Drawings of Joe Hill, 1911 & 1914, from Postcards
Sent to Charles Rudberg
From Labor History Journal of Fall 1984:
JOE HILL-CARTOONIST
by PHILIP MASON
In 1980, the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University acquired four postcards written by Joe Hill, the “Wobbly songwriter and poet,” to a friend, Charles Rudberg, between the years 1911 and 1914. The four postcards contained more than the usual short message-each included a cartoon of drawing by Joe Hill…..
Mason goes on to describe the postcards (see below).
Mason fails to mention exactly how the postcards were acquired, but perhaps they came from Rudberg’s daughter, Frances Horn, of Ventura, California, with whom Mason had communicated. Horn stated that her father and Joe Hill were childhood friends in Galve, Sweden, and reunited later in San Francisco shortly before the San Francisco Fire. Both Rudberg and his daughters cherished the postcards from Joe Hill and kept them as “priceless heirlooms.”
Mason was, in 1984, Director of the Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs , Wayne State Univ., Professor History Dept.
Franklin Rosemont states that in a letter to Mason on January 29, 1980, Frances Horn wrote that her father told her older sister that Joe could also “sing like an angel, play the violin like a master and write like a fury.”
POSTCARD DRAWINGS by JOE HILL
January 24, 1911 -from Joe Hill at Coalinga CA to Charles Rudberg at Sailors Rest Mission, San Pedro CA:
“Doings of Väran Kalle”
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April 29, 1911 -from Joe Hill at Sailors Rest Mission, San Pedro CA to Charles Rudberg at Sailor’s Union Hall, East Street, San Francisco CA:
“I’ve Got a Mission to Fill Don’t Ye Knauw, JO-EL”
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September 2, 1911 -from Joe Hill at San Pedro CA to Charles Rudberg at Sailors Union Hall, East Street, San Francisco CA:
“Oh you Hoboeing”
With Poem by Joe Hill:
The song of Mauser bullets may be exciting and the rattle of machine-guns may also have its thrills- but Oh you hoboeing!
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December 18, 1914 -from Joe Hill at Salt Lake County Jail, Salt Lake City UT to Charles Rudberg at San Francisco (?) CA Note: Joe was not moved to Utah State Pen until July 1915, after appeal for new trial was denied by Utah Supreme Court.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 13, 1912 San Francisco, California – Joe Hill Speaks on Conditions in San Diego Jail
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:
FREE SPEECH DOINGS IN CALIFORNIA
(By Caroline Nelson).
The free speech protest in Building Trades hall Last Sunday [March 31] was a great success; $175 were collected to carry on the fight in San Diego.
Austin Lewis delivered one of his masterly addresses. He showed that street speaking of the I. W. W.’s was an absolute necessity. Without street speaking the migratory worker could not be reached, because he would not go to any hall. Without street speaking there would have been no organization among the lumber workers and section laborers, and therefore no strikes or fights for better conditions. In street speaking pamphlets, circulars and propaganda sheets are given out and find their way to camps where they do their work.
The last speaker was a released speaker from San Diego, Fellow Worker Hill. He explained that he had just come from the hospitality of the M. & M. [Merchants and Manufacturers Association] in San Diego, that owing to that hospitality he was physically unable to make any lengthy speech.He looked as though he had just risen from a sick bed. His face was pale and pinched. Dressed in overalls he bespoke the low standard of living that our modern civilization imposes upon our most intelligent workers; for he spoke more intelligently and eloquently than many a widely heralded upper class jaw smith, who has had nothing to do all his life but to wag his tongue and to look up references. He nailed the widely circulated lie that the upper class have bought out all the workers who have any intelligence, and that every intelligent man can get work.
Fellow Worker told how they practiced sabotage in San Diego in the jail in the form of building battle ships, as they called it, by hammering on the iron doors. The court was located on the second story over the jail and terrible noise made by the hungry prisoners prevented them from holding a session in the upper region. They sent word down to the prisoners to be quiet or they couldn’t hold court. The prisoners’ replied that it was their intention that no court should be held until they were fed.
Hill brought down the house when he proposed that the army of fifty thousand unemployed of San Francisco move on the San Diego, to free the men now in jail there which the M. & M. intend to railroad to the pen. The San Diego jail and bull pen are full now. They are running up the expenses of the tax-payers fearfully and an army of invaders would scare them stiff, and prevent the sending of the ten men now on trial to the penitentiary. But unless something was done quickly these men would be sent over the road; for there is nothing our ruling class doesn’t dare when it comes to strike terror to the hearts of the workers. They violate every law on the statute books, and trample in the dust every human right that is supposed to be sacred. They hold no law sacred except when it protects them in their piracy.
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The free speech protest in Building Trades hall Last Sunday [March 31] was a great success; $175 were collected to carry on the fight in San Diego.
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