes Swedeville as the center of Norwood’s Finnish community in addition to its Swedish immigrant population. In Norwood, a socialist retail cooperative store opened in 1909 and operated until 1953. The store was initially a branch of a coop called Turva founded in Quincy.
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| A 1900 pamphlet describing dance lessons to be hosted by the SLP at Cochrane’s Hall in Malden |
Scandinavian immigrants joined the SLP in greater numbers than any other ethnic group and were consistently at the forefront of demands for workers’ rights and unionization, according to historian Patricia Fanning. They built halls for community gatherings, formed drama, athletic, and sewing clubs, hosted educational and political lectures, and of course, sang and played music together.
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| A circa 1901 labor song book published by Labor Press in Lynn |
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over, and I maintain that if a person can put a few cold, common sense facts into a song, and dress them up in a cloak of humor to take the dryness off of them, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers... - Joe Hill, 1914
Though he was not a member of the SLP, Joe Hill (born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund) was a Swedish American labor activist, poet, and songwriter remembered as a martyr and folk hero within U.S. labor movements following his execution in 1915. He was an itinerant worker for much of his life and was an organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Hill had been born into poverty in Northern Sweden, forced to work in factories as a child after his father’s death on the job. Following his mother’s death in 1902, he emigrated to the U.S. He worked various jobs, moving westward across the country, writing songs as he went. He saw his music as a means to build class consciousness and build solidarity among workers, and he intended his songs to be sung as a group activity rather than by soloists. Hill’s lyrics were known for their humor and satire, mocking abusive bosses and the wealthy. Generations of American musicians have been influenced by Joe Hill - Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Paul Robeson, and Joan Baez to name a few.
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Sheet music cover courtesy of
the Library of Congress |
From
The Rebel Girl by Joe Hill:
She’s a rebel girl, a rebel girl.
She’s working class: the strength of this world.
From Maine to Georgia, you’ll see
Her fighting for you and for me.
Yes, she’s there by your side
With her courage and pride.
She’s unequaled anywhere.
And I’m proud to fight for freedom
With the rebel girl.
Alyssa Persson
Special Collections Processing Archivist
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