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Ben H. Williams

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Ben H. Williams
Eleven Blind Leaders by B. H. Williams (Industrial Workers of the World publishing bureau)
Born1877
OccupationLabor leader

Benjamin "Ben" Hayes Williams was a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Life

Ben Williams was born in 1877 in Monson, Maine and named after president Rutherford B. Hayes.[1]: 83  In 1888, he moved with his mother to Bertrand, Nebraska and started working as a printing apprentice.

Williams graduated from Tabor College in 1904 with a bachelor's degree.[2] While at Tabor, he played on the football team, edited a campus magazine, and was president of the Phi Delta Literary Society.[3]

He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and from 1909 to 1917 edited the IWW's publication, Solidarity.[1]: 47 

Williams published newspaper articles and authored several works on labor movement.[4]

He died in 1964.

References

  1. ^ a b Melvyn Dubofsky. We Shall be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. University of Illinois Press, 2000.
  2. ^ Catalogue of Tabor College. Tabor, Iowa, 1905.
  3. ^ Warren R. Van Tine. Making of the Labor Bureaucrat: Union Leadership in the United States, 1870-1920. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973, pp. 21-22.
  4. ^ Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology. Edited, with introductions by Joyce L. Kornbluh. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1964. ISBN 9780882861203