A large raised fist rising from a crowd of striking workers was used to promote a mass strike in Budapest in 1912. Journalist and socialist activist John Reed described hearing a similar description from a participant in the strike. William 'Big Bill' Haywood, a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, used the metaphor of a fist as something greater than the sum of its parts during a speech at the 1913 Paterson silk strike. Its use in trade unionism, anarchism, and the labor movement had begun by the 1910s. The origin of the raised fist as either a symbol or gesture is unclear. This 1912 poster by Mihály Bíró uses the fist as a symbol of the collective power of the massed workers from whom it rises.
