HILL, JOE 1879-1915

Songwriter; labor activist; folk hero

Death in the Morning

On 19 November 1915, at 7:44 A.M., Joe Hill, strapped to a chair in the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City, was pronounced dead. Hill had been shot in the heart minutes before by a five-man firing squad, ending a yearlong struggle by his supporters to have his sentence commuted or a new trial declared in what may have been the trial of the decade. Hill's case had, since its beginning in January 1914, grown from a dubious murder charge for a local crime to an international cause célèbre that symbolized the violent ongoing struggle between the forces of capital and the much hated Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), of which Joe Hill was a member. Before his death, Hill, an itinerant worker known throughout his workers' union as a songwriter, had remained in prison, professing his innocence while the storm raged around him. "I have absolutely no desire to be one of them what-ye-call-em-martyrs," he wrote in a letter in August 1915; but as his execution neared, he became a martyr, nevertheless, and his name became a prominent labor rallying point in the 1910s, when his case achieved the status of folklore.

Early Years

Although his later life achieved a myth-like status, little is known about Joe Hill before his arrest for murder on 13 January 1914. He was born Joel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden, in 1879 (even this information was not known until 1949.) His family was poor, especially after his father, a railroad conductor, died in an accident when Hill was eight. The young Hill worked in a rope factory and then as a fireman on a steam-powered crane. He had been raised in a musical family and had learned to play guitar, piano, and violin. In 1902 his mother died and Joel immigrated to America with his brother. All that is known about his life between 1902 and 1910 is that he worked and traveled. He sent a Christmas card from Cleveland in 1905, and in 1906 witnessed the San Francisco earthquake, about which he wrote a letter to a Gavie newspaper, describing the devastation. He is known to have joined the IW W in 1910 in San Pedro, California, and by many accounts was in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1911 when the Wobblies (the nick-name for members of the IWW) rallied around the Magón brothers, who were plotting against the Mexican government. Hill was in Hawaii in 1911, where he apparently lived as an itinerant worker.

Songwriter

Were it not for his music, Hill would probably have died in anonymity. But his songs, especially the classic "The Preacher and the Slave," had made him famous among IWW members. Usually set to an already popular folk tune, Hill's songs were hard-bitten stones of the workers. He also wrote songs about his own plight to survive against the forces of capital, and about the necessity of his writing; he also wrote parodies about his enemies. His songs were made popular in the IWW's "Little Red Song Book," which first appeared in August 1909. Hill's contributions began appearing in the third edition in 1911, and many quickly became standards for rallying workers. "The Preacher and the Slave" was his best-known song. Others, such as "Casey Jones," "The Union Scab," and "Where the Fraser River Flows," directly addressed and interpreted IWW strikes of the time, at some of which Hill had apparently been present. These songs were an important weapon that the IWW used to build morale and unity among strikers. Hill's works, poignant in their depiction of working people, harshly satirized the leaders of industry and memorably supported the IWW's work. By March 1913 Hill had placed more than a dozen songs in the different editions of the "Little Red Song Book."

The Charge

On 10 January 1914, at about ten o'clock at night, two men entered the Salt Lake City grocery store of John G. Morrison, who, with his two sons, was closing his shop for the night. Morrison and his eldest son Arling were shot and killed, while thirteen-year-old Merlin Morrison watched. Ninety minutes later Joe Hill arrived at a doctor's office with a bullet hole through his chest. He maintained to his death that he had been shot in an argument about a woman. Police officials believed otherwise; Hill was arrested three days after the Morrison shooting and charged with murder. At the time of his arrest, his affiliation as a Wobbly was unknown. But by April the IWW, through its paper Solidarity, was calling for support of their fellow member and songwriter, citing trumped-up charges and a Utah vendetta against the IWW. Between 1912 and 1914 the IWW presence had begun to have an impact in Utah, especially in the copper mines. The year 1912 had seen strikes in Bingham Canyon and Park City. In 1913 a strike in Tucker, Utah, led directly to violence at an IWW rally in Salt Lake City. Though Hill's IWW affiliation did not become widely known until the trial began in June, the union had taken the offensive and rallied around Hill, while at the same time using his case to support their cause.

Awaiting Execution

The case went to trial on 17 June 1914. Despite dubious circumstantial evidence, Hill was found guilty and on 8 July 1914 was sentenced to die. Given the choice of execution by shooting or hanging, he chose the firing squad. Although his verdict was based on questionable evidence, it was never certain that Hill was convicted because of his IWW affiliation. Nonetheless, his cause snowballed over the next sixteen months, becoming a national and later an international story. While Hill's lawyers appealed the decision of the court, the IWW promoted his case. Meetings and marches were held in his honor in New York City, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and other cities. The IWW branch in London began a fund-raising campaign. By the summer of 1915 threats were pouring in from the IWW and others. Utah Gov. William Spry hired the famous security man William Pinkerton for protection. Pleas for clemency arrived from across the country. The Swedish government lobbied for Hill, who was still a citizen of Sweden. Even President Woodrow Wilson asked Governor Spry to reconsider the case, an extraordinary request that many Utah citizens believed to be an act of federal interference in state business. After appeals, Hill was resentenced two more times, and scheduled to die on 19 November 1915. Hundreds of letters and telegrams arrived daily in support of Hill. On 8 November a "Joe Hill Protest Meeting" was held in New York City, featuring radical journalist John Reed and IWW activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn as key-note speakers. American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers wired President Wilson on behalf of Hill, as did Helen Keller. But all these actions were futile. The protests had bought Hill some extra months of life, but on 19 November 1915, as scheduled, he was executed by firing squad. The day after his execution, Hill lay in state in Salt Lake City; one day later, a funeral in the city drew thousands of people. Hill had a second funeral in Chicago on 23 November, Thanksgiving Day, and again thousands came, including Bill Haywood, head of the IWW. Hill's body was later cremated.

The Legend

Joe Hill, the legend, the martyr, the working-class hero, remained for the rest of the decade a rallying cry for the IWW, even after America's entry into World War I reduced Wobbly membership. In 1925 a young poet, Alfred Hayes, published "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night," a poem which, after being set to music a few years later, became a classic among labor folk songs. Upton Sinclair used Joe Hill's songs in a 1924 play, Singing Jailbirds. Notable writers such as Carl Sandburg referred to Joe Hill, and Hill's songs continued to be labor standards through the tumultuous 1930s. In 1950 Wallace Stegner published The Preacher and the Slave (later published as Joe Hill), a novel about Hill's life. Other plays, poems, and songs about Hill appeared, confirming what the poet Hayes had written: "Joe Hill ain't never died." Hill was also remembered for his own work as a songwriter and for his contribution to labor legend and history. On the eve of his execution he wrote short messages to many people. Perhaps sensing his future place in labor legend, he wrote to Bill Haywood: "Goodbye Bill: I die like a true rebel. Don't waste any time mourning—organize!" These words remain a rallying cry for union men and women around the country.

Sources:

Gibbs M. Smith, Joe Hill (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1969);

Wallace Stegner, Joe Hill, A Biographical Novel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950).

Hill, Joe (1879–1915), balladeer, labor organizer. The folksong I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night/Alive as you or me celebrates this Swedish immigrant's martyrdom. As a member of the Industrial Workers of the World—the Wobblies— from 1910 until his death, he composed songs for the movement, including The Preacher and the Slave, with the jeering line You'll get pie in the sky when you die. He was, labor legend has it, framed for a grocery store robbery and murder, and was in fact executed by firing squad in Utah. His guilt or innocence, like the later case of Sacco and Vanzetti, has been a subject of debate. His final words to his colleague Big Bill Haywood, another labor martyr, “Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize!,” have enshrined him in the American labor movement.

Joe Hill 1879–1915, Swedish-American union organizer; b. Sweden, as Joel Hägglund, also called Joseph Hillström. He came to the United States in 1902 and worked as a miner and a longshoreman, when he joined (1910) the Industrial Workers of the World. He wrote many labor songs, including "Casey Jones" and "The Union Scab." Found guilty in 1915 of murdering a prominent Salt Lake City man, Hill was executed; later information indicated that he had not committed the crime. Hill, who became a legendary hero of radical labor, is memorialized in a well-known 1936 ballad.

Bibliography: See biography by W. M. Adler (2011).