The Everett massacre Part 12

To the strains of the "Red Flag" and the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" the grim and imposing cortege wended its way thru the crowded city streets, meeting with expressions of sorrow and sympathy from those who lined the sidewalk. Delegations of workers from Everett, Tacoma, and other Washington cities and towns were in line, and a committee from Portland, Ore., brought appropriate floral offerings. The solidarity of labor was shown in this great funeral procession, by all odds the largest ever held in the Northwest.

Arriving at the graveside in Mount Pleasant cemetery the rebel women reverently bore the coffins from the hea.r.s.es to the supporting frame, surrounded by boughs of fragrant pine, above the yawning pit. A special chorus of one hundred voices led the singing of "Workers of the World, Awaken," and as the song died away Charles Ashleigh began the funeral oration.

Standing on the great hill that overlooks the whole city of Seattle, the speaker pointed out the various industries with their toiling thousands and referred to the smoke that shadowed large portions of the view as the black fog of oppression and ignorance which it was the duty of the workers to dispel in order to create the Workers' Commonwealth. The entire address was marked by a simple note of resolution to continue the work of education until the workers have come into their own, not a trace of bitterness evincing itself in the remarks. Ashleigh called upon those present never to falter until the enemy had been vanquished.

"Today," he said, "we pay tribute to the dead. Tomorrow we turn, with spirit unquellable, to give battle to the foe!"

As the notes of "Hold the Fort!" broke a moment of dead silence, a shower of crimson flowers, torn from the coats of the a.s.sembled mourners, covered the coffins and there was a tear in every eye as the bodies slowly descended into their final resting place. As tho loath to leave, the crowd lingered to sing the "Red Flag" and "Solidarity Forever." Those present during the simple but stirring service were struck with the thought that the cla.s.s struggle could never again be looked upon as a mere bookish theory, the example of those who gave their lives in the cause of freedom was too compelling a call to action.

But the imperious exactions of the cla.s.s war left no time for mourning, and ere the last man had left the graveside the first to go was busily spreading the news of an immense ma.s.s meeting to be held in Dreamland Rink on the next afternoon. At this meeting five thousand persons from all walks of life gathered to voice their protest against the Everett outrage and to demand a federal investigation. The labor unions, the clergy, public officials and the general citizenry, were represented by the speakers. This was the first of many ma.s.s meetings held by the aroused and indignant people of Seattle until the termination of the case.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Funeral of GERLOT, LOONEY and BARAN]

The "kept" press carried on a very bitter campaign against the I. W. W.

for some few days after the dock tragedy, but dropped that line of action when the public let them understand that they were striking a wrong note. Thereafter their policy was to ignore, as far as possible, the entire affair. Practically the only time this rule was broken was in the printing of the song "Christians At War" by John F. Kendrick, taken from the I. W. W. song book. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave a photographic reproduction of the cover page of the book and of the page containing the song. The obvious intent was to have people think that this cutting satire was an urge for the members of the I. W. W. to do in times of peace those inglorious things that are eminently respectable in times of war. Later the Times, and several other papers, reproduced the same cover and song, the only change being that certain words were inked out to make it appear that the song was obscene. And tho the P.--I. had published the song in full the Times placed beneath their garbled version these words, "The portions blotted out are words and phrases such as never appear in The Times or in any other decent newspaper." The simultaneous appearance of this song in a number of papers was merely a coincidence, no doubt; there is no reason to believe that the lumber trust inspired the attack!

Allied as usual with the capitalist press and "stool pigeons" and employers' a.s.sociations in a campaign to discredit the workers involved in the case, was the moribund Socialist Labor Party thru its organ, the Weekly People.

The entire I. W. W. press came to the support of the imprisoned men as a matter of course. The Seattle Union Record and many other craft union papers, realizing that an open shop fight lay back of the suppression of free speech, also did great publicity work. But no particular credit is due to those "labor leaders" who, like J. G. Brown, president of the Shingle Weavers' Union, grudgingly gave a modic.u.m of a.s.sistance under pressure from radicals in their respective organizations.

The Northwest Worker of Everett deserves especial praise for its fearless and uncompromising stand in the face of the bitterest of opposition. This paper had practically to suspend publication because of pressure the lumber trust brought to bear on the firm doing their printing. This, with the action recorded in the minutes of the Commercial Club, "decided to go after advertis.e.m.e.nts in labor journals and the Northwest Worker," shows that a free press is as obnoxious to the lumber lords as are free speech and free a.s.sembly.

It scarcely needs noting that the International Socialist Review rendered yeoman service, as that has been its record in all labor cases since the inception of the magazine. Several other Socialist publications, to whom the cla.s.s struggle does not appear merely as a momentary quadrennial event, also did their bit. Diverse foreign language publications, representing varying shades of radical thought, gave to the trial all the publicity their columns could carry.

Just why seventy-four men were picked as prisoners is a matter of conjecture. Probably it was because the stuffy little Snohomish county jail could conveniently, to the authorities, hold just about that number. The men were placed four in a cell with ten cells to each tank, there being two tanks of steel resting one above the other. Even with all the windows thrown open the ventilation was so poor that the men were made ill by the foul air.

For almost two full months after being transported to Everett the men were held incommunicado; were not allowed to see papers or magazines or to have reading matter of any description; were subjected to the brutalities of Sheriff McRae and other jail officials who had been prominent in previous outrage and partic.i.p.ants in the ma.s.sacre at the dock; and were fed on the vilest prison fare. Mush was the princ.i.p.al article of diet; mush semi-cooked and cold; mush full of mold and maggots; mush that was mainly husks and lumps that could not be washed down with the pale blue prison milk; mush--until the prisoners fitfully dreamed of mush and gagged at the mere mention of the word. Finding themselves slowly starving the men decided that it were better to complete the job at once rather than to linger in misery. A hunger strike was declared! Meal after meal--or mush after mush--pa.s.sed and the men refused to eat. Those who were thought to be leaders in the miniature revolt were thrown in the blackhole where there was neither light nor fresh air. Still the men refused to eat, so the authorities were forced to surrender and the men had something to eat besides mush.

Great discomfort was experienced by the prisoners from having to sleep on the cold steel floors of the unheated cells during the chill November nights. Deciding to remedy the condition they made a demand for mattresses and blankets from the authorities, not a man of them being willing to have the Defense Committee purchase such supplies. The needed articles were refused and the men resorted to a means of enforcing their demands known as "building a battleship."

With buckets and tins, and such strips of metal as could be wrenched loose, the men beat upon the walls, ceilings, and floors of the steel tanks. Those who found no other method either stamped on the steel floors in unison with their fellows, or else removed their shoes to use the heels to beat out a tattoo. To add to the unearthly noise they yelled concertedly with the full power of their lungs. Three score and ten men have a noise-making power that words cannot describe. The townspeople turned out in numbers, thinking that the deputies were murdering the men within the jail. The battleship construction workers redoubled their efforts. Acknowledging defeat, the jail officials furnished the blankets and mattresses that had been demanded.

A few days later the men started their morning meal only to find that the mush was strongly "doped" with saltpeter and contained bits of human manure and other refuse--the spite work, no doubt, of the enraged deputies. Another battleship was started. This time the jailers closed all the windows in an effort to suffocate the men, but they broke the gla.s.s with mop-handles and continued the din. As before, the deputies were defeated and the men received better food for a time.

On November 24th an official of the State Board of Prisoners took the finger prints and photographs of the seventy-four men who were innocent until proven guilty under the "theory" of law in this country, and, marking these Bertillion records with prison serial numbers, sent copies to every prison in the United States. In taking the prints of the first few men brute force was used. Lured from their cells the men were seized, their hands screwed in a vise, and an imprint taken by forcibly covering their hands with lampblack and holding them down on the paper.

When the others learned that some had thus been selected they voted that all should submit to having their prints taken so the whole body of prisoners would stand on the same footing. Attorney Moore was denied all access to the prisoners during the consummation of this outrage.

After obtaining permission of the jail officials a committee of Everett citizens, with the voluntary a.s.sistance of the Cooks' and Waiters'

Union, prepared a feast for the free speech prisoners on Thanksgiving Day. When the women arrived at the jail they were met by Sheriff McRae who refused to allow the dinner to be served to the men. McRae was drunk. In place of this dinner the sheriff set forth a meal of moldy mush so strongly doped with chemicals as to be unfit for human consumption. This petty spite work by the moon-struck tool of the lumber trust was in thoro keeping with the cowardly characteristics he displayed on the dock on November 5th. And the extent to which the daily press in Everett was also under the control of the lumber interests was shown by the publication of a faked interview with attorney Fred Moore published in the Everett Herald under date of November 29th, Moore having been credited with the statement that the prison food deserved praise and the prisoners were "given as good food and as much of it as they could wish."

During the whole of McRae's term as sheriff there was no time that decent food was given voluntarily to the prisoners as a whole. At times, with low cunning, McRae gave the men in the upper tank better food than those confined below, and also tried to show favoritism to certain prisoners, in order to create distrust and suspicion among the men. All these attempts to break the solidarity of the prisoners failed of their purpose.

On one occasion McRae called "Paddy" Cyphert, one of the prisoners whom he had known as a boy, from his cell and offered to place him in another part of the jail in order that he might escape injury in a "clubbing party" the deputies had planned. Cyphert told McRae to put him back with the rest for he wanted the same treatment as the others and would like to be with them in order to resist the a.s.sault. In the face of this determination, which was typical of all the prisoners, the contemplated beating was never administered.

McRae would oftentimes stand outside the tanks at a safe distance and drunkenly curse the prisoners and refer to them as cowards, to which the men would reply by repeating the words of the sheriff on the dock, "O-oh, I'm hit! I-I'm h-hit!! I-I-I'm h-h-hit!!!" Then they would burst forth with a song written by William Whalen in commemoration of the exploits of the doughty sheriff, a song which since has become a favorite of the migratory workers as they travel from job to job, and which will serve to keep the deeds of McRae fresh in the minds of the workers for many years to come.

TO SHERIFF McRAE

Call out your Fire Department, go deputize your b.u.ms; Gather in your gunmen and stool pigeons from the slums; You may resolute till doomsday, you ill-begotten knave; We'll still be winning Free Speech Fights when you are in your grave!

You reprobate, you imp of hate, you're a traitor to the mind That brought you forth in human shape to prey upon mankind.

You are lower than the snakes that crawl or the scavengers that fly; You're the living, walking image of a d.a.m.n black-hearted lie!

We'll still be here in Everett when your career is ended, And back among the dregs of life your dirty hide has blended; When you shun the path of honest wrath and fear the days to come, And bow your head to the flag of red, you poor white-livered b.u.m!

For the part you played in Everett's raid that fateful Sunday morn, May your kith and kindred live to curse the day that you were born; May the memory of your victims haunt your conscience night and day, Until your feeble, insect mind beneath the strain gives way!

Oh, Don McRae, you've had your day; make way for Freedom's host: For Labor's sun is rising, soon 'twill shine from coast to coast!

The shot you fired at Everett re-echoes thru the night As a message to the working cla.s.s to organize and fight!

Those graves upon the hillside as monuments will stand To point the way to Freedom's goal to slaves thruout the land; And when at last the working cla.s.s have made the masters yield, May your portion of the victory be a grave in the Potter's Field!

The end of the first week in January brought about the change in the administrative force of Snohomish county that had been voted at the November election. A new set of lumber trust lackeys were placed in office. James McCullogh succeeded Donald McRae as sheriff, and Lloyd Black occupied the office vacated by Prosecuting Attorney O. T. Webb.

The advent of a new sheriff made some slight difference in the jail conditions, but this was more than offset by the underhanded methods used from that time on with the idea of breaking the solidarity of the free speech fighters. Liquor was placed in the bathrooms where the men could easily get hold of it, but even among those who had been hard drinkers on the outside there were none who would touch it. Firearms were cunningly left exposed in hopes that the men might take them and attempt a jail break, thus giving the jailers a chance to shoot them down or else causing the whole case to be discredited. The men saw thru the ruse and pa.s.sed by the firearms without touching them.

Working in conjunction with the prosecuting attorney was H. D. Cooley.

This gentleman was one of the deputies on the dock, having displayed there his manly qualities by hiding behind a pile of wood at first, and later by telling others to go with rifles to head off the Calista which he had spied approaching from the direction of Mukilteo. Cooley had a practice among the big lumbermen, and in the case against the I. W. W.

he was hired by the state with no stipulation as to pay. The general excuse given for his activities in the case, which dated from November 6th, was that he was retained by "friends of Jefferson Beard" and other "interested parties."

Attorney A. L. Veitch was also lined up with the prosecution. He was the same gentleman who had lectured to the deputies during the preceding fall as a representative of the Merchants' and Manufacturers'

a.s.sociation, and had told the deputies how to handle "outside agitators." Veitch was also employed by the state as a matter of record, but there was a direct stipulation that he receive no pay from state funds. He also was employed by "friends of Jefferson Beard" and other "interested parties."

With Veitch there was imported from Los Angeles one Malcolm McLaren, an M. and M. detective and office partner with Veitch, to act as "fix-it"

man for the lumber trust. McLaren was at one time an operative for the infamous Wm. J. Burns, and Burns has well said "Private detectives, ninety per cent of them, as a cla.s.s, are the worst of crooks, blackmailers and scoundrels." Under McCullogh's regime this open-shop gumshoe artist had free access to the jail with instructions to go as far as he liked.

Just what the prisoners thought about jail conditions during the time they were incarcerated is given in the following report which was smuggled out to the Industrial Worker and published on March 3rd:

"'Everything is fine and dandy on the outside, don't worry, boys.'"

"This is the first thing we heard from visitors ever since we seventy-four have been incarcerated in the Snohomish County Jail at Everett.

"While 'everything is fine and dandy on the outside' there are, no doubt, hundreds who would like to hear how things are on the inside. Let us a.s.sure everyone on the outside that 'everything is fine and dandy' on the inside. We are not worrying as it is but a short time till the beginning of the trials, the outcome of which we are certain will be one of the greatest victories Labor has ever known, if there exists a shadow of justice in the courts of America.

"One hundred days in jail so far--and for nothing! Stop and think what one hundred days in jail means to seventy-four men! It means that in the aggregate the Master Cla.s.s have deprived us of more than twenty years of liberty. Twenty years! Think of it, and a prospect of twenty more before all are at liberty.

"And why?

"There can be but one reason, one answer: We are spending this time in jail and will go thru the mockery of a trial because the masters of Everett are trying to shield themselves from the atrocious murders of b.l.o.o.d.y November Fifth.

"After being held in Seattle, convicted without a trial, except such as was given us by the press carrying the advertising of the boss and dependent on him for support, on November 10th forty-one of us were brought to Everett. A few days later thirty more were brought here.

"We found the jail conditions barbarous. There were no mattresses and only one blanket to keep off the chill of a Puget Sound night in the cold, unheated steel cells. There were no towels. We were supplied with laundry soap for toilet purposes, when we could get even that. Workers confined in lower cells were forced to sleep on the floors. There were five of them in each cell and in order to keep any semblance of heat in their bodies they had to sleep all huddled together in all their clothing.

"The first few days we were in the jail we spent in cleaning it, as it was reeking with filth and probably had never been cleaned out since it was built. It was alive with vermin. There were armies of bedbugs and body lice. We boiled up everything in the jail and it is safe to say that it is now cleaner than it had ever been before, or ever will be after the Wobblies are gone.

"When we first came here the lower floor was covered with barrels, boxes and cases of whiskey and beer. This was moved in a few days, but evidently not so far but McRae and his deputies had access to it, as their breath was always charged with the odor of whiskey. It was an everyday occurrence to have several of the deputies, emboldened by liquid courage and our defenseless condition--walk around the cell blocks and indulge in the pastime of calling us vulgar and profane names. Threats were also very common, but we held our peace and were content with the thought that 'a barking dog seldom bites.'