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ANSWERED

3334 W. Madison St.,
Chicago, Ill., Sept. 12, 1915

To the Governor of Utah,
Salt Lake City, Utah.

Your Excellency:

As a member of the great proletarian army, I wish to protest
against the execution of Joe Hill on October 1, whose real crime seems to
have been that he attempted to point the way to better conditions indus-
trially to a body of workmen. It apprears that he was railroaded in
an unfair trial in a community where public sentiment had been unjustly
aroused against him.

If rampant capitalism can so pervert justice, if it is to pro-
long its sway and postpone its inevitable downfall, it will not be
by such short-sighted methods, in the humble opinion of your petitioner.

The workers of this country have been awakened as never before
by the monstrous crimes committed against their class at Calumet, Lud-
low, Paterson, Lawrence, West Virginia, and numerous other locations, and
can any thinking man doubt that a day of reckoning will come--may even be
close at hand? Is it reasonable to suppose that this kind of thing can go
on forever, or that the breach between labor and capital can be healed
(if such were possible) by such brasen effrontery on the part of the dom-
inant class? The patience of the working class is the marvel of thinking
men today, but surely there must be a breaking point.

Your petitioner respectfully submits, that in granting the prayer
at the working people to commute the sentence of Joe Hill, you will not
not only befriend that class, but perhaps to an extent postpone the seem-
ingly inevitable armed conflict between the exploited and the exploiters.

Yours respectfully,

H.E. Wiskirie