Customer Reviews

Break Their Haughty Power: Joe Murphy in the Heyday of the Wobblies

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Break Their Haughty Power is one of my all-time favorite books. It makes you feel that you are there with the migrant workers in the 1920's. You can see why they would want a union like the IWW to deal with the lousy hand they had been dealt in life. It is very 3-dimensional, showing the problems and not just glorifying the union, which elevates it from propaganda to truly fine literature.

The author had four interviews with the late Joe Murphy of Occidental, California, a former member of the IWW and something of a "professional" Wobbly in his later years, and uses the groundwork to write a very misleading and false work.

I knew Joe murphy, I too interviewed him, and you could take half of what he said and ignore it.

You could then ignore the other half of this book.

This book provides a first-person account of 20th-Century American history that is not taught in schools, but should be.

Joe Murphy embodied the IWW values of activism and independent thought, and was involved in the turbulent history of the organization from lumber camps to the maritime industry. Contrary to another reviewer's anonymous statement, he was supportive of Eugene Nelson's fictionalized version of his story, as was his widow Doris Murphy, who died recently.

The story follows Joe from his troubled teenage years to maturity, and includes his involvement with labor legend Big Bill Haywood, Socialist Presidential candidate Eugene Debs, Helen Keller(an IWW member), and Charlie Chaplin (a sympathizer). It is written from a first-person perspective, and includes a couple of frank romantic interludes in the midst of Joe's activism.

Structured as a novel, the book provides much useful information about a time when unions were stronger than they are today, and were much more militant in fighting the reactionary forces that are so prevalent now. We can hope that by reading this book, others may be inspired by the principles of the IWW.

I knew Joe Murphy, quite well, and am very much an expert on the IWW or "Wobblies".

What the author did in this case was interview Joe on only four occasions and took a rough outline of what life was like in the days of the IWW and turned it into a fictional account.

I interviewed Joe with regard to the "Centralia Massacre of 1919" and the author's "facts" are the opposite of what Joe had told me.

This is a very misleading book trying to represent fiction as being historical fact.

If only I could get my money back!