Part Three: The Struggle Spreads
A long delay followed during which the story of Joe Hill began to spread throughout the world. Worldwide shock at the grossly unfair verdict caused the fight to become international. Members of the I.W.W. throughout the world (Australia held a protest meeting of 30,000), called on Governor Spry to free Joe Hill. The Salt Lake City Evening Telegram got fifty letters a day from all over the world. In all, 10,000 letters were received by Governor Spry. As Joe was a Swedish citizen, the Swedish ambassador, convinced of the injustice, approached President Wilson about the case and Wilson approached Spry. This was bluntly rejected as an interference. But President Wilson made a second appeal, this time at the request of another legendary figure, namely the "Rebel Girl" - Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizebeth Gurley Flynn was one of the great feminist radicals involved in the trade union and all other areas of struggle. When a pall of reaction settled on the USA from the 1930s onwards she, like so many others in the communist and progressive movements, was written out of mainstream history.
Many Irish people will have read about her first in Greave's biography of Connolly. "It was at one of these meetings that Connolly first met Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the schoolgirl of 17 whose severely simple dress contrasted so strangely with the forceful and sparkling oratory which could spellbind audiences composed of people of three times her age. On this occasion they spoke from a wagon in Washington Park. Somebody spilled a glass of water in Connolly's hat. ‘I hope it won't shrink,’ he grimaced, ‘it's the only hat I have.’ She recalled him in her memoirs as a ‘short, rather stout plain man, with a big moustache and dark sad eyes, who rarely smiled’."
Later we find Connolly putting forward her younger sister, Kathleen (15), for secretary of the New York branch of the Irish Socialist Federation.
In James Larkin by Emmet Larkin we read: "Connolly had also given Larkin the address of the Flynns in the Bronx. Thomas Flynn's daughter, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, though still in her early twenties, had already made a national reputation as a strike organiser. She had come into prominence in the Laurence Mill strike of 1912, and had been arrested with Quinlan in the Paterson strike of 1912 but had not been prosecuted".
Larkin frequently visited the Flynn home and often stayed for tea. Catherine, Elizabeth's sister, tells how Larkin was shocked when they smoked cigarettes after tea on one of his first visits and later cautioned Mrs. Flynn about allowing her daughters such "free ways".
Now Elizabeth was to come into Joe Hill’s life, or the little that was left to him. Not only did she make her appeal to President Wilson, she corresponded with Joe Hill while in jail, and though they only met each other in person for one short hour it was to result in her name becoming part of the Wobbly legend and her finding her place in history as the "The Rebel Girl".
THE REBEL GIRL
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as every one knows,
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And are wearing the finest of clothes,
There are blue-blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl,
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
"That's the Rebel Girl, That's the Rebel Girl
To the Working Class she's a precious pearl:
She brings, courage, pride and joy
To the Fighting Rebel Boy.
We've had girls before,
But we need some more,
In the Industrial Workers of the World,
For it's great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl."
Yes, her hands may be harden'd from labour
And her dress may not be very fine,
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind;
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl,
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
Joe Hill
In one of his last letters to Gurley Flynn he says, "You have been an inspiration, and, when I composed the "Rebel Girl" you were right there and helped me all the time."
During Joe's 22 months in jail his pen never ceased pouring out songs, letters and exhortations to his fellow Wobblies. To Ben Williams, editor of 'Solidarity' he wrote: "Tomorrow I expect to take a trip to the planet Mars and, if so, will immediately commence to organise the Mars canal workers into the I.W.W. and we will sing the good old songs so loud that the learned star-gazers on earth will, once for all, get positive proof that the planet Mars really is inhabited .... I have nothing to say for myself only that I have always tried to make this earth a little better for the great producing class
and I can pass off into the great unknown with the pleasure of knowing that I never in my life double crossed a man, woman or child."
APPEAL REJECTED
When in the end his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, he wrote his most famous line when he said in a letter to Big Bill Haywood, the Wobbly leader,"Goodbye Bill, I Die a True Blue Rebel. Don't Waste Time in Mourning. Organise."
When he faced the firing squad, one story says that it was he himself who gave the order "Fire!"
Patrick Renshaw in "The Wobblies" says: "The most recent scholarly re-examination of the Joe Hill affair is Philip S. Foner's exhaustive study. Dr. Foner's conclusion, after a thorough examination of all the sources, is that Hill was the innocent victim of a conspiracy. Dr. Foner shows that the identification and ballistic evidence was most unsatisfactory and reveals many other discrepancies in the prosecution’s case. He argues that the trial was unfair because Judge Ritchie’s conduct was sufficient grounds for a mistrial, while his summing-up ran completely contrary to precedent in the state of Utah concerning the law of circumstantial evidence.
"Dr. Foner also believes a fair trial was impossible because the authorities in Utah - the Mormon Church, the copper trust, the newspapers and the police - were bitterly opposed to the I.W.W. and were determined to convict Hill as soon as they discovered he was a member of the union".