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)
No one will ever know how many brave workers were swept out to sea and
lost, but Sunday, November Fifth, of the year Nineteen-sixteen, wrote
in imperishable letters of red on the list of Labor's martyrs who gave
up their lives in Freedom's Cause the names of
FELIX BARAN;
HUGO GERLOT;
GUSTAV JOHNSON;
JOHN LOONEY;
ABRAHAM RABINOWITZ.
French, German, Swedish, Irish, and Russian Jew,--these are the true
internationalists of the world-wide brotherhood of toil who died for
free speech and the right to organize in this "land of liberty." To them
Courtenay Lemon's tribute to the I. W. W. applies with full force.
"Again and again its foot-free members, burning with an indignation and
a militant social idealism which is ever an inscrutable puzzle to local
authorities, have hastened to towns where free speech fights were on,
defied the police, braved clubbings, and voluntarily filled the jails to
overflowing, to the rage and consternation of the police and taxpayers.
It has acted as the flying squadron of liberty, the unconquered
knight-errantry of all captive freedoms; and the migratory workers who
constitute a large part of its membership, ever on the march and
pitching their camp wherever the industrial battle is thickest, form a
guerilla army which is always eager for a fight with the powers of
tyranny. Whether they disagree with its methods and aims, all lovers of
liberty everywhere owe a debt to this organization for its defense of
free speech. Absolutely irreconcilable, absolutely fearless, and
unsuppressibly persistent, it has kept alight the fires of freedom, like
some outcast vestal of human liberty. That the defense of traditional
rights to which this government is supposed to be dedicated should
devolve upon an organization so often denounced as 'unpatriotic' and
'un-American,' is but the usual, the unfailing irony of history."[11]
Baran, Gerlot, Johnson, Looney, Rabinowitz,--these names will be a
source of inspiration to the workers when their cowardly murderers have
long been forgotten.
Those who survived their wounds, saving as pocket pieces the buckshot,
copper and steel jacketed and dum-dum bullets extracted from their
persons, were; mentioning their more serious wounds:
Harry Golden, age 22, shot in left leg, making amputation necessary.
Joseph Ghilazano, age 20, shot in shoulder and both legs, entire
knee-cap shot off and replaced with a silver substitute.
Albert Scribner, age 32, severely wounded in hip, probably lamed for
life.
Mario Marino, age 18, shot thru the lungs.
Edward Roth, age 30, severely wounded in abdomen.
Walter Mulholland, age 18, shot in buttock.
Carl Bjork, age 25, wounded in back.
Harry Parker, age 22, shot above abdomen, in back, and in legs.
John Ryan, age 21, wounded in right shoulder and left leg.
Leland E. Butcher, age 28, shot in the left leg.
J. A. Kelly, age 31, shot in right leg.
Hans Peterson, age 32, wounded in head.
Fred Savery, age 25, wounded in hip.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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