Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel

by Wallace Stegner

Lund found himself thinking that Joe could be absurd, as the intelligent but under-educated could always be absurd, and he could perhaps be dangerous, a really deadly partisan, but he would also be something of a seeker always, and something of an artist. He continued to look smilingly into Joe’s face. Finally he said, “Life is a battleground to you.” “It’s always been a battleground. It’s taken the working class hundreds of years to get to the point where they can fight with a chance of winning.” “But you think they’ll win.” “It’s inevitable.” “And after they’ve won, then what? After they’ve thrown the bosses off their backs and broken up this system, what do they erect in its place?” “Then the workers will own the instruments of production and will operate industry for the good of all. After the class war is won there is no more need for the state. The armed men and the ballot boxes and all the rest of it will wither away, and we get a classless and stateless society.” Lund knocked hot ash into his palm and held it there till it grew too hot to hold, when he dumped it in the trash bucket. The hope. The unshakable piety! He whistled a moment between his lips and then said, “And you attack me for being a Heaven-monger.” “What?” “Let it go, let it go.” He thought to himself ruefully that he had taken up the wrong mythology. His own had led him to scepticism and humanitarianism. Joe had a faith that would have shamed a Christian martyr, and it led him to crusades, blood-lett...