"The Kicker" (ca. 1870).This citation is traditional among quotation dictionaries, but it must be noted that no Billings poem called "The Kicker" or with words like these has ever been veri?ed.The earliest documented version appears in the Wall Street Journal, 20 May 1910: "The wheel that squeaks the loudest / Is the wheel that gets the grease." The saying is now proverbial, often with a form like "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."