"The Preacher and the Slave" is a song written by Joe Hill in 1911. It was written as a parody of the hymn "In the Sweet By-and-By". The Industrial Workers of the World (commonly known as the Wobblies) concentrated much of its labor trying to organize migrant workers in lumber and construction camps. When the workers returned to the cities, the Wobblies faced the Salvation Army (which they satirized as the "Starvation Army"). Hill had first encountered the Salvation Army in Sweden when he was a child.