The Conspiracy of Capital by Michael Mark Cohen;

Author:Michael Mark Cohen; [Cohen, Michael Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press

Wobbly Martyrs: Joe Hill and Frank Little

The counterrevolution against the IWW began with the start of war in Europe. The execution of itinerant worker and Wobbly bard Joe Hill by the state of Utah on November 19, 1915, was the first political prosecution of a radical artist in this period, and it transformed Hill from a “fellow worker” into the central martyr of the IWW, the legendary “man who never died.”73 In the words of his fellow Wobbly songwriter Ralph Chaplin, Joe Hill wrote “songs of and for the worker, written in the only language he can understand and set to the music of Joe Hill’s own heart.”74 Born in Sweden as Joel Hägglund, also known as Joseph Hillstrom, Joe Hill emigrated to the United States in 1902 and officially joined the IWW in San Pedro in 1910. Active in strikes and free speech drives up and down the Pacific coast, including the 1912 San Diego free speech drive, which left him permanently scarred, Hill soon found himself blacklisted. Were it not for the witty, caustic, and rebellious songs that he wrote “to fan the flame of discontent” among the immigrants, the uneducated, and the radical, Hill could very well have spent his life an unknown bum, an anonymous member of the Wobblies’ rank and file. Yet his songs, set to the popular tunes of the day, spread from labor camps and union halls, sung at rallies, on picket lines, and in prisons, galvanized an activist chorus to feats of solidarity and rebellion until Hill’s name and poetry were finally set down in the IWW’s Little Red Songbook. By the time Hill arrived to work in the mines outside Salt Lake City, his popularity was already growing.

On the night of January 10, 1914, two masked men entered the Salt Lake City grocery store of John Morrison, a former policeman and father of two. One of the assailants yelled, “We’ve got you now,” and proceeded to shoot John and his son Avling dead, leaving Morrison’s younger son, fourteen-year-old Merlin, the only witness. Nothing was stolen from the store, and according to Merlin, Avling managed to shoot at least one of his attackers before meeting his own end. Several days later, after interviewing a number of suspects, the police arrested Joe Hill. When they found him, Hill was recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest, yet the police managed to shoot him again in the hand while arresting him. As it turns out, late on the night of the murders, Hill appeared at the office of Dr. Frank McHugh seeking treatment for a gunshot wound; the bullet had passed through his body, piercing his lung. Hill, who carried a weapon of his own, told the doctor that he’d been shot in a dispute over a married woman, and that he wished to keep the affair quiet. Hill’s roommate vanished immediately after the murders, leading the police to suggest that the two had been accomplices in the attack. Hill pled not guilty

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