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)
In this headline the daily papers of Seattle, Washington, gave the
findings of the jury. With an unbroken series of successful prosecutions
of Labor to the credit of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association
this, the first great victory for the working class on the Pacific
Coast, was a bitter pill for the allied employers and open shop
interests to swallow.
With Tracy freed and the I. W. W. exonerated, there was nothing for the
Snohomish County officials to do but to release the rest of the free
speech prisoners. Yet the same contemptible spirit that had marked their
actions from the very start of the trouble led them to hold the
prisoners for several days and to try to make a few of the men think
that there would be a trial of a second prisoner.
Part of the men were released in Seattle and part in Everett. All went
at once to the I. W. W. hall upon gaining their freedom, and from there
nearly the whole body of released men went to Mount Pleasant cemetery to
visit the graves of their dead fellow workers.
Returning to the hall, those who had previously been delegates, or who
had fitted themselves for the work while in jail, immediately took out
credentials and started on an organizing campaign of the Northwest, with
the uniting of the workers in the lumber industry as their main object.
[Illustration: Gus Johnson Felix Baran John Looney]
[Illustration: Hugo Gerlot Abraham Rabinowitz]
The dearth of workers due to the war, the tremendous advertisement the
I. W. W. had received because of the tragedy and the trial, and the
spirit of mingled determination and resentment that had grown up in the
jail, made the work easy for these volunteer organizers. Members joined
by the dozen, then by the score, and finally by the hundreds.
Seattle had but two officials under pay on November 5th--Herbert
Mahler, secretary of the I. W. W., and J. A. MacDonald, editor of the
Industrial Worker. By July 4th, 1917, one year from the time of the
loggers' convention at which there were only half a hundred paid up
members, the I. W. W. in Seattle had thirty people under pay, working at
top speed to take care of the constantly increasing membership, and
preparations were under way to launch the greatest lumber strike ever
pulled in the history of the industry with the eight hour day as the
main demand. That strike in which thousands of men stood out for week
after week in the face of persecution of every character, in the face of
raids upon their halls and the illegal detention of hundreds of members
by city, county, state and federal agents, and in the face of
deportations by mobs of lumber trust hirelings, deserves a volume to
itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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