BBB Etymology - Pie in the Sky
Usually credited to the American trade union organizer Joe Hill, who wrote in The Preacher and the Slave (1906):
"Pie in the sky" was seized on and much used by the militantly radical Industrial Workers of the World, a potentially revolutionary American labour movement, who used it to taunt the conventionally minded religious and industrial establishment and idealistic socialists alike. It may even be that Hill did not invent the phrase but merely utilized an existing ironical slogan of this organization.
You will eat, bye and bye,This bitter advice to tolerate inhuman social conditions in order to earn rewards in heaven is a parody of 'We shall meet by and by', a popular hymn in the Moody and Sankey hymnbook, Sacred Songs and Solos. Contemporary evangelical or revivalist sentiment promised a better life to come, but implied resigned acceptance of one's place in society in the meantime.
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
"Pie in the sky" was seized on and much used by the militantly radical Industrial Workers of the World, a potentially revolutionary American labour movement, who used it to taunt the conventionally minded religious and industrial establishment and idealistic socialists alike. It may even be that Hill did not invent the phrase but merely utilized an existing ironical slogan of this organization.
