by Mike Marino The first time many of us in the tie-dyed generation were fumbling our way through the altered states of Sixties America ever heard of Joe Hill, was during the Joan Baez warbling performance at Woodstock when she unleashed her staccato voice to sing the praises of the IWW Wobblies and organizer/songwriter Joe Hill in particular. Just who was this Joe Hill? Was he the Country JOE asking us to give him an "F"? Or was he a Big Brother bandmate or a pilot for The Jefferson Airplane or any of the other bands that played at Yasgurs farm for the free music, mud and bad acid festival. Joe Hill pre-dates Woodstock, in fact he even pre-dates John Steinbecks protaganist, Tom Joad leading his family on a Route 66 dust bowl journey into the false utopia of California's ag belt during the great Okie migration, thereby becoming Steinbeck's inimitable champion of the working man in literature. No, Joe was not Joad. Joe Hill was not frescoed and frozen in time for the ages in any of Diego Rivera's socialist works of men and women as cogs in the industrial machine, nor was he in a film about humans serving as replaceable robotic parts led to the assemblyline slaughter by the False Maria in Fritz Lang's German expresssionist film "Metropolis!" Devoured by Democracy? Consummed by Capitalism? Were the unions to be the saviour of labor? Was Joe Hill the second coming of Jesus the Socialist in disguise? No? Then, just who hell was this Joe Hill anyway? Just another brick in the labor wall of fame?
Joe Hill was and is a labor legend who worked with an intensity and focused purpose of organizing union members for the International Workers of the World...the IWW or more commonly known as Wobblies. Woody Gutherie came along bound for glory with his fascist killing machine, but when he got on that "road" Joe Hill had already been on the front lines paving the way for Woody. Joe was also writing solidarity songs and blue collar ballads that were inspirational in spreading the gospel of unionization among the working class faithful. Joe was popular with the workers, and more importantly, he was highly effective in encouraging them to act decisively by joining the union and banding together. His fame and the power of the messages in his songs were infectious, and they spread across this land is your land, this land is my land, like a blue collar wild fire ready to consume corporate injustice in it's path. This raging wild-fire of solidarity created an environment of danger as well. The growth of the IWW and Joe's fame in particular alarmed the corporate profiteers who wielded a heavy hand over it's "serfs" The pirates of industry were not fans of the growing union movement, nor Joe Hills musical indictment of capitalism. He may have been number one with a bullet on the Wobblie hit parade, but the US government also had a bullet...with Joe's name on it.
American leaders in the White House along with their congressional cronies and their partners in crime, big industry, were a sociological disease, festering as an American cancer eating away at the rights of the populous of the government of the people, by the people and for the people. The rulers were getting agitated at all the agitation being stirred up by these rebels with a cause. This most "un-American" activity that smacked of socialism would threaten corporate profits of the industrial nation which in turn would erode the amount of congressional graft and bribes that were flowing into Congress with the force of a broken spigot flooding the Capital Building with more corruption than there are prostitutues in Nevada! The American worker was told to bend over and take it in the ass! Lets face it, politics and graft are the worlds oldest profession.
Money influencing kept the wheels of the well-heeled well greased when it came to the enactment of labor laws in favor of big busines while at the expense of the average American worker, keeping his and her in a state of near poverty...powerless against the machine. On the other side of the invisible picketline, the peoples machine had it's own strength as well..in the growing numbers of union members, and then there was Joe Hill who was working his working class ass off for labor reform....only to be persecuted, prosecuted and ultimately shot dead by a prison firing squad, murdered by the US Government. It was one of the times in the world of labor, when America was truly the Ugly American and vented its anger and frustration out on the laborer. If you had the balls to stand up for the working class, or WERE the working class, you were under suspicion and labled and targeted as a blue collar radical with red tendencies where you looked toward Moscow as your personal Mecca, and the red, white and blue was to you a symbol of oppression and prosecution in your fight for bloody rights, which in fact it was.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was formed in 1905 in Chicago with the goal of being "one big union." At the initial convention hundreds of socialists and trade unionists from all points of the North American compass gathered in the Windy City. Miners unions were represented in vast numbers, especially from the western parts of the country. The founders read like a who's who of radical unionism from Eugene Debs to Lucy Parsons. Yes, women were not only allowed to vote on union matters as equals, but, could also hold union offices and act in the fields as recruiters. This was 1905, the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution did not give women equal status in American politics or even the right to vote until 1920! .
The IWW wanted to encompass all workers and laborers in one huge union...one massive sociological nuclear bastion of unionism no matter that they slaved away in different fields of labor. They fought for the self-determination of the workers as a social class unto itself and democracy in the workplace. The only thing they felt standing in the way of this Labor Utopia and that was holding the worker down..was captitalism itself and it should be abolished. It was a message that went for a head shot to the psyche of American capitalism. It was tinged with a shade of "anarchism" & "bolshevism" with a bright "red" hue that scared American big business and the governemnt. By 1923 the Wobblies registered membership was over 40,000. Labor strikes, strike breakers, battles, and fears over the rise of communism in America put the Wobblies and other unions on a collision course with factory hired goon squads, local and state police and Federal government intervention usually with guns and ammo that resulted in bloodshed on both sides, but mainly, it was the red blood of the blue collar workers that was pouing on the streets of the factory picket lines. The more workers blood that was shed, the more their politics went "Red" The government shit was about to hit the fan.
The American Federation of Labor found the Wobblies were too radical, while they in turn were looked upon by the IWW as the limp wrist of labor. Bolshevism was on the rise in Europe, and was regarded as the evil cockroach in the kitchen of democracy. The Red Scare was off and running, preceeding Sen. Joe McCarthyls demonic rape of American civil rights by decades. The IWW was a prime target of the federal government, the industrialists, and the FBI....and straight in the cross hairs of the US government..was one lone balladeer...Joe Hill. He would sing the songs, but he would also pay the price of admission! His spoken words were "Don't Mourn, Organize!"
Joel Emmanuel Hagglund was born in 1879 in Sweden. He was one of nine children born to Olof and Margareta Hagglund and times were hard in Europe at that time. When his father died, conditions only worsened economically for the family. Margareta died in 1902 and it was around this time when Joel and his brother left Sweden for the promised land of America. Meager jobs led him to employment from New York to San Francisco. His timing was not good as he was working in San Francisco in 1906...the year of the great earthquake! Joel soon joined the IWW in 1910 while he was working the docks in San Pedro, California. This was the first leg of his long arduous journey as a labor activist for the them. He landed work as a cartoonist for the IWW and started writing songs to encourage the working men and women of the nation, and especially songs about the need to organize and to improve working conditions for not only itinerant workers, but all workers.
Joel, not only adopted the pen-name of "Joe Hill" to accompany all his IWW writings, songs and union cartoons he was having published. He was also making a political name for himself and began traveling from end of the country to the other organizing workers for the IWW. In the meantime he began writing songs, songs and ballads of union brotherhood and solidarity, many of them laced with statire. He also developed his oratory skills giving speeches. Still, he was an worker, and had to travel to where the work was so hopped freight trains, rode the rails and ended up as working the mines in Utah along with his other duties.
The die was soon cast, and Joes fate was sealed on January 10, 1914. A grocery store owner and former police officer and his son in Salt Lake City were killed by armed and masked persons, who apparently were not out to rob the store, as police found later that nothing at all had been stolen. They were reported to be wearing red bandanas during the commission of the crime by witnesses. At first it was felt it was a crime of revenge, as the store owner had been a cop at one point and probably had a few targets painted on his back by some enemy or enemies by thugs with a grudge.
The plot thickens when on the same night Joe Hill, also in Salt Lake City at the time, was shot and sought the help of a doctor for his bullet wound through his left lung. He also had a pistol on him according to the doctors testimony to police later during the investigation of the grocery store murders. A dozen suspects were arrested for interrogation in the murders, but finally, after the doctor contacted police, Joe Hill was arrested and charged with the murder. Unfortunately there was a red bandana found in Joes room, but the pistol Joe allegedly had in his possession was never found. Joe claimed he was shot in an argument over a 20 year old woman, Hilda Erickson, whom he refused to name at that time. This was only disclosed well after the trial and his subsequent execution. In a letter found years later written by Hilda, she said that Joe was shot by Otto Applequist as she was having a relationship with both men, and the rivalry between the two men brought about the gunfight.
During the trial, Joe was not called to the stand to testify on his own behalf, but his defense attorney mentioned that according to records, four other people were also treated for bullet wounds on the same night in Salt Lake City. Besides he said, Joe did not know the deceased so therefore had no grudge against him to commit murder, and there was nothing stolen so it was not robbery as the cause of his demise. The prosecution called over a dozen witnesses to the stand who cofirmed that Joe Hill may have resembled one of the gunmen, but one, the victims young son and brother, said, "That's not him at all!" Later during the course of the trial, he changed his testimony and said it was him. Was he coerced? Was it a frame-up? Was it a political hanging? We'll never know but I have my opinion that it was all of the above. This wouldn't be the first time a witness has been intimidated by a prosecutor, especially one all of 13 years of age!
The prosecution kept bringing up the fact that Joe was a member of the IWW and there...."Must be guilty!" The defense was on the defensive at all times and down played that information, but the press hungry for headlines went for the headline headshots and played his involvement with the IWW as much as they could..I made for banner headlines...and also helped put the political nails in Joes coffin. Joe was convicted in just a few hours in a Kafkaesque scene out of a judicial nightmare. There was an appeal, debates and cries for clemency from around the world were of no value either. These pleas came from high profile persons in workers organizations and unions. Along with the interantional outcry, voices in the wilderness were heard in America as well for clemency for President Woodrow Wilson, and IWW member and author, Helen Keller!
He was executed in November of 1915. While Joe stood in front of the prison firing squad he listened to the squad leader call out the commands. Afer he said, "Ready, Aim) Joe yelled out "FIRE!" Just before the date of execution, Joe had written to the head of the IWW at the time, Bill Haywood and it read, "Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste time in my mourning. Organize! Also, could you have my body hauled to the state line for burial? I don't want to be found dead in Utah!"
Joes body was sent to Chicago where it was cremated and the ashes placed in envelopes and supposedly sent to union members around the world who on May Day sometime around 1917. Some of the ashes left and saved were obtained by the IWW in the 80's and at one time Abbie Hoffman said the ashes should be eaten by todays "Joe Hills" like Billy Bragg. Billy did and washed them down with some beer his union supplied for the ceremony.
In 1989, some ashes were scattered at the unveiling of a monument to the IWW coal miners in Colorado who were machine-gunned down by state police in 1927 during the Columbine Mine Massacre, and in Michigan in 1990 the IWW hosted a gathering of members where during an after dinner bonfire his last will was read as remaining ashes were tossed in the campfire and rose with the flames to be dispersed in the woods
. Joe Hill's legacy lives on today. Everytime the working man or woman stands up for their rights, goes on strike, or Occupies Wall Street or the streets of Cairo or stands alone defiantly in Tianamen Square.