JOE HILL’S SONGS OF PROTEST

by Tom Faigin

At the Woodstock Festival, Joan Baez mesmerized audiences with her a cappella rendition of "Joe Hill":

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

Alive as you and me.

Says I, "But Joe, you 're ten years dead,"

"I never died," says he, "I never died," says he.

Who was Joe Hill and why did he die? In the early 1900’s, America was becoming a land with fewer and fewer opportunities. Thousands of people found that the western frontier existed no more and wealthy industrialists had bought up the best and cheapest land. Working men were fighting each other for fewer and fewer jobs. Under these conditions, the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies was formed in 1906 with the radical intention of taking over industry from the rich and powerful. They were viewed as revolutionaries and hated and feared by the newspapers, the church and the privileged. When the Wobblies organized strikes for higher wages and better working conditions, various songwriters from their ranks seemed to always come up with the right song at the right moment.

Joe Hill was a young Swedish immigrant of 21 who came to the U.S. in 1901. He worked at various jobs in the East and then joined the I.W.W. in San Pedro out in the L.A. area in 1910. This Union’s goal was to organize all workers—skilled and unskilled— into one giant union. Their motto was to use songs to "Fan the flames of Discontent." Sometimes these were angry, but more often their songs were parodies of popular songs of the day which poked fun at the bosses of industry and the Salvation Army which they called the "Starvation Army." They claimed that the church usually wanted worshippers to accept conditions as they were and not attempt to change things. This is a parody of "In the Sweet Bye and Bye."

Long-haired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right.

But when asked about something to eat,

They will answer with voices so sweet.

Chorus:

You will eat (You will eat)

Bye and bye (Bye and bye)

In that glorious land in the sky (Way up high)

Work and pray (Work and pray)

Live on hay (Live on hay)

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie).

Joe Hill played a basic piano, wrote songs and traveled around the country, trying to organize new branches of the Wobblies. In January 1914, the police picked him up in Salt Lake City and charged him with the murder of a grocery store owner during a holdup. After spending 22 months in prison, he was found guilty on circumstantial evidence. Millions of people rallied to his cause, wrote letters to the governor of Utah and demonstrated for his release. Even President Woodrow Wilson tried to save him, but powerful copper company owners were determined to stop the Union from organizing these workers in their mines. Joe Hill represented radical change and they clamored for his death. Joe Hill, the rebel poet, was executed in the early morning of November 19, 1915 by a firing squad. On the day before his death, a newspaper reporter asked him about his will and possessions. he scribbled this poem as a reply:

My will is easy to decide,

For there is nothing to divide.

My kin don’t need to fuss and moan,

Moss doesn’t 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 flower then

Would come to life and bloom again

This is my last and final will— Good luck to all of you. Joe Hill

During the Depression in the 1930’s many radical songwriters were influenced by Joe Hill and other Wobbly writers to write songs of protest and establish new unions like the C.1.O. (Congress of Industrial organizations). Just as Joe Hill borrowed from the songs of his day to create new songs, Woody Guthrie’s "Union Maid" and Lee Hayes’ "Roll the Union On" were taken from traditional songs and hymns. People identified with these melodies and they saw that they could be used to develop a militancy which the times demanded. Joe Hill and Ralph Chaplin, another Wobbly songwriter who wrote "Solidarity Forever," were the first professional songwriters of the working class. They consciously wrote songs that attempted to bolster morale, recruit new believers in a big union and they tried to present a working class view of the world.

Tom Faigin has taught guitar banjo and mandolin to private students since 1960 while teaching guitar classes at UCLA, CSULA, CSUN and many other colleges, schools and organizations. Tom has performed on radio, TV, given concerts and lectured on folk music at California State University at Los Angeles. Currently Tom is teaching English and ESL at James Monroe High School and actively uses folksongs and guitar music to motivate his students.