Morrison Family

On the evening of Saturday, Jan. 10, 1914, John G. Morrison was getting ready to close his downtown Salt Lake City grocery for the night. At just past 9:45 p.m., Morrison was dragging a sack of potatoes through the store, while his 17-year-old son, Arling, swept the floor; his 13-year-old son, Merlin, was in a rear storeroom.

Suddenly, two men with red bandanas obscuring their faces burst through the front door. “We’ve got you now!” they yelled. A shot rang out. A bullet hit Morrison in the right side of his chest, dropping him to the floor. Arling grabbed a revolver from the ice chest. As he attempted to fire, he was shot three times – twice in the back.

Neighbors who heard the commotion saw the two men flee the building. Some said one of the men was clutching his chest and stooping over. One witness said they heard the man call out, “Hold on, Bob, I’m shot.”

Young Merlin emerged from his hiding place in the rear storeroom, from which he had seen at least some of the confrontation, to find his brother already dead and his father breathing his last breaths.

About 5 miles south, sometime before midnight, a 34-year-old Swedish immigrant known as Joe Hill staggered into the doorway of Dr. Frank M. McHugh’s home office in Murray.

“Is that you, doctor?” Hill called out.

“Yes, what is it?” McHugh replied.

“I’ve been shot, doc, and want you to do something for me.”

Hill explained that another man had shot him in a quarrel over a woman. As Hill said he was as much to blame in the matter as his shooter, he asked the doctor to keep it quiet.

Dr. Arthur Bird, passing in his car, noticed his colleague’s lights on and went to see if he needed assistance, arriving just as McHugh was finishing bandaging Hill. The shot was a lucky one – it passed completely through his body, puncturing his lung but missing his heart; the wound would not require hospitalization. As they tended to him, the doctors noticed that Hill carried a pistol in a shoulder holster.

Headlines about the Morrisons’ murders splashed across local newspapers in the following days. Gov. William Spry announced a $500 reward for information leading to the conviction of their killers. Hoping to get the reward, McHugh reported Hill’s gunshot wound to the Murray police department.

In the wee hours of Wednesday, Jan. 14, Hill was arrested as he lay on a cot in the house where he was staying. The jumpy arresting officer shot Hill through his right hand, saying he thought he was reaching for a gun.

When the newspapers found out about Hill’s status as the foremost writer of propaganda songs for the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor union with socialist ties, they wasted no time declaring him guilty of the murders. Overnight, Hill became a symbol – representing, depending on one’s ideology, either the violence inherent in the labor movement, or of the wickedness of the capitalist ruling class in perverting justice to crush union opposition.

 

Joe Hill was born Joel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden, in 1879. He grew up in a musical family that sang together; as a boy, Hill learned to play the violin and began writing his first songs about his family. When he was 8, his father died of injuries sustained on the job as a railway conductor. Hill left school at age 12 to work in a rope factory, then worked at the local port. When he was 22, after his mother died, he and his brother Paul caught a steamship to America. Upon arrival, Hill changed his name to Joseph Hillstrom, though he became best known by the shortened version: Joe Hill.

Hill worked his way west, arriving in San Francisco by the time of the 1906 earthquake there. He and a friend hoboed their way up to Oregon, where by 1908 he had joined the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, whose members were known as “Wobblies.”

The IWW was known as the “one big union.” Whereas other unions were specific to certain trades – miners, millworkers, engineers, conductors, etc. – the Wobblies welcomed all workers. The idea was that if one trade went on strike, the rest of the trades would, too, increasing their bargaining leverage.

The IWW had been founded in Chicago in 1905, with one of the founders and key leaders being Salt Lake City native Big Bill Haywood. Wobblies espoused many socialist ideals, marching under a red banner and exhorting the “workers of the world” to join them. In the eyes of industrialists and members of the ruling class, the IWW was a menace and threat to the social order.

Songs were one of the key methods the Wobblies used to win hearts and minds. By 1911, many of the most popular Wobbly songs were those written by Joe Hill. One of his first big hits was called “The Preacher and the Slave.” The song made fun of religious leaders who tell impoverished workers that they shouldn’t bother seeking fair treatment on earth – that they will get their reward in heaven. In the chorus, a “long-haired preacher” says:

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.

In addition to introducing the phrase “pie in the sky” to the lexicon, the song resonated with workers impatient for better working conditions.

Each year, the IWW published its Little Red Songbook, compiling the most popular Wobbly anthems. In the 1912 edition, four out of seven songs were written by Hill; in the 1913 edition, he wrote 10 out of 12 songs.

His songwriting success didn’t make him much money, however, and Hill continued to drift from job to job. By 1913, Hill was employed as a dockworker at Los Angeles Harbor. There, he and friend Otto Appelquist befriended a pair of fellow Swedes, brothers John and Ed Eselius. The brothers were about to return to their family home in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray, and they encouraged Hill and Appelquist to join them in one of the plentiful smelting and mining jobs there.

In August 1913, after spending 30 days in a Los Angeles jail on vagrancy charges, Hill hopped a boxcar bound for Salt Lake City. As it happened, Utah had recently been the scene of some intense Wobbly activity.

The IWW opened its first Salt Lake City union hall in 1910; in July 1913, just a month before Hill arrived in town, the IWW orchestrated a strike among workers building a grade for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad near Tucker. Strikers demanded that their employer, the Utah Construction Co. – the state’s largest contractor – provide adequate food and bedding, sanitary bathing and laundry facilities, and a raise of 25 cents per day.

The company conceded to the strikers’ demands, but officials vowed revenge on the union. A month later, on Aug. 12, 1913, the company sent 20 armed thugs to violently break up an IWW meeting in Salt Lake City.

Hill arrived in town just days later. His friend Appelquist had already arrived in Utah, and both stayed with the Eselius brothers in Murray while lining up work. Within a month, Hill and Appelquist took jobs in Park City’s Silver King Mine. When Hill fell ill in December, he and Appelquist returned to stay with the Eselius family as he recovered over the Christmas holiday.



Morrison Family

The Eselius house was a bustling place, with much of the brothers’ extended family living there. A 20-year-old niece, Hilda Erickson, who boarded in Salt Lake City, was a frequent visitor. She and Appelquist became an item, and by Christmas, they were engaged to be married. However, just a few days into the new year, Erickson called off the engagement.

According to a letter written by Erickson – which author William Adler published for the first time in his 2011 book The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, the source for much of this story – Appelquist “got very angry and asked me if I liked Joe better than him.” Erickson told him no, but that didn’t stop Hill from teasing his friend that he was going to take her from him.

Despite this tension, Hill and Appelquist continued to room together at the Eselius house. On Jan. 10, 1914, the day of the Morrison killings, the pair spent most of the day at the house trying to fix a motorcycle. That evening Erickson, Appelquist and a friend went to see a 7:30 p.m. vaudeville show. They left a note for Hill, who joined them at the theater before parting ways after the show.

Erickson next saw Hill the following morning, as he lay on a cot in the Eselius house. When she asked him what was wrong, he “told me that Otto shot him in a fit of anger,” adding that Appelquist “was sorry right after, and carried him to Dr. McHugh’s office.” Appelquist had disappeared into the night shortly after Hill returned from the doctor’s, never to be heard from again.

When Hill was arrested several days later, he simply told them he had been shot after arguing over a woman, but he refused to name the shooter or the woman. Hill didn’t want to sully the honor of Erickson – and, stubbornly idealistic, he believed in the presumption of innocence, and that the burden lay on prosecutors to prove his guilt. As he knew he was not guilty, he had faith he would eventually be exonerated.

As Hill awaited his trial, Utah newspapers ran articles about Wobblies causing chaos. “Work is the last thing in the world that an Industrial Worker of the World desires. His principles are based on the ‘general strike’ and the ‘social revolution,’ ” the Salt Lake Tribune wrote. “It is a challenge to society that can be met only with retaliation. The IWW makes war upon society … and society can only defend itself by warlike measures.”

The newspapers and civic leaders behaved as though the IWW were being put on trial alongside Hill. The IWW, in their own publications, began depicting Hill as an icon of capitalist oppression. Wobblies held protest rallies across the nation, and tens of thousands of letters and telegrams on Hill’s behalf flooded the governor’s office.

“The main thing the state has against Hill is that he is an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty,” wrote Hill’s pro bono defense lawyers, Ernest D. MacDougall and Frank B. Scott, a few weeks before his trial began.

Jury selection for Joe Hill’s murder trial began on June 10, 1914. The scales of justice seemed tipped against Hill from the start, as presiding Judge Morris L. Ritchie and the lead prosecutor, District Attorney Elmer O. Leatherwood, were friends belonging to the same clubs and fraternal organizations. When Ritchie deemed the defense attorneys were taking too long examining potential jurors, the judge simply appointed the last three of 12 jurors himself. One of those jurors was Joseph Kimball, a friend of the judge.

The first prosecution witness was Merlin Morrison, the 13-year-old son who had survived the shooting hiding in the storeroom. He testified that Hill looked like the man who shot his father. (Hill was being tried only for the elder Morrison’s murder; prosecutors theorized Appelquist shot the other son.)

Hill’s attorneys scarcely cross-examined the boy for fear he may start crying and upset the jury. Hill was furious with his attorneys, and the next day in open court, he fired them, demanding to represent himself. The judge allowed Hill to do so, but he also kept his fired lawyers on to provide defense as “friends of the court.”

The next key witness was Phoebe Seeley, who said she had walked past two men – one tall, one short – wearing red bandanas on the street outside the grocery store just before the murders. At the preliminary hearing, Seeley said she couldn’t be sure that the taller man was Hill. At trial, however, she said she thought he looked similar, but that the tall man had different hair – lighter, bushier. The judge interjected, proceeding to feed her lines to make it seem as though she were positively identifying Hill.

After Seeley’s testimony, the Deseret Evening News ran a story about the trial, accompanied by an editorial about the IWW, which said, in part: “They are revolutionaries. They believe in a violent overturning of the established institutions.”

Virginia Snow Stephen, daughter of former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Lorenzo Snow, read about the case and believed Hill was innocent. She got expert lawyer Soren Christensen to join the defense; the IWW paid his legal fees.

The prosecution rested its case having presented no motive for the shooting. Hill clearly did not know the Morrisons, and not a cent had been taken from the till, ruling out robbery. When the defense presented its case, Hill’s attorneys presented evidence suggesting an alternate suspect, along with a motive: revenge.

Criminals had attempted to rob Morrison twice in the decade before he was shot. Both times, he had foiled the would-be robbers by firing his pistol at them, sending them scurrying away. His most recent shootout had been just a few months before he was killed. He told a newspaper reporter at the time that he thought he knew who his attacker was, and that he feared he would be back.

The defense had a theory about who this mystery bandit was. Witness Peter Rhengreen testified that as he was walking to his overnight shift as a railroad machinist about 90 minutes after the shooting, he saw two men standing on the street a mile west of the crime scene. The men split up. The taller man then either lay down or fell on the snowy sidewalk, moaning and shutting his eyes. Rhengreen stopped and looked at him for a minute. Then the man got up and boarded a streetcar. The streetcar operator testified, too, and both witnesses identified the man they saw as Frank Z. Wilson.

Wilson was a career criminal who had spent his adult life in and out of jail. He had lately been on a crime spree, robbing railroad cars and attempting to burn down a brothel after a failed jewel heist.

Wilson, it turned out, was law enforcement’s original prime suspect. Police had arrested him in a dragnet as he was walking without a coat in the freezing cold near Morrison’s store around 1 a.m. the night of the shootings. Wilson gave a false name and lied about where he lived; he said he was out taking a walk before bed. A search revealed no weapon. Still, he was jailed, and a later search turned up a bloody handkerchief.

Yet, for reasons unclear, police determined Wilson was not involved. Instead, he voluntarily confessed to a robbery in Nevada and was sent there to be tried.

The final witness was Dr. F.M. Beer, who made two salient points. First, the bullet that struck Hill was jacketed in hard metal, whereas the Morrisons’ gun fired unjacketed, soft lead bullets. Second, the bullet holes in Hill’s coat were 4 inches lower than the holes in his body; the only way they lined up was if Hill had been holding his arms above his head, lifting the coat – hardly the posture of a brutal attacker.

The jury began deliberating at 4:45 p.m. on Friday, June 26, 1914. The next morning, just before 10 a.m., they notified the judge they had a verdict. The foreman, the judge’s friend Kimball, announced that the jury found Hill guilty of murder in the first degree.

A week and a half later, Hill returned to court for his sentencing. He had a choice: death by firing squad or hanging.

“I’ll take shooting,” Hill said. “I’m used to that. I have been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it again.”

 

Hill’s execution was put on hold while he appealed his case. All through the appeals process, Hill wrote at a feverish pace – both letters to supporters and new songs. He wrote one of his best-loved songs, “Workers of the World, Awaken,” while in jail. The song begins:

If the workers take a notion,

They can stop all speeding trains.

Every ship upon the ocean

They can tie with mighty chains.

Meanwhile, Hill had become something of a celebrity and a hero of the Wobbly movement. Gov. William Spry received some 40,000 letters urging a new trial for Hill.

The Utah Supreme Court heard Hill’s appeal on May 28, 1915, with Denver attorney Orrin Hilton representing him. Hill had high hopes he would get a new trial, but those were dashed when, a little more than a month later, the court unanimously affirmed the guilty verdict. Hill decided not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, so as not to drain the IWW’s resources on his account.

The last option was to appeal to the Utah Board of Pardons. The board urged Hill to say who had shot him to prove his innocence. Hill refused. After a short recess to confer with his client, Hill’s attorney Hilton returned to the board and said, “It seems he wants to be considered a martyr.” Hilton recalled Hill saying, “Gentlemen, the cause I stand for, that of a fair and honest trial, is worth more than human life – much more than mine.”

Popular demand for a new trial reached a new pitch. Influential supporters even prevailed upon President Woodrow Wilson to twice ask Utah Gov. Spry to stay the execution to consider more evidence. Spry halted the execution both times but ultimately ordered it to be carried out on Nov. 19, 1915.

That morning, deputies marched a blindfolded Hill to a chair outside the Utah State Prison’s blacksmith shop. They strapped him into the chair and placed a paper target over his heart. A curtain with five slits hung on the long blacksmith shop window. Five rifles appeared through the slits.

A deputy gave the commands.

“Ready … Aim …”

Hill yelled out the final command: “Yes, aim! Let it go! Fire!”

Witnesses saw Hill smile as the bullets tore into his chest.

Thousands viewed his body at a Salt Lake City funeral home, but Hill wouldn’t be buried in Utah. He said in a telegram to Big Bill Haywood: “It is a hundred miles from here to Wyoming. Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? Don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”

Rather than Wyoming, his body was transported via railroad to Chicago, where 5,000 people packed the auditorium for his funeral, and another 30,000 jammed the streets around for three blocks. Haywood read one of the final telegrams Hill sent: “Goodbye, Bill. I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don’t waste any time in mourning – organize.”

Shortly before his death, Hill composed a will in verse form:

My Will is easy to decide,

For there is nothing to divide.

My kin don’t need to fuss and moan –

‘Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.’

My body? Oh! If I could choose,

I would to ashes it reduce,

And let the merry breezes blow

My dust to where some flowers grow.

 

Perhaps some fading flowers then

Would come to life and bloom again.

This is my Last and Final Will,

Good Luck to All of you,

Joe Hill

His friends followed his instructions and cremated his body the day after the funeral. The next year on the anniversary of his death, Haywood distributed 600 packets of Hill’s ashes to 150 IWW delegates from across the globe, instructing them to scatter his ashes as they wished. The ashes were eventually distributed over five continents and 47 of the 48 states – all but Utah.

 

Hill’s legacy is hard to assess. The IWW, to which he devoted his life, saw its power and influence significantly curtailed in 1917, when the United States entered World War I, and the federal government cracked down on the union’s activities, deeming them “treasonable conspiracy.”

Yet many of the principles Hill fought for have become more accepted since his time: the right to due process under the law, the right to freedom of expression, the right to a living wage, safe workplace, affordable healthcare and housing.

At the 1969 Woodstock festival, singer Joan Baez, who closed out the first night of performances, sang a song called “Joe Hill”:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

Alive as you and me.

Says I, “But Joe, you’re 10 years dead,”

“I never died,” said he,

“I never died,” said he.

 

“The copper bosses killed you, Joe,

They shot you Joe,” says I.

“Takes more than guns to kill a man,”

Says Joe, “I didn’t die,”

Says Joe, “I didn’t die.”

 

And standing there as big as life,

And smiling with his eyes,

Says Joe, “What they can never kill

Went on to organize,

Went on to organize.”

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Hill’s death in 2015, Josh and Heidi Belka, members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union, painted a mural of Hill on the side of their Salt Lake City union hall. The mural lasted only eight days before someone came in the night and painted over it with an American flag – proof that Hill’s beliefs remain as controversial as ever.

Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books, offered one of his shop’s walls for the Belkas to paint a new version of the mural. Hill’s portrait is ringed by the slogans “Educate. Agitate. Organize,” “Fire Your Bosses” and “Abolish the Wage System.”

“The mural was painted over because some people think Joe Hill and the movement and his lyrics are un-American,” Heidi Belka said. “Since the advent of labor organizing, the bosses have been trying to tear down the labor movement. They’ve convinced people to go against their own best interests, thinking one day they’ll be middle management – ‘pie in the sky,’ as Joe put it.”

Sanders is proud to have the mural on his store, and he plans to put a new one up at his new location at The Leonardo.

“Joe Hill … and the other great IWW labor leaders fought on behalf of working men and women against the low wages, putrid working conditions and the malfeasance of the robber barons of the gilded age,” Sanders said. “We need to learn the lessons of the past to confront the sins of the present.”