I had the pleasure to fight under The Red Flag once, any way,
so I guess I've had my share of the fun.
-Joe Hill
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Wednesday October 20, 1915
Salt Lake City, Utah - Joe Hill's "Record" Released Day of Pardon Board Meeting
On October 16th, the day that the Utah Board of Pardons met to once again decide the fate of Fellow Worker Joe Hill, Salt Lake City and area newspapers saw fit to publish lurid details of the supposed criminal record of Joe Hill. Hill was identified by an officer from Layton, Utah, as the man who was held for six weeks in May of 1911 in Davis County on suspicion of the murder of a deputy sheriff in that town.
The list of supposed crimes goes on to include taking part in the "I. W. W. invasion of Mexico" from Southern California. This "invasion" also took place in May of 1911. It seems that fellow worker Joe Hill has the remarkable ability to be in two places at one time.
The officer from Layton admitted his mistaken identification the following day, after the reprieve of the death sentence of Joe Hill had been terminated.
The source for other details of Joe Hill's "alleged record" is an unidentified prisoner who is serving time for robbery. The Salt Lake Telegram reported that that prisoner had been promised a pardon in return for information regarding FW Hill. The prisoner claims to be a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World and an accomplice to some of the crimes reported.
Regarding the coincidental timing of the release of this information on the very day of the meeting of the Pardon Board, Mrs. Virginia Snow Stephen stated:
Why is the board not satisfied with what it already has? It seems to me that the governor and the board of pardons are not entirely satisfied in their minds of this mans guilt.
Below the fold, our readers can find an example of the reporting on Joe Hill's "alleged record" along with other recent articles of interest regarding FW Hill.
From The Ogden Standard of October 16, 1915:
HILLSTROM SHOT A MAN AT LAYTON, MAY 4, 1911
"Tierra y Libertad" flag flies over Tijuana in May of 1911.
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Salt Lake, Oct. 16.-Hillstrom's alleged record as uncovered by state officials:
Arrest at Layton May 1, 1911, and held for six weeks under suspicion of having shot Deputy Sheriff William Lavender while attempting to rob a store.
Arrested at San Pedro, Cal., on a charge of holding up a street car; held for several months on a lesser charge.
Arrested In Butte and held for several months.
Participated in the I. W. W. invasion of Mexico from Southern California, with the rank of lieutenant in the army of invasion.
Helped transport dynamite from San Francisco to Los Angeles and San Diego in connection with dynamite, outrages.
Thought to have been connected with the McNamaras.
When Joseph Hillstrom, convicted murderer of John G. Morrison and Arling Morrison, appears today before tho state board of pardons, he will be confronted with evidence pointing to a long criminal record, leading from Layton, Utah, to the Mexican border and even across it.
One of the most surprising features in connection with the record of the murderer is the fact that he has now been positively identified as a man held in jail at Layton for six weeks on suspicion that he was the criminal who shot an officer while robbing a hardware store at that city.
In addition to this fact the state officials believe they have conclusive evidence that Hillstrom was in jail on several occasions in Butte, Los Angeles and San Diego, and there are [in]dications pointing to his connection with the McNamara plot which resulted in the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building and other California buildings.
Hillstrom has never once since his first arrest given any information as to his past record [Not true: see Joe Hill's statement to Utah Board of Pardon wherein he stated that the only time he served in jail, prior to coming to Utah, was in San Pedro where he was sentenced to 30 days for vagrancy]. He has declined to tell the board of pardons, prison officials or his attorneys anything concerning his life, save that he was born in Sweden and was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Identified by Officer.
Hillstrom was identified yesterday by Deputy Sheriff David S. Warren of Clearfield as the suspect who was arrested at Layton and held for six weeks in connection with the shooting of William Lavender a deputy sheriff at Layton, May 4, 1911.
Lavender was shot by robbers, who were attempting to blow the safe of the Layton Hardware company. Warren declares Hillstrom, under the name of James Corbett, was arrested three hours after the shooting, and for six weeks was held in the Davis county jail. He was finally released for lack of evidence. Warren said last night that he and other Davis county officers were convinced that they had the right man, but were unable to prove it.
[Photograph added.]
From Goodwin's Weekly of October 9, 1915:
Note: Although the name, Industrial Workers of the World, is not mentioned in the following article, the implication is clear that that organization and Fellow Worker Joe Hill are the "Human Fungus" so named therein.
This article is fairly typical of recurring editorials on I. W. W. "agitation" which have appeared in the newspapers of Salt Lake City since Joe Hill's arrest in January of 1914.
Human Fungus
THIS case of the wretch Hillstrom is really a notice served upon the people and the peace officers of this whole country to keep in mind that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and the call to every man who loves order and believes in law, to be on the alert. When arrested, the first letter Hillstrom wrote was to that Haywood who was tried for wholesale murders in Idaho, who was necessarily cleared because the evidence against him was the unsupported testimony of a self-confessed assassin, but who at the same time was convicted in the thought of every man familiar with what had been going on for years in Colorado and which culminated in the assassination of Governor Steuenberg of Idaho.
Haywood was quiet for a year or two after his neck escaped the noose in Idaho and then commenced to preach anarchy. Why he is permitted to continue that work is a mystery. It would be entirely legal to arrest him on a charge of conspiracy to anarchise the United States, make our country as much worse than Mexico as our people are stronger of brain and determination than Mexicans, and easy to convict him. Were he and a few others like him silenced or sent to the rock pile, it would have a soothing effect upon the whole band of slimy and skulking blatherskites who, stealing the holy name of honest labor for a text, preach contempt for righteous laws and hurl anathemas at needed order.
This case of Hillstrom accentuates the need of our people to put forth more exertions to throttle this menace that is hanging over our land and converting weak-minded men and women to the belief that they are entitled to comforts that they never earned, and to the belief that a government which permits some men who are rich to retain their wealth while so many are poor, is unjust.
Our state of Utah should move in this matter. There are several of these miscreants in this city. If the police cannot be made to act, the sheriff should be on the alert and when one of these creatures starts a harangue against order and law, call him down; when a band of them halt before a business house to intimidate decent people from entering, disperse them; if in private they preach their treason, haul them up and make them show why they should not be punished as vagrants.
They, like wolves at night, make such a noise as to carry the idea that the woods are full of them, but a little sunlight of justice shining down upon them would show them but as a few-vagrant coyotes that who, when left to themselves can fill the night with howls, but skulk shambling away under the light of the dawn.
It is a shame that such creatures should be permitted to vitiate weak brains and make decent people apprehensive of possible coming trouble.
[Photograph added.]
From the Chicago Day Book of October 14, 1915:
CHAIN GANG UTAH'S ANSWER TO RADICALS
WHO FLOCK TO SAVE POET "JOE HILL"
Salt Lake City, Utah, Oct. 14.- While the Swedish government is lending itself to a movement to save Joseph Hillstrom from the firing squad in Utah, the itinerant class, many of them members of the Industrial Workers of the World, is flocking to Salt Lake City. It, also, is bent on saving the life of Joseph Hillstrom, and it is that class that first came to Hillstrom's aid, starting a movement which was brought directly to the attention of the president of the United States.
Hillstrom is now breathing the breath of that movement. Through the efforts of the I. W. W. the Swedish minister was interested. That interest led to the state department and national cognizance of a state execution. President Wilson, 24 hours before the time set for the execution, requested a respite. By that request, Hillstrom's life was prolonged at least 16 days.
On Oct 16 the Utah board of pardons will again consider the case of Joseph Hillstrom, convicted of murder. If no new evidence is produced by the friends or attorneys of Hillstrom, he will again be taken into court to hear the death sentence read. A new date will be set.
The condemned man is known to the I. W. W, forces as Joe Hill. Under that name he wrote many songs, parodies on popular airs, sung at I. W. W. meetings. He served 30 days in jail for his part in the I. W. W. riots in San Diego. He participated in the railroad strike at Soldier Summit, Utah, three years ago, when 1,200 men were led from their work by the I. W. W.'s.
That activity, friends of Hillstrom believe, brought him the anger of capitalists, and his conviction on a murder charge.
When the I. W. W. threats were made police met incoming trains and ordered suspected arrivals to keep going. The city was kept comparatively free of radicals. Those who persisted in remaining in town were arrested on charges of vagrancy. They were given long terms on the chain gang, constructing a new boulevard overlooking the city.
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From the Appeal to Reason of October 16, 1915:
Appeal Position On Hill Case
The following letter sent by the editor of the Appeal to Heber Ruffell, Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 2, 1915, is the position of this paper on the Hill case:
The APPEAL presumes that Joe Hill like other persons in similar circumstances is innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The officials of Utah, including the governor, regard Hill as guilty unless he can prove that he is innocent. The very fact that the governor asks him to produce evidence that he is innocent shows that the governor entertains a doubt as to Hill's guilt. Were he convinced hat Hill was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt he would never have offered to pardon him on the submission of further proof. Still the APPEAL is not claiming that Hill is absolutely innocent-it is claiming that Hill deserves a new trial because of the methods that were used to convict him. The fact that Hill's past so far as anybody knows was along humanitarian rather than criminal lines makes us naturally more sympathetic toward him and anxious that he be given a fair trial.
Aside from our opposition to capital punishment under any circumstances we believe that the state of Utah has not the right to take Joe Hill's life unless it has demonstrated beyond any doubt that he was in fact the murderer of the person he has been accused of killing.
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[Photograph added.]
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SOURCES
The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times,
and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon
-by William M. Adler
Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Aug 30, 2011
https://books.google.com/...
Note: in my opinion, best book yet written
about Joe Hill and the case of Utah v Hillstrom.
A review by our own Richard Myers (RIP):
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The Ogden Standard
(Ogden, Utah)
-Oct 16, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Goodwin's Weekly
(Salt Lake City, Utah)
(Also source for image of text on Goodwins.)
-Oct 9, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
(Also source for photos within article.)
-Oct 14, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Oct 16, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Virginia Snow Stephen
http://historytogo.utah.gov/...
Flag, Tierra y Libertad, Tijuana, May 1911
pdf! https://www.sandiegohistory.org/...
The IWW is coming
http://libcom.org/...
Joe Hill, International Socialist Review, Aug 1915
https://books.google.com/...
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Information from Archie Green via Gibbs Smith:
The Industrial Worker of March 6, 1913 announced that the new edition of the I. W. W. songbook (Little Red Songbook) would include eleven new songs. That edition of the songbook was designated as the Fifth Edition on the front cover. Nine of the eleven new songs were by Joe Hill, including "Mr. Block" on page 18.
Mr. Block - Utah Phillips
MR. BLOCK
By Joe Hill
(Air: "It Looks To Me Like a Big Time Tonight")
Please give me your attention, I'll introduce to you
A man that is a credit to "Our Red White and Blue,"
His head is made of lumber, and solid as a rock;
He is a common worker and his name is Mr. Block.
And Block he thinks he may
Be President some day.
CHORUS:
Oh Mr. Block, you were born by mistake,
You take the cake, you make me ache.
Tie a rock on your block and then jump in the lake,
Kindly do that for Liberty's sake.
Yes, Mr. Block is lucky; he found a job, by gee!
The sharks got seven dollars, for job and fare and fee.
They shipped him to a desert and dumped him with his truck,
But when he tried to find his job, he sure was out of luck,
He shouted, "That's too raw,
I'll fix them with the law."
Block hiked back to the city, but wasn't doing well.
He said "I'll join the union -- the great A. F. of L."
He got a job next morning, got fired in the night,
He said, "I'll see Sam Gompers and he'll fix that foreman right."
Sam Gompers said, "You see,
You've got our sympathy."
Election day he shouted, "A Socialist for Mayor!"
The "comrade" got elected, he happy was for fair,
But after the election he got an awful shock,
A great big socialistic Bull did rap him on the block.
And Comrade Block did sob,
"I helped him to his job."
The money kings in Cuba blew up the gunboat Maine,
But Block got awful angry and blamed it all on Spain.
He went right in the battle and there he lost his leg.
And now he's peddling shoestrings and is walking on a peg.
He shouts, "Remember Maine,
Hurrah! To hell with Spain!"
Poor Block he died one evening, I'm very glad to state,
He climbed the golden ladder up to the pearly gate.
He said, "Oh Mister Peter, one word I'd like to tell,
I'd like to meet the Astorbilts and John D Rockefell."
Old Pete said, "Is that so?
You'll meet them down below."