Authors: Wallace Stegner
Joe Hill or Joe Hillstrom, he stands before the bar of justice and hears himself convicted of murder in the first degree. Indifferently, standing straight because his body has never learned to slouch, but not respectful, not cowed, he hears the judge’s dry intoning voice ask him if he has any reason why he should not be sentenced, and he shrugs off the formality: “No, let it go at that.” According to the laws of Utah he is offered his choice between hanging and shooting, and his lip lifts (out of personal insolence or out of some perception of how he must look for the public at such a moment?) “I’ll take shooting,” Hill or Hillstrom says clearly. “I’m used to that. I’ve been shot at a few times before and I guess I can stand it again.”
With his life already forfeit and his death sentence forming on the judge’s withered lips, he ironically underlines the refusal he has made steadfastly through the trial. The bullet wound which properly explained would clear him becomes the source of an acid joke just before the words that will end his life.
That joke too goes broadcast from headquarters and adds its touch to the growing portrait of Joe Hill. The verdict has inspired a renewed burst of activity; the sentence which condemns Joe Hillstrom to be shot on September 4 doubles it again. Defense committee and lawyers sit late in the little office off the Wobbly hall. Jack Carpenter, the gimpy-legged printer, in eye shade and apron sets stick after stick of worn type. Across the country men lounging on corners or outside the doors of skid-road joints hear, among denunciations of war and the Rockefellers and the lumber trust, the story of Joe Hill’s frame-up, and a few of them drop coins in the hat. From his parents’ farm in Minnesota Gus Lund, ex-preacher, sends twenty dollars, and later another twenty. From the ranch crowded with lushes and hangers-on in the Valley of the Moon, Jack London sends a hundred dollars and a short note of cheer.
The man in jail, Joe Hillstrom or Joe Hill, waits, and fills his days answering his mail, and keeps his mouth shut.
Salt Lake City
Sept. 15, 1914
Dear friend and fellow worker:
Yours of Sept. 9 at hand. Glad to hear that you are still alive and kicking and back on the firing line again
.
So you tried to imitate Knowles, the Nature Freak, and live the simple life. It might be all right for a little while, as you say, but I am afraid a fellow would get simple getting too much of the simple life
.
Well, I guess the wholesale butchery going on in Europe is putting the kibosh on everything, even the organization work, to some extent. As a rule, a fellow don’t bother his head much about unions and the class struggle when his belly is flapping up against his spine. Getting the wrinkles out is then the main issue, and everything else side issues
…
Well, I guess Van has told you about my case, and he knows more about it than I do, because he has been around here and on the outside. I am feeling well under the circumstances and I am fortunate enough to have the ability to entertain myself and look at everything from the bright side. So there is nothing you can do for me. I know you would if you could
.
With best wishes to the bunch,
Yours for the OBU,
J
OE
H
ILL
Salt Lake City
Dec. 2, 1914
Dear friend and fellow worker:
Received your letter and should have answered before, but have been busy working on some musical composition and whenever I get an “inspiration” I cant quit until it’s finished
.
I am glad to hear that you manage to make both ends meet, in spite of the industrial deal, but there is no use being pessimistic in this glorious land of plenty. Self-preservation is, or should be, the first law of nature. The animals, when in a natural state, are showing us the way. When they are hungry they will always try to get
something to eat or else they will die in the attempt. That’s natural; to starve to death is unnatural
.
No, I have not heard that song about “Tipperary” but if you send it as you said you would I might try to dope something out about that Frisco fair. I am not familiar with the actual conditions of Frisco at present; and when I make a song I always try to picture things as they really are. Of course a little pepper and salt is allowed in order to bring out the facts more clearly. If you send me that sheet music and give me some of the peculiarities and ridiculous points about the conditions in general on or about the fairground, I’ll try to do the best I can
.
Yours for the OBU,
J
OE
H
ILL
Salt Lake City
Jan. 3, 1915
Dear Gus:
Jud Ricket was telling me the other day he had had two or three contributions from you for the defense fund. You know I never was very sold on the sky pilots, but you’re one preacher I’ll let into heaven whenever I happen to be tending door. Ricket tells me funds keep coming in and there is going to be enough to finance the appeal clear to the supreme court. I’m still pretty sure no man is worth that much, but if I get sore and tell them to give the money to strike relief somewhere they don’t pay any attention, so I have learned to keep still. Keep still and sit still. I’d make a first class toadstool
.
I was thinking the other day, when the new year rolled around, that I’ve been in this calaboose almost a full year, and that’s a long time to live on the kind of stew they serve here. The coffee is a little better than you used to make, but not enough to get excited about. Well, when we used to sit in the kitchen and drink that turpentine we never thought that pretty soon you’d be hoeing corn and I’d be where I am. I keep myself in good spirits by reminding myself that the worst is yet to come
.
No chance to read anything here. Once a month or so a missionary of some kind comes around with a basket of books, but they’re all full of moral uplift and angel food, and I’d rather read old
letters over again than waste my time on that. This missionary is a lot like you used to be. I think he prays for me
.
Write me when you can. One thing this jail has made out of me is a good correspondent
.
Your friend
J
OE
Salt Lake City
Feb. 13, 1915
Dear friend and fellow worker:
Should have answered your letter before but have been busy working on a song named “The Rebel Girl” (words and music) which I hope will help to line up the women workers in the OBU, and I hope you will excuse me
.
I see you made a big thing out of that Tipperary song. In fact, a whole lot more than I ever expected. I didn’t suppose that it would sell very well outside of Frisco, though by the way I got a letter from Swasey in N.Y. and he told me that “Casey Jones” made quite a hit in London, and “Casey Jones” he was an Angeleno, you know, and I never expected that he would leave Los Angeles at all
.
The other day the defense committee got ten bucks from a company of soldiers stationed on the Mexican line. How is that, old top? Maybe they are remembering some of the cigars in glass bottles that they smoked at the expense of the Tierra y Libertad bunch
.
Don’t know much about my case. The Sup. Court will “sit on” it sometime in the sweet bye and bye and that’s all I know about it
.
Give my best to the bunch,
J
OE
H
ILL
Salt Lake City
March 22, 1915
Dear friend and fellow worker:
Yours of March 13 at hand. I note that you have gone “back to nature” again and I must confess that it is making me a little homesick when you mention that “little cabin in the hills” stuff
.
You can talk about your dances, picnics, and blowouts, and it won’t affect me, but the “little cabin” stuff always gets my goat. That’s the only life I know
.
Yes, that Tipperary song is spreading like the smallpox they say. Sec. 69 tells me that there is a steady stream of silver from Frisco on account of it. The unemployed all over the country have adopted it as a marching song in their parades, and in New York City they changed it to some extent so as to fit the brand of soup dished out in N.Y. They are doing great work in N.Y. this year. The unemployed have been organized and have big meetings every night. Gurley Flynn, George Swasey (the human phonograph) and other live ones are there, and Gurley F. tells me things are looking favorable for the OBU
.
The hearing of my case has been postponed, they say, and they are trying to make me believe that it is for my benefit, but I’ll tell you that it is damn hard for me to see where the benefit comes in at; damn hard
.
Well, I have about a dozen letters to answer
.
Yours as ever,
J
OE
H
ILL
Salt Lake City
June 6, 1915
Dear friend and fellow worker:
Your welcome letter received, and am glad to note that you are still sticking to your “little cabin in the hills.” I would like to get a little of that close to nature stuff myself for a couple of months in order to regain a little vitality, and a little flesh on my rotting bones. My case was argued on the 28th of May, and according to Judge Hilton the results were satisfactory. He says he is sure of securing a reversal, and if so, there will hardly be another trial, for the simple reason that there won’t be anything to try
…
Your friend,
J
OE
P.S.—I’ve just found out that the Superior Court judges are getting ready to go on their vacation until next fall, so I guess there won’t be anything decided on my case for some time. But “everything comes to him who waits” they say, and that’s the only consolation I got now
.
He had almost a month to sit and think it over between the time the Supreme Court denied his appeal and the time they came to take him back to the District Court for resentencing, but he found this waiting easier because by now he brought resignation to it. Ricket and Hilton tried to inject cheer into him day after day, but it leaked out as fast as they poured it in. He had no need for cheer. He watched them almost with pity as they wasted their time and strength in a stubborn, step-by-step retreat.
His mail increased sharply after the Supreme Court decision, and all of it was meant as encouragement. (
Don’t give up. We’ll fight it to the highest court in the country. The dirty plutes don’t know what they started when they started trying to railroad you. We’ll fill Salt Lake so full of sab cats the bulb will crawl under the beds
.) It astonished him that so many spoke to him in their letters as if they were old friends; he was surprised that so many knew his songs. More than once, reading their letters, he found himself thinking with a remote pity of Joe Hill, held in the Salt Lake jail, Joe Hill the rebel song writer. He thought of himself not as himself but as an acquaintance, a name he had heard of. But he knew in his bones they would kill him.
They came for him one day at midmorning, two deputies named Young and Raleigh, and behind them Sheriff Coues and Chief Barry of the Police Department.
“Little walk in the park,” Raleigh said as he slipped the handcuff on Joe’s wrist. Joe glanced down; his wrist was bare bone. He said to Raleigh, “Looks like a chicken’s neck in a horse collar. You’d better tighten that up or I’ll slide right through.”
“Well, if you insist,” Raleigh said. He was a beefy man who was a professional wrestler in his off time, and he had a purple mat-burn on one cheekbone. Beyond the gate the sheriff was relaxed, wrinkle-necked, ministerial. The police chief was a short, dew-lapped man with a mad, stubborn mouth.
“Why all the escort?” Joe said.
The chief looked at him as if he were personally furious. Sheriff Coues said, “Some of your Wobbly friends have been making threats.”
“Good for them,” Joe said. “What are they going to do?”
“Nothing!” the chief said, short and sudden as an explosion.
“Can’t let you get away without a struggle,” the sheriff said mildly. “Have to make an effort to hang onto you.”
They led him out and down the corridor and out past the office and into the alley. After the cool stone jail the heat of the sun-beaten pavement was shrivelling, and the light was so strong that Joe walked the first two hundred feet with his hand cupping his eyes. Objects swam in a blind red glare, and he smelled smells he had not smelled in weeks: outside smells, asphalt and gasoline and horse manure and the moldy earth-smell of the gutter where a trickle of water ran.
They hurried him across the street and along the sidewalk under the park trees. A squirrel shot across in front of them and up the trunk of a boxelder, and people passing stared at the manacled man. He walked with his face straight ahead, the swimming dazzle gone from his eyes now, his mind on the thing he was headed toward. There was a tightness in his chest; he felt his wound. Into the cool, lofty, cuspidor-smelling tile-floored hall, then the five of them jamming shoulders in the elevator cage, staring at the back of the elevator operator’s bald head and hearing the sigh of the shaft, seeing the swaying snaky cables move downward past them.
This was all as it had been many times before, and now this time the last: the cool sigh of the shaft and the bald head of the operator and the echoing tiles and the cuspidor smell of justice. He saw the hall and the offices and the sign above the door on the left that said Third District Court, Judge M. L. Ritchie.
Voices floated out the door. He heard the dry old voice of the judge and a heavy bass that replied. Then they were at the door, steel pulled at his wrist, the proceedings in the courtroom momentarily paused as they came in, and Joe, walking with his head up, met the bleak impersonal glance of the man who had condemned him once and would condemn him again. The judge nodded slightly to the party, indicating that they should sit down and wait. “The prisoners will stand forward,” he said.