In changing the information charging the murder of C. O. Curtis to the charge of murdering Jefferson Beard the prosecution thought to cover one point beyond the possibility of discovery, which change seems to have been made as a result of the exhuming of the body of C. O. Curtis in February. Curtis had been buried in a block of solid concrete and this had to be broken apart in order to remove the body. Just who performed the autopsy cannot be ascertained as the work was covered in the very comprehensive bill of $50.50 for "Exhuming the body of C. O. Curtis, and autopsy thereon," this bill being made out in the name of the superintendent of the graveyard and was allowed and paid by Snohomish County. This, together with the fact that at no time during the trial did the prosecution speak of C. O. Curtis as having met his death at the hands of the men on the Verona, seems to bear out the contention of the defense that Curtis was the victim of the rifle fire of one of his associates. So on March 5th, after holding the free speech prisoners for four months to the day, the lumber trust, in the name of the State of Washington, brought the first of them, Thomas H. Tracy, to trial, on a charge of first degree murder, in the King County Court House at Seattle, Washington. CHAPTER VI. THE PROSECUTION The King County Court House is an imposing, five story, white structure, covering an entire block in the business section of the city of Seattle. Its offices for the conduct of the county and city business are spacious and well appointed. Its corridors are ample, and marble. The elevator service is of the best. But the courtrooms are stuffy little dens, illy ventilated, awkwardly placed, and with the poorest of acoustics. They seem especially designed to add to the depressing effect that invariably attends the administration of "law and order." The court of Judge Ronald, like many other courts in the land, is admirably designed for the bungling inefficiencies of "justice." Yet it was in this theater, thru the medium of the Everett trial, that the class struggle was reproduced, sometimes in tragedy and sometimes in comedy. To reach the greatest trial in the history of labor unionism, perhaps the greatest also in the number of defendants involved and the number of witnesses called, one had to ascend to the fourth floor of the court house and line up in the corridor under the watchful eyes of the I. W. W. "police," C. R. Griffin and J. J. Keenan, appointed by the organization at the request of the court. There, unless one were a lawyer or a newspaper representative, it was necessary to wait in line for hours until the tiny courtroom was opened and the lucky hundred odd persons were admitted to the church-like benches of J. T. Ronald's sanctum, where the case of State versus Tracy was on trial.