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Highlights with Heidi: Research Archivist at Utah State Archives & Records Service

Highlights with Heidi: Coffin Nails

Heidi Stringham
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June 7, 2022
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While searching through Governor Spry’s correspondence records, Heidi found this colorful cartoon depicting a funny-dressed man with a cigarette in his mouth. “To the Cigarette Pimp” is handwritten below the man, who, presumably, is Governor Spry. On the back of the cartoon is an impassioned letter to the Governor begging him to take a harder stance against selling tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. The writer also asks for the curfew to be enforced, which would not allow minors out past 9pm.

The author presumes that by enforcing the laws, the I.W.W would not get any “new recruits.” The I.W.W. refers to Industrial Workers of the World, a famous labor union formed in 1905. Joe Hill was famously a member of the I.W.W.