Ben H. Williams Explained

Ben H. Williams
Birth Date:1877
Birth Place:Monson, Maine
Occupation:Labor leader

Benjamin Hayes Williams (1877-1964) 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] 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]

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

He died in 1964.

Notes and References

  1. Melvyn Dubofsky. We Shall be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. University of Illinois Press, 2000.
  2. https://archive.org/stream/catalogueoftabor1904tabo#page/84/mode/2up/search/Benjamin+Hayes+Williams Catalogue of Tabor College
  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. https://books.google.com/books?id=n2ATBwAAQBAJ&dq=Ben%20H.%20Williams&pg=PA51 Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology