Interview: John Sillito John Sillito is a professor at Weber State University. He has done extensive research on the trial of Joe Hill and the early labor movement in Utah and the West Continued from previous page... Q: Hill's I.W.W. membership is actually unknown for some time. Once Hill is labeled a Wobbly, what impact does that have on the trial environment? A: Yeah, it does mean something. It means a lot, really. Wobblies are pictured in the local press, and you have to understand that the Wobblies are introduced to Utah earlier than the Joe Hill case. They've been involved in that strike at Tucker and that strike at Bingham. And so people have a sense that the Wobblies are bomb-throwers, people who are dedicated to overthrowing everything that civilized society holds dear. They don't believe in God, they don't believe in religion, they don't believe in marriage, they're lazy, they're -- they're criminals, all of the things that you could list that seem to be threatening to a society, the IWW seems to be for. And so within that backdrop, the press will make something of Joe Hill's affiliation. Obviously, then, Local 69 of the IWW begins to organize to defend Joe Hill. Once they do that, rumors are rampant that hundreds of IWW's are going to come to -- to Utah and to protest and bombs are going to be planted. A bomb device is found at one point; the IWW is blamed for it. This is in the wake of the bombing of the former governor of Idaho a decade before. So people are quite willing to believe that rhetoric about the IWW. Everything they've heard seems to substantiate it, and all they have to do is pick up an IWW leaflet and it says: The working class and the capitalist class have nothing in common and an historic struggle must go on until the workers of the world gain control of the means of production. That sounds pretty threatening to a lot of people. It sounded threatening to some union members, who, in the AF of L are working within the system, who say, you know, "I don't care about capitalism or any other kind of ism. What I care about is safer working conditions, better pay, shorter hours." So it builds into that. This is a culture dominated by one church. That church is just as anti-IWW as they are anti- socialism or -- or anarchism or any other kind of radical ism of the time. Now, does that mean that Joe Hill was railroaded by the Mormon Church? You know, I don't think so. I don't think it's quite that simple. But would the leaders of the Mormon Church or the leaders of Utah Construction or the leaders of any other corporate enterprise like to see the IWW no longer in existence? Absolutely. If this trial focuses attention on the threat that they pose, is that a problem? Not at all. Is there an instructor in art at the University of Utah who has the audacity to defend Joe Hill? Then, we will fire that person so that other people get the message if you defend the IWW, you better find yourself another job? The simple act of saying, "Joe Hill did not get a fair trial" creates the direct result in 1915, 1916 of losing your job. Society is threatened by the IWW and society is threatening the IWW at the same time. Joe Hill is a player in all of that. Q: Before we started, you mentioned the name of William King--as a figure who offered some interesting insight on society's view of the I.W.W. A: William King, for example, who is U.S. senator from Utah, makes a very telling comment about Joe Hill and the IWW. He says, "These people are homeless people. These people have no roots in society. They not only don't value the things you and I value, but they have no connection. They are -- they are migrants. They are people that -- that have no place in society." And that reflects the opinion of many people in Utah, this senator from Utah's opinion. Leaders of the LDS Church, while they don't comment directly in the press about Joe Hill, David O. McKay will say to Spry after the execution, "You did the right thing and we're proud of you for doing it." But in private and in public, leaders of the LDS Church will impute to socialists, anarchists, Wobblies and all kinds of radicals, as people who are not only wrong, but people who are wrong and misguided, but people who have a kind of a streak of negativism, of violence, of evil in them. That they are people that are just misfits. And they don't really offer solutions for the problems that face early 20th Century America. These are just misfits. There are problems that need to be solved, yes, but solutions are not going to come from these kind of rootless, you know, folks who don't cherish the virtues that civilization is built on. Q: Let's consider this era, the big picture of the era. This is an era of dynamic uncertainty. The Russian revolution is starting to play out. The old order in Europe is being thrown out. And there's geuine uncertainty about the future of the American experience. A: Fighting for the soul is exactly what they're doing, and fighting in a lot of ways, politically and in unions and elsewhere. The Progressive movement of early 20th Century America is an attempt to come up with a way of blunting what is obviously the power of corporate capitalism over our lives and our political institution and, at the same time, recognizing that on the left are the IWW and the Socialist Party and others who threaten the very underpinnings of capitalism. So how do you develop a middle course that can reform the worst parts of capitalism but prevent the excesses of the left? And progressivism permeates every aspect of life in that period of time. Education, child- rearing, housework, all kinds of things, music, art, are all influenced by that progressive spirit. That we literally live in a time in which things are difficult, but we have the possibility to change them. You know, problems are created by people. Perfect people will then solve the problems that face society. I don't think it's easy for us who grew up in a later period to understand the sense of optimism that there was in early 20th Century America. I mean, I read from the Socialists in Utah and their reports back to the national office. They honestly believe they are living within a period of a few years when the revolution will come and the cooperative commonwealth will be put into place. They honestly believe that's happening. It's a period of great optimism. It's a period of great challenge, and there are some real problems, but there's great optimism in -- in the ability to solve those, if you come up with the right set of solutions. World War I and then the Russian Revolution really change that. And the repression that you see in the United States in reaction to, first, the IWW and others who attack the war, who are disloyal -- it is claimed, and then many will support the Russian Revolution -- the Bolshevik revolution, once it takes place. It's almost like the air goes out of the balloon of optimism of the pre-war period. Q: I want to return to the Hill trial, and its aftermath. One comment that I found very, interesting was O.N. Hilton coming to Utah shortly after Hill's conviction, as the appellate process is beginning. And Hilton says to a reporter, "This Hill is a strange bird. It almost seems he wants to be a symbol for a cause." A: I think there is some of that, yeah. Hill's reading the press and he's realizing that this case is focusing attention not just on Joe Hill but on the whole question of the IWW and its analysis of the problems facing society. Is Joe Hill somebody who is willing to give up his life to be a martyr to the cause? You know, I don't know. And sometimes I kind of go back and forth on that. There are some things that suggest, yeah, he is quite willing to do that. There are other things that suggest, no, he is making a very fundamental point. And he says it time and time again publicly and in letters to his friends and elsewhere. "I deserve a fair trial. I didn't get a fair trial. That's all I want. And I'd rather die than say something that I didn't do." He said, "I really don't want a pardon. I want a fair trial. I want another trial. I'm" -- you know, "I'm not a guilty man. I don't have to prove my innocence," you know, "That's not the way it works." He is the most complicated and complex person, in many ways. He is a very complicated guy. He's a man of great talent musically and elsewhere. I mean, he understands the power of the idea. He understands you can say, "Don't waste time mourning -- organize." And that slogan will last forever. He has a great sense of humor. He says to big Bill Haywood, "Have my body hauled up to Wyoming and thrown over the line. I don't want to be found dead in Utah." Well, there's a guy that's, in a few hours, going to be executed, but that's a -- an interesting sense of humor. He says, "I die like a true rebel. I'm not going to bend." In a letter to a friend who's Swedish, he says, "You know what they say in Sweden, 'I'd rather break than bend an inch.'" So I don't know. I think there is a change. I think he realizes his value to the movement, possibly more as -- as a martyr than as a living person, even if he's pardoned. On the other hand, he tells people that as soon as he dies, he's off to Mars to organize the canal workers. I mean, what a complicated guy. Where does a guy that we know so little about, who has very little education, where does he pick up the ability to communicate ideas through cartoons, through music the way he does? Does he understand his symbolic value? Yeah, I think he does. Is he simply willing to die to be a martyr? Well, I don't know. In the FBI files back in Washington, there's a very interesting piece of information. The FBI -- it's predecessor -- it's called the Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice -- is monitoring the activities of radical groups, labor groups and political parties in Utah as early as I can tell is 1915, '16. And later, in the early '20's, they are monitoring the activities of a Utah attorney who's been a defender of the IWW who's running for president on a third party ticket. They infiltrate his campaign, they break into his campaign office, they steal files, they send reports back to Washington. So they're infiltrating these various organizations. Scandinavian social clubs and a variety of things. And in one of the files, this individual, Parley P. Christensen, a local radical attorney, says that Gov. Spry said to him, "If you'll go out to the prison and get Hill to say that he had nothing to do with the shooting and he had nothing to do with the robbery then I will commute his sentence." And Hill says to him, "Why should I say that? I'm an innocent man. I don't want my sentence to be commuted. I want a fair trial and I am perfectly willing to give up my life if I cannot have a fair trial." He is very consistent. There's no reason for Hill to pull any punches with Christensen. Christensen is a radical too. He can say to him, "Let me tell you the true story." He doesn't say anything other than what he's been saying all through the trial, which is, "I'm an innocent man. I deserve a fair trial." Q: During the course of the trial, Hill refuses to testify. Is that insignificant or is it significant? A: Well, I think it's very significant and I think the prosecution will build on that and will say, in effect, to the jury: If this man were innocent, he would stand up and tell you the facts. He claims he was shot in a quarrel. No quarrel is worth being executed for. The reason he won't take the stand is, you know, he refuses to say what happens. We do know that he had a bullet wound in his chest; he says it happened this way, we think it happened this other way. And Hill will not take the stand to tell you really what happened. "If he were an innocent man," the prosecuting attorney says, "if he were an innocent man, he would do that." Well, you're sitting on the jury and this prosecuting attorney's a pretty good attorney. And you say to yourself, "Well, you know, maybe that's true. Why in the world won't he tell us what happened?" He said, "I don't have to." You know, "I don't have to prove my innocence. I know what happened and I know what I did and what I didn't do. I've never double-crossed a person in my life. I've never double-crossed anybody and I didn't commit this crime." And he'll say that in other ways in his appeal, the Board of Pardons and elsewhere, he'll say, you know, "I didn't do it. I'm innocent of this crime." But he doesn't take the stand. One of his attorneys says, "Well, he got some bad advice. We were advising him he should testify and he got some advice from somebody else who told him he shouldn't. And he didn't and it probably weakened his case." I don't know whether it weakened his case or not. And, you know, in our society, we talk all the time about what happens when a defendant does or does not take the stand. In the days way before CNN and instant kind of communications, whether that was a major factor outside of the courtroom, I don't know. It was certainly played up in the press, but it clearly impacted, I think, the jury. Q: I think, looking at Utah officials, they truly expected, after the sentencing of Hill to be executed, they expected it to be over in relatively quick order. A: Well, a huge amount of mail and telegrams poured in to Utah as a result of the conviction. From people like Eugene Debs and Pres. Wilson to the Swedish ambassador to the United States. So you have people like that to just common, ordinary workers who write to Gov. Spry and say, "Joe Hill did not get a fair trial. Joe Hill deserves a fair trial. Joe Hill is an innocent man." So there is a great deal of outcry from prominent people and from average working-class folks as well. It unites organizations that are not always sympathetic to the IWW. The AF of L will ask the governor to intervene, will ask for commutation. The AF of L and the IWW have not exactly been getting on too well. The IWW refers to the American Federation of Labor as a tool of the capitalist class. Well, the AFL doesn't like that. But they are willing to intervene to protect a worker from what they think is an unfair sentence. The Socialist Party will intervene locally and nationally, and they've had conflicts with the IWW. Bill Haywood--a Wobbly leader--has been expelled from the Socialist Party because it is claimed he advocates sabotage and violence. So they've had some -- some bad feelings. Joe Hill writes a song called Mr. Block. And Mr. Block works to elect a socialist to the city council, hoping that when that socialist is in office, he'll protect working people. And, according to Hill's song, he doesn't; he becomes just another politician. There's a real interesting socialist connection in the Hill case. Hill goes to the doctor, Dr. Frank McHugh, and McHugh is a socialist. He's run for office as a socialist. He's identified in the public press, he and his wife both are socialist. They've moved into Utah a couple years prior to this and he's practicing medicine out there in Murray. Hill goes to McHugh, perhaps because he's a socialist. He goes to McHugh because he is treating members of the family that he's staying with. He thinks McHugh will not turn him in. Many, many years later, McHugh's widow told me "He also assumed that my husband would not charge him for the medical services." Well, McHugh does call the Murray police and say, "This guy may have had something to do with that killing." So a socialist doctor calls the Murray police, and the Murray policeman that goes to arrest Joe Hill has in fact been the Socialist Party's candidate for county sheriff in the election prior to that. And he arrests Hill and shoots him in the hand. And then Joe Hill is defended by two attorneys who are both socialists. Well, there's an interesting connection there. Does that mean that the Socialist Party was out to get Hill? No, they weren't. There's an interesting connection. Does it make it a little less likely that Joe Hill was railroaded by the copper bosses and the Mormon Church? It probably does. It's such a complicated case. And it gets so amplified as we tell it and retell it. It gets so interpreted, you know? In some ways, I wish there had been television. It would be nice to see the video of that case and the press coverage of that, to see those people in action is one of those historical things that I wished I had access to. So there is a great outcry against the execution of Joe Hill on a variety of ways: He's an innocent man. Capital punishment is wrong. The Episcopal bishop of Utah will protest the execution, Bishop Jones, who is also a socialist, and say, "It's wrong." You know, "He didn't get a fair trial, but, more importantly, capital punishment is wrong. We shouldn't do this. It isn't right for the State to take a life to pay for another life." The Swedish government will say, in effect: This person is a Swedish national and ought not be dealt with this way. He has certain rights. So a lot of people get involved in it. There's an orchestrated campaign. The IWW will send out form letters for people to fill out or sign, and petitions and things. And I think it really infuriates a lot of public officials in Utah. I think Gov. Spry does not like the idea that Woodrow Wilson is telling him how to run the state of Utah. He's a Democrat, in the first place and, what right does the federal government have to tell a state how to conduct its business? Now, that's a notion that still floats around in Utah minds today. It isn't the right of the federal government or the Swedish ambassador or the AF of L or the Socialist Party or anybody else to tell us how to run our -- our justice system. One of the prosecuting attorneys says, in fact, "You know, what really bothers me about this guy is not that he maintains his innocence. That's fine. I don't think he is innocent. But he attacks the system. He has no value for the system of justice. He claims that's what's motivating his whole actions, the Constitution, but he doesn't have any real regard for the Constitution. And for somebody to say to that prosecuting attorney or that governor, "What you've done is a travesty," that's a direct attack. And I think it raises the rhetoric, raises the level of intensity. I think government figures become adamant that they are not going to be pushed around by a bunch of outsiders. Now, obviously, they're not all outsiders. There's a lot of support in Utah. But you know, we don't have polls in that era, but I would assume that if Gallup had been around, public opinion would have not favored Joe Hill or the IWW in Utah in 1915. Q: I gain the sense Joe Hill has become a symbol for everyone, for every interest. A: I think that's exactly what happens. And let's not forget that Joe Hill is, after all, a real worker. He's a migrant worker. He's a laborer. He's a blue collar worker. And he moves from being that person to a kind of a different version, almost a sensitive, romantic poet. Joe Hill was clearly a poet. Joe Hill was clearly a songwriter, but he's also an ordinary worker. And the symbolism it -- it obviously gets more pronounced after Joe Hill's execution. But even in the period between the trial and the appeal and the Board of Pardons and his ultimate execution, yeah, he takes upon symbolic proportions. He is such a complicated person to understand. You can find in the historical record, people saying, "He is the nicest, gentlest, sweetest guy in the world. He never harmed anybody. He's never broken the law." Joe Hill himself says, "I was only in jail one time, and that's for vagrancy and that's because I was causing a little too much problem for the local authorities in San Pedro and they didn't know what to do with me, and so they put me in jail for vagrancy." On the other hand, you have people say he was a common criminal. You have an IWW who says he was a criminal, he robbed, he stealed, he cheated, he got involved with women all over the world. Other Wobblies say Joe Hill was one of those rare kind of guys who didn't chase women and drink and carouse and carry on. Ray Christensen, Soren Christensen's brother, was still living when I first started my research of Joe Hill, which is nearly 25 years ago now. He told me he had the cruelest eyes he'd ever seen. He said, "I've seen a lot of guilty men. That man had the eyes of a guilty man. They were cruel. They penetrated you. He was a hard-bitten, evil, cruel man." Other people said, "How could anybody as sensitive and as talented, as artistic as Joe Hill kill anybody? It's impossible." He moves somehow from being a real flesh-and- blood person before he's executed to being a symbol. In some ways even in his own mind, I guess. How else would -- would you deal with it? He's been in jail now for, what, nearly two years? The case is swirling around him and public attention, international media attention. In some ways, I guess maybe even Hill becomes to himself a symbol. He never loses his sense of humor. He never -- he never says that he's guilty. He always maintains his innocence. But, yeah, he is a symbol to be manipulated then -- and for years to come. Q: Why are we still talking about Joe Hill? Why not some other figure? A: Well, in part, because of that whole campaign that's gone on for the 80 years since the execution. It has turned Joe Hill into a martyr of the labor movement. That's a part of it. It's gone way beyond just the Utah connection. Joe Hill has become a symbol -- in every mine and mill where working folks defend their rights, that's where you'll find Joe Hill, in the song that -- that Alfred Hayzand wrote. So -- so there's part of that. But beyond that, there's all the elements of absolute drama in the Joe Hill case. A man who maintains, to the very end, his innocence, who says, "I'm willing to die as a true blue rebel rather than say I did something I didn't do. There's the power of the individual against the power of the state, whether you accept that it was a combination of the copper bosses and the Mormon Church or not, there is clearly that individual protesting against the power of the state. There's his music. His music is captivating. It straightforward. It's direct. There's his humor, you know, that "Don't mourn--organize." You see it all over the world. He's a master at understanding the ability to use that sort of approach to propaganda. So I think it's partly the drama, just the drama of the case itself. The other thing that I think is really there, nobody honestly knows what happened except Joe Hill. Now, he always said he was innocent, but nobody really knows. Dr. McHugh said, some thirty years later, that Joe Hill had confessed. "I'm not such a bad guy. I shot in self-defense." He needed some money to get out of town. Well, there's no way of verifying that. Otto Applequist, [a friend of Joe Hill's in Utah] people think is the person that really did the shooting. Merlin Morrison [a son and brother of the two men murdered in the grocery store in 1914] I interviewed about ten years before he died. The event was as dramatic for Merlin Morrison in 1972 as it was in 1914. He could just recall it immediately. Now, maybe he could recall it simply because he'd told it so many times, it just was something he could quickly recall. But nobody knows. Can I tell you Joe Hill was innocent? I can't. Can I tell you he was guilty? I can't. Could I tell you that he didn't get a fair trial? Well, I don't think he did. Can I say that he didn't get a very good defense? No, I don't think he did. But there is so much mystery associated with it. It's just one of those cases where people keep going back and looking for additional kinds of evidence to try to figure it out. Why would he let himself become a symbol to the degree he let himself become a symbol? Why would he give up his life if he was really innocent? I mean, it's just a compelling drama. And it's an unanswerable question in many ways, an unanswerable question. Q: One of the saddest aspects is it seems that shortly after Mr. Morrison and his son are buried, they're forgotten. A: Yeah, they are forgotten. There's a public outcry immediately, but they really are forgotten. They're the forgotten people in this -- this whole case. And so does that mean we shouldn't try to understand this case? We shouldn't try to see whether or not in fact an injustice was done? You know, I don't think so. I think this is an important case that really does transcend the event that took place in the Morrison store. But the event that took place in the Morrison store is not without impact, either in the case of Joe Hill or, more importantly, in the case of the lives of the Morrison family. And I can't speak for every student of the Joe Hill case, but, believe me, as an individual historian, I believe the Morrisons suffered a great loss. I don't happen to believe that the person they believe that caused that great loss was the person that did it. We had an event here in Utah in 1990 to mark the 75th anniversary of the execution of Joe Hill and it was a controversial event. We had public concert, we had an academic program that looked at the case, and we had various other activities. The opening night, I made it certain that we say a few words about John and Arling Morrison, and we had a moment of silence for the Morrisons. They suffered. They suffered greatly. Joe Hill suffered greatly. Lots of people suffered in that case. In some ways, it would be nice if we really could resolve it. And I don't know that we ever really will resolve it. But we ought not forget the Morrisons and we ought not forget the impact that killing, regardless of who did it, had on their family and the rest of their lives. It was a terrible event. Terrible event.                   About the Program || Joe Hill Home || PBS Home