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.
A Bain News Service photograph of 11 April 1914 showing a man at an Industrial Workers of the World rally for the unemployed in Union Square, New York, wearing a hat card that reads 'Bread or revolution'. The slogan is the demonstrators' own, photographed by a commercial news service. It asks the audience to grant relief. Fear appeal is the tagged technique: the slogan offers only two outcomes, relief or upheaval, a threat and a single remedy with no middle course.
Propaganda techniques used in this photograph
- Date
- April 11, 1914
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Industrial Workers of the World rally, Union Square, New York (photo: Bain News Service)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Source, Rights
- 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
- Regime
- Wilson administration
- Leader
- Woodrow Wilson
- 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.
