Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel

by Wallace Stegner

The Wobblies, Lund was thinking as he went toward his hotel to get his suitcase, were as automatic as a burglar alarm. Touch any part of the mechanism, let one member be misused, anywhere, and they went off in a loud single-minded uproar. An injury to one was an injury to all. They went no further. There was one enemy, the System. No matter what happened, they knew who was to blame. They recognized one virtue, loyalty to the cause, so that their souls and stomachs were not visited by doubt and queasiness. The revolutionary faith was a flux that absorbed moral complexities and even rational doubts as limestone absorbed impurities from iron ore. Once the flux had begun to operate, there were only two possibilities, one choice. Either or, our side or theirs, iron or slag. Joe would have support, if he would accept it; he would have a defense, if he would permit it; he would have widespread and unquestioning belief for any statement he chose to make, or any statement made in his name. He could sit still, as he had said he would, but others would move the chair he sat in. Those who would convict him because he was an IWW or those who would free him unquestioned for the same reason would pick a bone over his fate. But what of those who saw with a twist of almost fatherly solicitude the broken and crippled hand, and those who wondered against their own wish if Joe Hillstrom could really have entered that grocery store masked and armed, and if he had, then why? Was it disloyal to ...