In 1914, Joe Hill was convicted of murder in Utah and sentenced to death by firing squad, igniting international controversy. Many believed Hill was innocent, condemned for his association with the Industrial Workers of the World-the radical Wobblies. Now, following four years of intensive investigation, William M. Adler gives us the first full-scale biography of Joe Hill, and presents never … before published documentary evidence that comes as close as one can to definitively exonerating him.
Joe Hill’s gripping tale is set against a brief but electrifying moment in American history, between the century’s turn and World War I, when the call for industrial unionism struck a deep chord among disenfranchised workers; when class warfare raged and capitalism was on the run. Hill was the union’s preeminent songwriter, and in death, he became organized labor’s most venerated martyr, celebrated by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and immortalized in the ballad “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.”
The Man Who Never Died does justice to Joe Hill’s extraordinary life and its controversial end. Drawing on extensive new evidence, Adler deconstructs the case against his subject and argues convincingly for the guilt of another man. Reading like a murder mystery, and set against the background of the raw, turn-of-the-century West, this essential American story will make news and expose the roots of critical contemporary issues.
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Absolutely terrific book ~
It took William M. Adler five and a half years to complete this outstanding biography about Joe Hill, (nee Joseph Hillström), and it shows. His research into the life of Hill, a Swedish ex-pat who was a Laureate of Labor during the International Workers of the World labor movement in the U.S. and Canada in the early part of the Twentieth Century, is exhilarating and thorough.
Hill, an immigrant laborer, fled life in the religiously intolerant Sweden for the American dream after his parents died. Rather than discovering the promised vision of freedom, he found economic injustice, deplorable working conditions, bare, meager wages, a low standard of living, and controlling, inhumane bosses.
Joe got involved with the I.W.W. (the Wobblies) movement in several cities where he worked organizing rallies for the union and ultimately rose to fame due to his exceptional talent for writing about current conditions, which he set to popular tunes. His songs, infused with irony and humor, stand up as some of the best folks songs I’ve ever heard.
After following the work flow to a series of towns and going to Baja California in 1910 to take part in the Mexican Revolution along with Mexican allies of similar radical persuasion, Joe and another Swedish immigrant, Otto Appelquist, ended up at a boarding house outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. There, Hill and Appelquist both had their eye on the same young woman, Hilda Erickson, to whom Otto became engaged. On the same night Grocer John G. Morrison and his son Arling were murdered at their store, Joe turned up at a physican’s house with a bullet wound. He told the doctor he was shot by a romantic rival. Hilda had recently broken off her engagement to Applelquist, and Hill, a songwriter, wrote Hilda two love songs before she broke off it off with Otto.
Alder goes into diligent detail about another fellow in town who went by the alias Frank Z. Wilson, one of many fake identities. Wilson, somewhat of a Hill look-a-like, was a staunch career criminal with a trail of badass crimes as long as Joe’s list of conscientious actions that were taken by a man with a high sense of morality and intellect, and deeply devoted to justice, fairness, worker’s rights, and the betterment of humankind.
Adler also does an outstanding job chronicling the political and religious views and aspirations of those in positions of power in Utah and how they conflicted with Joe’s union supporter rebel persona.
With the sketchy Wilson at large, and without circumstantial or other evidence against Joe Hill, Joe was booked for the Morrison murders. The trial proceedings against Joe were corrupt and manipulated; there was failure to show motive, insufficient identification, and some of the jurors were appointed by a judge with a political aspirations and past that set him squarely against Hill.
As an itinerant physical laborer, Joe Hill couldn’t afford a defense and notably fired his lawyers while court was in session, but his request was not honored by the judge. When his case was on appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, he had the help of famed attorney Orrin N. Hilton who declared: “The main thing the state had on Hill was that he was an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty. Hill tried to keep the IWW out of [the trial] … but the press fastened it upon him.”
Though his life was on the line, Joe refused to divulge the woman’s name he was involved with, or that of her other suitor, Otto Appelquist, who coincidentally skipped out of town the night Joe was arrested, never to return. Helen Keller, the Swedish Ambassador, President Woodrow Wilson, the activist and orator Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, (for whom Joe wrote the song, “The Rebel Girl”), and other high profile persons in society and the labor movement, rallied for Joe in various ways.
Hill’s complex story is of IWW’s most acclaimed martyr – a man of integrity who saw his own life as insignificant in contrast to the needs of the working people and causes which he loyally devoted himself to – versus a false, wicked, and cowardly system, peopled by vile fools. Joe never wavered in his stand for a just trial, which he did not get.
William Adler presents this accomplished account without stating his ultimate judgement on the matter, so I will. Hill, a political prisioner, was framed, and the corrupt legal system has not changed much since. Hill is a hero of mine. Here is one of his songs to Hilda:
OH, PLEASE LET ME DANCE THIS LAST WALTZ WITH YOU
When I hear that melody, with its rhythmic harmony,
Then I feel just like I’d be in a dream entrancing,
And I’d like to float through space, softly glide from place to place,
With the fascinating grace of a fairy dancing.
Oh, please let me dance this waltz with you,
And look in your dreamy eyes of blue.
Sweet imagination, smooth, gliding sensation,
Oh, love, I would die just for dancing this waltz with you.
Listen to that mellow strain, come and let us waltz again.
Please don’t let me ask in vain; I just feel like flying,
Put your head close to my heart, And we’ll never, never part.
Come my darling, let us start, from joy I’m nearly dying.