The Everett Massacre: A history of the class struggle in the lumber industrySmith, Walker C.
History
The Everett Massacre: A history of the class struggle in the lumber industry
Smith, Walker C.
Industrial Workers of the World; Lumbering -- Washington (State); Lumbermen -- Washington (State)
"The facts are, if you go back into the history of the Revolutionary
Days, that our forefathers urged and banded together and combined and
federated, and if you will, conspired to violate the Stamp Act of the
British Government, and were willing to go to jail if necessary. They
went even further! They threw the British tea into Boston Harbor.
Violation of the law? Yes, if you want to call it such, but the
indignant protest of a people as against the enforcement of an unjust
law.
"I might urge upon you that the State at that time wanted to absolutely
suppress any speech whatsoever, because they had constituted the chief
of police, the sheriff, the arresting officer, as the executive, the
legislative and the judicial department of our government. The sheriff
executed the law in person, the sheriff declared the question of guilt
himself, the sheriff ordered deportations, and the sheriff took physical
charge of the deportations. Isn't it impossible to avoid a fight when
someone usurps unlawfully and illegally the legislative and judicial
functions of government? Isn't it time to fight? If it isn't then we
may as well cease any attempt to administrate the law!
"In the phraseology of these boys 'Fight' means a moral adherence to
principle, a firm determination to face the authorities in the
administration of the law, and if necessary to be arrested. But the
State would have you put into it now a more sinister meaning, entirely
new and foreign to its former use.
"The State brought in the death of Sullivan of Spokane in their opening
and abandoned it in their close. One of the exploded hopes of the State!
They counted on North Yakima and Wenatchee to show violence and arson,
and they failed most miserably. They have failed in their identification
of the defendant. Now, their forlorn and bankrupt plea here is the
charge of conspiracy.
"The court has told you that this is a murder case. Why then has the
State cumbered the record with the I. W. W. preamble and constitution?
Why with two pamphlets on sabotage? Why with an I. W. W. song book and
such matters? Why?
"Because out of some of the phraseology here, phraseology far removed
from you and me, they may build up a condition of prejudice which may
result in your returning a conviction on a smaller degree of evidence
than you would otherwise require. Mr. Cooley is going to stand here and
read little, short, listed extracts from the context of the whole. The
pamphlets he has introduced on the question of patriotism and the worker
is the foundation from which Mr. Cooley will appeal to your prejudices
and passions.
"We are not afraid of the evidence. We are afraid of this deep-grained
interest that goes down into men's conscience and that reached back a
thousand years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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