Where Do I Get Off? The Wobblies I.W.W. Spurn The Hairy Ape

Abstract

On Easter Sunday 1914, visitors flocked New York’s Fifth Avenue for the annual Easter Parade, a colorful and ostentatious display of spring fashion that had been going strong for some 40 years. The New York Times coverage at the time tells readers that many people were blocking traffic in an attempt to “appear in moving pictures.” The story also notes that the I .W.W. had threatened to crash the parade: “The I .W.W. leaders who had threatened to mix into the Fifth Avenue parade a few hundred followers selected with the idea of making by their appearance the strongest contrast with the rest of the brilliant spectacle failed to carry out their plan” (“Fifth Avenue Gay with Easter Host”). Had the plan been carried out, the sight would certainly have been an interesting one—the upper class, in its conscientious display of finery for purposes of simultaneously generating entertainment and admiration, forced to bump up against and rub shoulders with the decidedly shabbier working class (who, rumor had it, were going to “shabby up” even further to make their point).