---
title: I.W.W. Hat Card
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/iww-bread-or-revolution-1914/
description: A man at an IWW rally for the unemployed in Union Square, New York, wears a hat card reading 'Bread or revolution'.
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![I.W.W. Hat Card](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/iww-bread-or-revolution-1914.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/iww-bread-or-revolution-1914.jpg)

# I.W.W. Hat Card

A man at an IWW rally for the unemployed in Union Square, New York, wears a hat card reading 'Bread or revolution'. The slogan offers two outcomes only: the audience either grants relief or faces upheaval, a threat and a single remedy with no middle course, which is the structure the fear-appeal tag describes.

- **Date:** April 11, 1914
- **Period:** [Pre-1914](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=pre-1914)
- **Made by:** Industrial Workers of the World rally, Union Square, New York (photo: Bain News Service)
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Photograph](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=photograph)
- **Issuer type:** [Movement](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=movement)
- **Regime:** [Wilson Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=wilson-administration)
- **Leader:** [Woodrow Wilson](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=woodrow-wilson)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Persuade or win support](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=persuade-support)
- **Themes:** [Labor](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=labor), [Economy and finance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=economy-finance)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2014695690/), retrieved September 27, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (Bain News Service photograph, published 1914, before 1931; LoC: No known restrictions on publication) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
BREAD OR
REVOLUTION
```

The handwritten caption 'I.W.W. Hat Card' and the glass-negative number in the top corners of the photograph are Bain News Service/archival annotations on the negative itself, not text printed on the hat card, and are not transcribed here.

[← Ejército Constitucionalista de México: billete de cinco pesos (Constitutionalist Army of Mexico: Five-Peso Note)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/constitucionalista-cinco-pesos-1914/) [Сдал австриец русским Львов (The Austrian Surrendered Lvov to the Russians) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/austrians-surrendered-lvov-1914/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)