Mr Block: Introduction

I'll be uploading the Mr Block comic a 1912-13 Comic series that ran in the Industrial Worker, the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Mr. Block, who has no first name, was created November 7, 1912 by Ernest Riebe, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Block appeared that day in the Spokane newspaper Industrial Worker, smoking a cigar and wearing a checkered suit with top hat. Subsequently, Mr. Block lost the fancy clothes but often kept a hat, ten sizes too small, perched on one corner of his wooden blockhead.

"Mr. Block is legion," wrote Walker C. Smith in 1913. "He is representative of that host of slaves who think in terms of their masters. Mr. Block owns nothing, yet he speaks from the standpoint of the millionaire; he is patriotic without patrimony; he is a law-abiding outlaw... [who] licks the hand that smites him and kisses the boot that kicks him... the personification of all that a worker should not be."

 Mr Block first appeared in the song Mr Block by Joe Hill.

Please give me your attention I'll introduce to you A man that is a credit to "Our Red, White and Blue"; His head is made of lumber, and solid as a rock; he is a common worker and his name is Mr. Block. And Block he thinks he may Be President some day.
(Chorus)
Oh, Mr. Block, you were born by mistake, You take the cake. You make me ache. Tie a rock to your block and jump in the lake. Kindly do that for Liberty's sake.


 Here's a Cuban version of Mr Block by Mats Paulson