Centralia Massacre, Centralia, Wash., 1919; Industrial Workers of the World; Lumber trade -- Washington (State)
American. Logger. 21 years of age. Member of the Industrial Workers of the
World since 1917. Was in the hall when raid occurred. Faulkner personally
knew Grimm, McElfresh and a number of others who marched in the parade. He
is an ex-soldier himself. The prosecution used a great deal of pressure to
make this boy turn state's evidence. He refused stating that he would tell
nothing but the truth. At the last moment he was discharged from the case
after being held in jail four months.]
A Massacre and a New Law
But no really important event occurred until 1916. At this time the union
loggers, organized in the Industrial Workers of the World, had started a
drive for membership around Puget Sound. Loggers and mill hands were eager
for the message of Industrial Unionism. Meetings were well attended and
the sentiment in favor of the organization was steadily growing. The A.F.
of L. shingle weavers and longshoremen were on strike and had asked the
I.W.W. to help them secure free speech in Everett. The ever-watchful
lumber interests decided the time to strike had again arrived. The events
of "Bloody Sunday" are too well known to need repeating here. Suffice to
say that after a summer replete with illegal beatings and jailings five
men were killed in cold blood and forty wounded in a final desperate
effort to drive the union out of the city of Everett, Washington. These
unarmed loggers were slaughtered and wounded by the gunfire of a gang of
business men and plug-uglies of the lumber interests. True to form, the
lumber trust had every union man in sight arrested and seventy-four
charged with the murder of a gunman who had been killed by the cross-fire
of his own comrades. None of the desperadoes who had done the actual
murdering was ever prosecuted or even reprimanded. The charge against the
members of the Industrial Workers of the World was pressed. The case was
tried in court and the Industrialists declared "not guilty." George
Vanderveer was attorney for the defense.
The lumber interests were infuriated at their defeat, and from this time
on the struggle raged in deadly earnest. Almost everything from mob law to
open assassination had been tried without avail. The execrated One Big
Union idea was gaining members and power every day. The situation was
truly alarming. Their heretofore trustworthy "wage plugs" were showing
unmistakable symptoms of intelligence. Workingmen were waking up. They
were, in appalling numbers, demanding the right to live like men.
Something must be done something new and drastic--to split asunder this
on-coming phalanx of industrial power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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