I.W.W. Hat Card

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
Made by
Industrial Workers of the World rally, Union Square, New York (photo: Bain News Service)
Region
North America
Country
United States
Medium
Photograph
Issuer type
Movement
Regime
Wilson Administration
Leader
Woodrow Wilson
Audience
Domestic public
Purpose
Persuade or win support
Themes
Labor, Economy and finance
Techniques
Fear appeal
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
Library of Congress, 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.