The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill,
American Labor Icon, By William
Adler. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. 349 pp. + sources, bibliography, index.
ISBN: 978-1-59691-696-8
In the annals of labor history, the 1915 execution of
troubadour Joe Hill ranks with cases such as those of the hanging of the Haymarket
martyrs (1887) and the electrocution of Sacco and Vanzetti (1927) as among the
great legal injustices of all time. Hill is equally vital in music history,
both for the songs he wrote in support of the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial
Workers of the World (“Wobblies”), and for songs written in his honor by
luminaries such as Ralph Chaplin, Phil Ochs, Steve Earle and, of course, Alfred
Hayes and Earl Robinson (“I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”). William Adler’s new book is the most through treatment of Hill to date, and is
destined to displace Gibbs Smith’s 1969 biography as the definitive work on the
subject.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwv4sKaa4ydEvw99nGvw7SfeB1wDl0GA5SqZtd3lhAq5BnBnt_hLUJeMvrLNQ5R5X06aCY63Of3O0kQaaCHvTcf0TBvsmT_xI6qxWN-Mc5SLLWpByfl9HPFSc0KOU8A5q3VZqllrYOSCok/s320/hill_book_cover2.jpg)
Adler’s best sleuthing is the depth he gives to Hill’s
sketchy pre-1909 biography. He provides rich details of Hägglund’s/Hill’s life
in Sweden, a plausible reconstruction of his life between 1902 and 1909, and a rare
telling of Hill’s participation in the IWW’s raid on Baja, California during
the Mexican Revolution. (The latter event earned the enmity of rabid IWW foe
Harrison Gray Otis, who owned land in Baja, edited the Los Angeles Times, and spearheaded the anti-clemency movement.)
Adler is equally vivid in taking us inside the mind, struggles, and character
of West Coast Wobblies–their lumber camps and dockside shapeups, their free
speech battles, the hard knocks of itinerancy, and the vitriol of capital/labor
strife.
Does Adler solve the Hill case? As a labor historian, I
have looked at a lot of the same evidence as Adler. I’m simply not convinced
that Hill was the innocent of legend. Hill’s willingness to don the martyr’s
mantle seems abrupt, and there’s not much past evidence of a Victorian
temperament that would accept death rather than besmirch a lady’s reputation.
(And why would Erickson, who was present throughout the drama, remain silent as
her lover went before the firing squad?) West Coast Wobblies were a rough-and-tumble
lot with no love for capitalists. Put bluntly, I think it’s quite possible that
Hill and Appelquist, who absconded, actually did kill Morrison. Having said
that, the standard of American justice is supposed to beyond a reasonable
doubt, not possibility. By that criterion, Hill’s execution is indeed the stain
upon American jurisprudence that Adler insists that is. Bottom line: even if
you don’t buy into the Hill-as-martyr image, Adler’s is still the best book
ever written on Joe Hill.
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