Several songs were written parodying the Salvation Army's hymns, "The Preacher and the Slave" being the most successful. Hill had first encountered the Salvation Army in Sweden when he was a child. When the workers returned to the cities, the Wobblies faced the Salvation Army (which they satirized as the "Starvation Army"), who were said to have tried to drown out IWW with their religious music. The Industrial Workers of the World (commonly known as the Wobblies) concentrated much of its labor trying to organize migrant workers in lumber and construction camps. Copying or using the musical style of the hymn was also a way to capture the emotional resonance of that style of music and use it for a non-religious purpose. It was written as a parody of the hymn " In the Sweet By-and-By". "The Preacher and the Slave" is a song written by Joe Hill in 1911.
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