Here's what Pete Seeger says in his songbook, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?:

Waldemar Hille, editing the People's Songs bulletin in 1948, once showed me two short verses he found when researching U.S. labor history.

Step by step the longest march
Can be won, can be won.
Many stones can form an arch,
Singly none, singly none.

And by union what we will
Can be accomplished still
Drops of water turn a mill,
Singly none, singly none.


It was printed in the preamble to the constitution of an early coal miner's union. Says Wally, "good verse." Says I, "What's the tune?"
"I don't know," says Wally, "I suppose some old Irish tune might fit it. Like the song from the Irish famine of the 1840's, 'The Praties they Grow Small.'"
"Let's try it," says I. It fit. And has been sung to that melody ever since.

The Digital Tradition has these same lyrics, but no tune, and says the lyrics are "From Ruthie Gorton, from the preamble to the constitution of the United Mineworkers of America." The Seeger songbook says the author is unknown, from the preamble to the constitution of the American Mineworkers Association (1863); music arranged and adapted by Waldemar Hills and Pete Seeger (1948) from the traditional Irish song "The Praties They Grow Small."

---

So, is it Waldemar Hills, Hille, or both? In most things I've seen about People's Songs, he's Hille - but he's identified as "Hills" in copyright information for "Step By Step" in two Seeger songbooks.

---

Click to play (joeweb)