On The Picket Lines

Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom, Joel Hagglund) was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1915 he was executed for murder after a controversial trial.

He had emigrated to the United States in 1902, where he became a migrant laborer, moving from New York City to Cleveland, Ohio, and eventually to the west coast. He was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the 1906 earthquake. Hill joined the Wobblies around 1910, when he was working on the docks in San Pedro, California. In late 1910 he wrote a letter to the IWW newspaper Industrial Worker, identifying himself as a member of the Portland, Oregon local.

Hill rose in the IWW organization and traveled widely, organizing workers under the IWW banner, writing political songs and satirical poems, and making speeches. His songs frequently appropriated familiar melodies from songs of his time. He coined the phrase "pie in the sky", which appeared in his song The Preacher and the Slave (a parody of the hymn In the Sweet Bye and Bye). Other notable songs written by Hill include The Tramp, There is Power in the Union, Rebel Girl, and Casey Jones: Union Scab.

Joe Hill was an itinerant worker, who moved around the west, hopping freight trains, going from job to job. Early 1914 found Hill working as a laborer at the Silver King Mine in Park City, Utah, not far from Salt Lake City.

On January 10, 1914, John G. Morrison and his son Arling were killed in their Salt Lake City butcher store by two armed intruders masked in red bandannas. Arling had drawn a handgun from behind the counter and wounded one of the masked men before being killed. The police first thought it was a crime of revenge, for nothing had been stolen. The elder Morrison had been a police officer, possibly creating many enemies.

On the same evening, Joe Hill appeared on the doorstep of a local doctor, bearing a bullet wound. Hill said that he had been shot in an argument over a woman, whom he refused to name. The doctor reported that Hill was armed with a pistol.

Considering Morrison's past as a police officer, several men he had arrested were at first considered suspects; twelve people were arrested in the case before Hill was arrested and charged with the murder. A red bandanna was found in Hill's room. The pistol purported to be in Hill's possession at the doctor's office was not found.

Hill resolutely denied that he was involved in the robbery and killing of Morrison. He said that when he was shot, his hands were over his head, and the bullet hole in his coat — four inches below the bullet wound in his back — seemed to support this claim. Hill did not testify at his trial, but his lawyers pointed out that four other people were treated for bullet wounds in Salt Lake City that same night, and that the lack of robbery and Hill's unfamiliarity with Morrison left him with no motive.

Joe Hill's will. Archives of the Communist Party USA, Tamiment Library, New York University. Click to enlarge.

The prosecution, for its part, produced a dozen eyewitnesses who said that the killer resembled Hill, including 13-year-old Merlin Morrison, the victims' son and brother, who said "that's not him at all" upon first seeing Hill, but later identified him as the murderer. The jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of murder.

A widely-circulated story is that Hill was in bed with a married woman on the night of the murder. He refused to use this iron-clad alibi, because in Utah in 1914, it would have ruined her reputation and her life. His discretion ended his life.

An appeal to the Utah Supreme Court failed. In a letter to the court, Hill continued to deny that the state had a right to inquire into the origins of his wound, leaving little doubt that the judges would affirm the conviction. Chief Justice Daniel Straup wrote that his unexplained wound was "a distinguishing mark," and that "the defendant may not avoid the natural and reasonable inferences of remaining silent."

In an article for the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Hill wrote:

Owing to the prominence of Mr Morrison, there had to be a 'goat' [scapegoat] and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live anyway, and was therefore duly selected to be 'the goat'.

The case turned into a major media event. President Woodrow Wilson, the blind and deaf author Helen Keller, and people in Sweden all became involved in a bid for clemency. It generated international union attention, and critics charged that the trial and conviction were unfair.

The night before his execution, at about 10:00 pm, Hill passed his will through the bars to a prison guard.

Click to enlarge.

Hill's biographer Gibbs Smith writes in Joe Hillthat the same night, supporters of Hill in Seattle delivered an affidavit to his lawyer. The affiant William Busky wrote he was with Hill for several hours, in a different town working, on the night of the murder; he said Hill was innocent. There were contradictions in the story, but the telegram was forwarded to the Utah governor. The governor asked the Seattle police to arrest Busky. They refused. In the morning prison officials asked Hill if he knew Busky. He did not. Officials decided Busky was not telling the truth and the execution should proceed.

Smith continues:

About 5 a.m. on Friday, November 19, Joe Hill awoke. His actions that morning provided drama to match the rest of the last few months of his life. The day before, Hill had been given a broom with which to clean his cell. When he awoke on Friday morning, he broke the handle of the broom in half, tore up the blankets from his bed, twisted the blanket strips through the bars of his cell door so it could not be opened, then put his mattress against the door. When the guards tried to remove the barrier from the door, Hill jabbed at them with the sharp point of the broken broom handle. The guards broke some brooms and began jabbing at Hill. One guard punched at Hill's stomach with his weapon in an attempt to force him to the rear of the cell while another attempted to remove the barricade from the door. Hill wrested the stick from the guard and was then armed with two weapons. According to the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, the strange duel lasted long enough for Hill to bloody the two guards. The duel was still going on when Sheriff Corless arrived to take Hill from his cell.

When the sheriff approached, Hill quit fighting. Corless, who had developed a friendship with Hill, said, "Joe this is all nonsense."

Hill replied, "What do you mean?"

Corless answered, "You professed to die like a man."

Hill hesitated, then said, "Well I'm through but you can't blame a man for fighting for his life."

The condemend man was taken from his cell and led out into the prison yard. The firing squad was already in the blacksmith's shop, concealed behind a canvas drape cut with five holes for the rifle barrels. Four of the rifles contained bullets -- one held a blank. Hill was placed on a chair located twenty feet in front of the canvas drape. When he sat in the chair, he said rapidly, "I will show you how to die. I will show you how to die, I have a clear conscience." He was strapped in the chair and a mask was placed over his eyes.

Joe Hill's funeral.

A doctor held a stethoscope over Hill's heart and located its exact position in his chest. A paper target was put over the spot.

When these preparatory actions were completed, the attending guards stepped back. Joe Hill tossed back his head and tried to see from underneath the mask. He shouted, "I am going now boys. Good-by!" There was no response from anyone. The three men Hill had invited to the execution -- Ed Rowan, George Child, and Fred Ritter -- were not allowed into the prison on orders of the warden. Hill again shouted, "Good-by Boys!"

Deputy Shettler, in charge of the firing squad, began the sequence of commands, preparatory to firing. "Ready, aim," he called out.

Joe Hill shouted, "Fire -- go on and fire," a smile speading over his face.

Shettler commanded "fire" and the rifles cracked. A newsman witnessing the scene reported: "Before the sound of the officer's voice had died, there were five reports, almost in unison, puffs of white smoke came from the curtained window and Hillstrom's chest sank in as though he had been hit with a mighty weight."

The smile faded from Hill's face, his muscles spasmodically contracted, his body stiffened, then relaxed and hung limp in the straps.

Shortly afterward, one member of the firing squad said:

It seemed like shooting an animal. How my thoughts wandered! It seemed an age waiting for the command to fire. And then, when it came from Hillstrom himself, I almost fell to my knees. We fired. I wanted to close my eyes, but they stared at the white paper heart, scorched and torn by four lead balls. Four blackened circles began to turn crimson, then a spurt and the paper heart was red.

Hill's will electrified the labor movement. Forty-five years later Ethel Raim set it to music. She writes:

I was studying composition with a colleague in 1960 and one of my earliest assignments was to set a text to music. I had always been drawn to the text of Joe Hill's Last Will, and when I sat down to set it to music, the melody came to me in its entirety, and emerged as if it had always belonged to the text. Joe Hill was one of my father's heroes and his most favorite song was Earl Robinson's I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night as sung by Paul Robeson. That 78 rpm recording had to have been played hundreds of times on our phonograph during my childhood.

Joe Hickerson.

My father, Morrris Goldstein, worked in the needle trades in New York's garment industry for over 45 years. He was a presser and he took great pride in his work. He was also an active rank-and-filer in the ILGWU his entire working life, and to my knowledge, never missed a day of work. During the 50s and 60s, the cutters, pressers, fitters and operators would take turns making coats and suits for the women in their families, which meant that every three or four years my sister, mother and I would alternately get a garment "tailor made" for us; we could select our fabric and choose one of the styles of garments being made in the shop that season by the particular manufacturer. My dad worked in the industry until he was 80, and only retired under pressure from his family. He was 100 and seven months when he left this world.

Joe Hickerson recorded it as an LP in 1976. Two years earlier he was a founding member of the AFSCME Guild at the Library of Congress. He writes:

In fact in spite of the fact that I had just been promoted to the supervisory "management" position of Head of the Archive of Folk Song (where I supervised a staff of two wonderful people), I was enlisted to perform union songs at the first AFSCME event at LC in 1974.

Additional source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill.

Personnel: Joe Hickerson, vocals, guitar; Sandy Paton, recording; David Paton, digital remastering.

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