MARTIN WELCH AND STUART (FRAGMENT) (JOE HILL) (c. 1912)
Tune: "Wearing of the Green" (trad.)

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Louis Moreau, a Wobbly "camp delegate" who helped organize the construction workers [of the Canadian Northern Railroad Company in British Columbia, 1912]... remembers that Joe Hill... appeared in the strikers' camp in Yale, British Columbia.... Moreau remembers seeing Joe Hill often in the office of the Yale strike secretary writing songs. "Where The River Fraser Flows" was written during the first few days Hill was in the camp....

To the tune "Wearing of the Green," Hill wrote "Martin Welch and Stuart," a parody on the names of the main contractors laying Canadian Northern track....

"The Wobblies drove those contractors nuts," Moreau recalls, "One day Martin came by our camp at Yale annex and started to talk to a bunch of Swedes that were sitting alongside of the road. When the groaning brigade, our singing sextet, started to sing the song Joe had made for him, Marzin tore his hair and swore he'd get us."

Gibbs M. Smith, Labor Martyr Joe Hill, New York, NY, 1969, pp. 24-25.

Lyrics (one stanza) as remembered by Moreau, reprinted ibid.

Martin Welch is mad as hell and don't know what to do.
And all his gunnysack contractors are feeling mighty blue.
For we have tied their railroad line and scabs refuse to come,
And we will keep on striking till we put them on the bum.
Till we put them on the bum, till we put them on the bum,
And we will keep on striking till we put them on the bum.

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