Over the course of two decades, publications of the Industrial Workers of the World featured the influential writings of a hobo, transient worker, columnist, poet, and songwriter named T-Bone Slim. Owen Clayton talks about Slim’s focus on workers’ everyday lives under capitalism, his political stances, his use of humor, and his commitment to worker organizing.
Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre, eds., The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim University of Minnesota Press, 2025
Owen Clayton, Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: The Literature and Culture of U.S. Transiency, 1890–1940 Cambridge University Press, 2023