Mayor Merrill, equally guilty with the deputies who were on the dock, taking advantage of a means of spreading information that was denied to the workers, directly after the massacre spoke from a soap box on the corner of Wetmore and California Avenues, telling all who would listen that he was not responsible for the trouble as the Commercial Club had taken the power away from him and put it in the hands of McRae. The insincerity of this vacillating lackey of the lumber trust was demonstrated by his brutal treatment of young Louis Skaroff, who with Chester Micklin and Osmond Jacobs, had been arrested and thrown into jail when the three, bravely taking their lives in their hands, attempted to speak on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore two hours after the tragedy. It was on Monday night about ten o'clock that the night jailer took Skaroff into a room where Mayor Merrill and a man posing as an immigration officer were seated. The fake immigration officer tried to frighten the prisoner with threats of deportation, after which the jailer beat Skaroff across the head. Merrill arose and took a hand in the proceedings, buffeting the boy back and forth until he fell to the floor. Then, with the aid of the jailer, Skaroff's fingers were placed, one by one, beneath the legs of an iron bed in the room while the ponderous mayor jumped up and down on the bed, mashing and tearing flesh and knuckles. Upon regaining consciousness the mutilated boy found himself in the jail corridor, crushed beneath Merrill's massive form, the mayor having grasped Skaroff by the hair in order to repeatedly hammer the lad's head against the hard cement floor. Finding that Skaroff's spirit could not be broken the cowards finally desisted. Skaroff was released at the end of eleven days. Chaos reigned in Everett following the tragedy. That night over five hundred deputies patrolled the streets, fearing just retribution for their criminal misdeeds. Those who had been on the dock as parties to the massacre were overheard saying to each other, "We must stick together on this story about the first shot coming from the boat." Certain officials called for the state militia which was mobilized in Seattle but not used. One militiaman, a young lad named Ted Kennedy, refused to serve, claiming that it was the same as strike duty. The fact that the militia was mobilized at once, and that Governor Ernest Lister went to Everett to confer with officials and mill owners there, when he had refused to furnish protection or even to make an investigation at the request of the I. W. W. a short time before showed the governor's bias in favor of the employers. In this lumber district the militia was apparently the property of the mill owners.