I have lived like an artist and I shall die like an artist.
-Joe Hill
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Sunday September 19, 1915
Salt Lake City, Utah - Joe Hill Denied Commutation by Utah Board of Pardons
Yesterday afternoon Fellow Worker Joe Hill appeared before the Utah Board of Pardons along with his attorneys Orrin N. Hilton and Soren X. Christensen. His petition for commutation was denied, and, he will, therefore, be shot to death by a Utah firing squad on October 1st.
Hellraisers will provide detailed coverage of that hearing in tomorrow's edition. For now, we would like to point out that Joe Hill has proclaimed that he is innocent of the murder of J. G. Morrison from the day that he was arrested, and continues to do so. He stands convicted on purely circumstantial evidence. And it is upon just such evidence that the state of Utah will put the rebel songwriter to death.
Hope is fading fast that Hill's life can be saved, nevertheless protest against his execution continue to pour into the Governor's office. In this week's edition of the Appeal to Reason, we find the following:
The following letter by Joseph Hillstrom, known among labor agitators as Joe Hill, was sent from prison by the condemned man to the Salt Lake Telegram. The letter is a convincing protest against unjust punishment, and rings with Joe Hill's dauntless defiance of the rotten rulers who would put a bullet in his heart as the penalty for being a class-conscious rebel against present conditions.
Joe Hill is ready to die like a man, but the workers for whose cause he lived and is about to die are guilty of great ingratitude if they permit him to be murdered without making a might protest. The same anarchy of the law that permits the murder of innocent Joe Hill because he is an "undesirable" agitator will permit, if allowed to go unchallenged, the persecution and murder of any workingman who is big enough to stand for justice and bold enough to speak against anarchy and the legalized murder of innocent workingmen. Strike now for Joe Hill, for yourself and for the whole working class. Write NOW to the governor of Utah, Salt lake City, and DEMAND that Joe Hill be given another trial.
[Photograph and paragraph break added added.]
The letter mentioned was written by Joe Hill on August 15th, and
previously featured in
Hellraisers. In that letter the
I. W. W. songwriter declared:
I have lived like an artist and I shall die like an artist.
The Northwest Worker of Everett, Washington, in its September 16th edition, announced that a mass meeting will be held on September 22nd to protest the legal murder of FW Hill. An open letter to the Governor of Utah from prominent socialist, Katherine H. Hodgins, was also published.
From The Northwest Worker of September 16, 1915:
Open Letter to the Governor
of Utah
-----
PROTESTING AGAINST LEGAL MURDER
OF JOE HILL
-----
Sir:-
It has been with deep interest and disgust that I have followed the reports of the trial of Joe Hillstrom (known to us as Joe Hill). It was with deeper disgust that I read of decision of the law-makers of your state to murder him legally on the first day of October. We who understand something of the underlying motives of judges and juries know why he was thus condemned on the flimsy evidence presented.
Aside from the fact that no proof of this man's guilt was offered, this farcical pretense of disapproving of murder comes with poor grace from a class who continually teach the fine art of professional murder, from the time a boy enters the kindergarten, until he is graduated as a finished product, decked in a hideous, garish uniform, with the implements of murder in his hand. I have served many years in the public schools of the country, and no one knows better than I do how well the murder-lust is cultivated in the hearts of little children. The public educational system is ably supplemented in this respect by the church, as exemplified by the careful nursing by it of the boy scout movement.
And slowly the masses are beginning to think. Slowly but surely they are becoming intelligent and class-conscious. A few more Ferrers, a few more Ludlows and Calumets, and one or two more Joe Hills, and the education will be sufficiently complete to be effective. I realize fully that your class are within their "rights" to murder legally, because you and your kind have made it lawful to murder legally. In short, you have the MIGHT. There fore you have the RIGHT. You have been teaching us this for thousands of years. that lesson, too, we will soon have thoroughly learned. There is a time coming, and it is not too far off, when the millions of Joe Hills will realize their mighty strength. And in that day and hour, remember it will have been your class that has taught them THAT MIGHT IS RIGHT.
And another thing, too, should be borne in mind: Joe Hill will be more effective dead than alive. You can murder his body, and bury it a thousand feet deep, but you cannot murder his spirit, the spirit of rebellion, that will be nursed and fostered all the more because of the fact of his having been murdered, murdered by the class to whom the teaching of the art of murder amounts almost to a religion in all countries today. His life shall have been taken in cold blood, in malice prepense by a class that glorify the murderer, and that has put a federal law upon the statute books making every male between the ages of 18 and 45 a legal murderer UPON THE CALL OF HIS COUNTRY, which to us, who understand, means the call of a group of parasites who today conduct the affairs of the world for their own special aggrandizement.
On Wednesday, Sept. 22, the intelligent workers of Everett will hold a public meeting protesting against the deliberate shooting, in cold blood, of one of their class. And be certain that they will vote the sentiment of millions of the downtrodden and oppressed.
The law-makers of Utah should bear in mind when their hired assassins pull the trigger that puts out the life of Joe Hill that a dead martyr is more dangerous to their reign of blood and cruelty than a hundred live rebels. They would do well to remember that Ferrer lives in millions of places today, where he was not known before your class snuffed out the light of his beautiful, splendid life. Yours is the class that has murdered in vain all the great souls of history. The mills of the gods grind slowly, BUT THEY GRIND!
Yours for a civilization in which the art of murder in all of its forms will be unknown.
KATHERINE H. HODGINS.
3118 Norton Ave., Everett, WN.
[Photograph added.]
Joe Hill's Application for Commutation:
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Joe Hill
-by Gibbs M. Smith
Gibbs Smith Inc, 1984
copyright, 1969
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
(Also source for image of text within article.)
-Sept 18, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Northwest Worker
(Everett, Washington)
(Also source for image of text within article.)
-Sept 16, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
IMAGES
Joe Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Joe Hill Mass Meeting,
NW Worker, Sept 18, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Katherine H Hodgins
(Also source for KHH as prominent socialist.)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
The Northwest Worker,
Socialist Party of Snohomish County,
Everett, WA, Sept 16, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Joe Hill Application
for Commutation to Utah
Board of Pardons, Sept 1, 1915
http://images.archives.utah.gov/...
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Information from Archie Green via Gibbs Smith:
Industrial Worker of July 11, 1911 anounces new edition of I. W. W. Songbook (Little Red Songbook) which includes "Long Haired Preachers"
Sung by Utah Phillips
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
The starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray
'Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:
Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
If you fight hard for children and wife --
Try to get something good in this life --
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:
FINAL CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and by
-Joe Hill
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