You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday July 20, 1914
From Chicago's Day Book: Joe Hill Labeled "Red Bandanna" Murderer
In today's edition of The Day Book, Fellow Workers Joe Hill is labeled the "red bandanna" murderer. We will point out that it was never proven during the trial that the red bandana found in Joe Hill's room after his arrest was the same bandana described by Merlin Morrison as covering the faces of the men who murdered his father and brother. Nor was it proven that the red bandana found by police near the scene of the crime was the one worn by either of the two murderers. Yet, both bandanas were presented as evidence against the rebel songwriter.
This is the sort of circumstantial evidence that the state of Utah has used to find Joe Hill guilty of murder and worthy to be executed.
POET-SLAYER TO BE SHOT!
-I. W. W. BARD WILL FACE FIRING SQUAD
-WOMAN'S NAME SECRET
Salt Lake City, Utah. The "red bandanna" murderer, Joe Hill poet of the proletariat, love lyric composer and I. W. W. leader, will be shot at dawn September 4!
A woman's name will go down to his grave with him, locked behind the dead lips which heroically refuse to utter it, though it would mean ALL life, honor, happiness!
One evening last January a Salt Lake grocer, John G. Morrison and his son were shot to death in their store by two mysterious murderers masked in red bandanna handkerchiefs. One of the murderers was wounded in the battle, Morrison said before he died.
On that same night' Joe Hill appeared at a Salt Lake City physician's office, pleading that a gaping bullet wound in his chest be cared for at once.
"A row with a woman," he muttered tersely'when asked how, he had been shot.
But when the police took him in charge they found a red bandanna handkerchief. That was all the evidence.
And those two circumstances only cruel coincidences, perchance have doomed the romantic-"poet of the people" to death before the rifle mouths which, under the law of Utah he chose in preference to hanging.
"Could I only speak her name," murmurs Joe Hill in his cell, "but, no, I cannot! Let death be mine rather than that dishonor-should be HERS!"
And so the mystery of the red bandanna murder, which has struck the imagination of all the west, is destined to be unsolved, shrouded for ever in the smoke from the gun that strikes down Poet Joe Hillstrom.
Little clues, rising here and there in the dramatic story of the case, only make the mystery more strange.
There is one woman, Mrs. Virginia Snow Stephens, grand-daughter of Lorenzo Snow, the famous one-time president of the Mormon church, who has fought with money and influence for Hill's release.
Mrs. Stephen is a wealthy society leader of Salt Lake.
Yet she is strangely co-operating with the I. W. W. chiefs in the poet-prisoner's cause!
She says it is because she believes no man who has composed such music as Hill has could possibly be guilty of murder.
SOURCES
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-of July 20, 1914
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
The Case of Joe Hill
-by Philip S Foner
International Publishers, 1965
IMAGE
Joe Hill in handcuffs, see link for Day Book above.
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Sunday July 20, 2014
More on the State of Utah vs Joseph Hillstrom and the Red Bandana
On Jan. 12, 1914, the
Deseret Evening News reported: "The red handkerchief tallies with the somewhat mixed description of the Morrison boy, who said that one of the men wore a red mask. The handkerchief was identified by Merlin Morrison."
On January 14th, the Deseret Evening News further reported that Mrs. Seeley had told the police that "one of the pair" had a red handkerchief around his neck. At the preliminary hearing two weeks later, she testified that both men had been wearing large red handkerchiefs.
Two red bandanas were produced and place into evidence against Joe Hill at the preliminary hearing. One of them was the one found near the store by Patrolman Vance, and the other was found during the search of Joe Hill's room in Murray. The rebel songwriter made a brief statement in which he attempted to address the ridiculousness of using the possession of a red bandana as evidence against him:
I have only this to say. I fail utterly to see how any significance can attach to the discovery of a red bandana handkerchief such as I owned. Many persons have red handkerchiefs and it is no uncommon thing to lose them.
At the trial, Mrs. Betty Eselius Olsen testified for the defense that the red bandana taken from Joe Hill's bedside table belonged to her. She had given it to him after he was shot. Her testimony held up under cross-examination.
And, I would point out that by the time of the trial in June, several thousand "god-damn redneck" miners had tied red bandanas around their necks before going into battle only a few months earlier in the near-by state of Colorado. Whether or not that fact had any influence on the jury could be open to speculation.
SOURCE
The Case of Joe Hill
-by Philip S Foner
International Publishers, 1965
NOTE: Google insists on "bandanna" as the correct spelling, sources vary on their spelling of the word, but most use "bandana," and so that is the spelling that I will use from now on, unless it spelled differently within a quote.
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Should I Ever Be A Soldier - Steven D Clark
We're spending billions every year
For guns and ammunition.
"Our Army" and "our Navy" dear,
To keep in good condition;
While millions live in misery
And millions died before us,
Don't sing "My Country 'tis of thee,"
But sing this little chorus.
Should I ever be a soldier,
'Neath the Red Flag I would fight;
Should the gun I ever shoulder,
It's to crush the tyrant's might.
Join the army of the toilers,
Men and women fall in line,
Wage slave of the world! Arouse!
Do your duty for the cause,
For Land and Liberty.
And many a maiden, pure and fair,
Her love and pride must offer
On Mammon's altar in despair,
To fill the master's coffer.
The gold that pays the mighty fleet,
From tender youth he squeezes,
While brawny men must walk the street
And face the wintry breezes.
Why do they mount their gatling gun
A thousand miles from ocean,
Where hostile fleet could never run
Ain't that a funny notion?
If you don't know the reason why,
Just strike for better wages,
And then, my friends-if you don't die
You'll sing this song for ages.
-Joe Hill
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