The Everett massacre Part 15

During the examination of this witness, and at various times thruout the long case, it was only with evident effort that Attorney Vanderveer kept on the unfamiliar ground of the cla.s.s struggle, his natural tendencies being to try the case as a defense of a pure and simple murder charge.

W. P. Bell, an Everett attorney representing a number of scab mills, a member of the Commercial Club and a deputy on the dock, testified next, contradicting the previous witnesses but throwing no additional light upon the case. He was followed by Charles Tucker, a scab and gunman employed by the Hartley Shingle Company and a deputy on the dock. Tucker lied so outrageously that even the prosecution counsel felt ashamed of him. He was impeached by his own testimony.

Editor J. A. MacDonald of the Industrial Worker was called to the stand to show the official relation of the paper to the I. W. W. and to lay a foundation for the introduction of a file of the issues prior to November 5th. A portion of the file was introduced as evidence and at the same time the state put in as exhibits a copy of the I. W. W.

Const.i.tution and By-Laws, Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Sabotage by Walker C. Smith, The Revolutionary I. W. W. by Grover H. Perry, The I. W. W., Its History, Structure and Methods by Vincent St. John, and the Joe Hill Memorial Edition of the Song Book.

Herbert Mahler, former secretary of the Seattle I. W. W. and at the time Secretary-Treasurer of the Everett Prisoners' Defense Committee, was next upon the stand. He was asked to name various committees and to identify certain telegrams. The unhesitatingly clear answers of both MacDonald and Mahler were in vivid contrast to the mumbled and contradictory responses of the deputies.

William J. Smith, manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company was then called to further corroborate certain telegrams sent and received by the I. W. W.

As the next step in the case prosecutor Black read portions of the pamphlet "Sabotage" by Smith, sometimes using half a paragraph and skipping half, sometimes using one paragraph and omitting the next, provoking a remonstrance from Attorney Vanderveer which was upheld by the Court in these words:

"You have a right to do what you are doing, Mr. Black, but it don't appeal to my sense of fairness if other omissions are as bad as the one you left out. You are following the practice, but I don't know of an instance where there has been such an awful juggling about, and it is discretionary with the Court, and I want to be fair in this case. I want to let them have a chance to take the sting out of it so as to let the jury have both sides, because it is there. Now, Mr. Vanderveer, I am going to leave it to you not to impose upon the Court's discretion. Any new phases I don't think you have the right to raise, but anything that will modify what he has read I think you have the right to."

Thereupon Vanderveer read all the omitted portions bearing upon the case, bringing special emphasis on these two parts:

"Note this important point, however. Sabotage does not seek nor desire to take human life."

"Sabotage places human life--and especially the life of the only useful cla.s.s--higher than all else in the universe."

With evidences of amus.e.m.e.nt, if not always approval, the jury then listened to the reading of numerous I. W. W. songs by Attorney Cooley for the prosecution, tho some of the jurymen shared in the bewilderment of the audience as to the connection between the song "Overalls and Snuff" and defendant Tracy charged with a conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree.

D. D. Merrill, Mayor of Everett, next took the stand. He endeavored to give the impression that the I. W. W. was responsible for a fire loss in Everett of $100,000.00 during the latter part of the year 1916.

Vanderveer shot the question:

"From whom would you naturally look for information on the subject of fires?"

"From the Fire Chief, W. C. Carroll," replied the mayor;

"We offer this report in evidence," said Vanderveer crisply.

The report of the Fire Chief was admitted and read. It showed that there were less fires in 1916 that in any previous year in the history of Everett, and only four of incendiary origin in the entire list!

The prosecution tried to squirm out of this ticklish position by stating that they meant also the fires in the vicinity of Everett, but here also they met with failure for the princ.i.p.al fire in the surrounding district was in the co-operative mill, owned by a number of semi-radical workingmen at Mukilteo.

The mayor told of having been present at the arrest of several men taken from a freight train at Lowell, just at the Everett city limits. Some of these men were I. W. W.'s, and on the ground afterward there was said to have been found some broken gla.s.s about which there was a smell of phosphorus. The judge ruled out this evidence because there were other than I. W. W. men present, no phosphorus was found on the men, and if only one package were found it would not indicate a conspiracy but might have been brought by an agent of the employers. This was the nearest the prosecution came at any time in the trial in their attempt to connect the I. W. W. with incendiary fires.

A tense moment in this sensational trial came during the testimony of Mayor Merrill, when young Louis Skaroff was suddenly produced in court and the question flashed at the cringing witness:

"Do you recognize this boy standing here? Do you recognize him, Louis Skaroff?"

"I think I have seen him," mumbled the mayor.

"Let me ask you if on the 6th day of November at about ten o'clock at night in a room in the City Hall at Everett where there was a bed room having an iron bedstead in it, in the presence of the jailer, didn't you have an interview with this man?"

Merrill denied having mutilated Skaroff's fingers beneath the casters of the bed, but even the capitalist press reported that his livid face and thick voice belied his words of denial.

And Prosecutor Lloyd Black remarked heatedly, "I don't see the materiality of all this."

Merrill left the stand, having presented the sorriest figure among the number of poor witnesses produced by the prosecution.

Carl Clapp, superintendent of the Munic.i.p.al Waterworks at Everett, and commander of one of the squads of deputies, followed with testimony to the effect that sixty rifles from the Naval Militia were stored in the Commercial Club on November 5th. At this juncture the hearing of further evidence was postponed for a half day to allow Attorney Vanderveer to testify on behalf of Mayor H. C. Gill in a case then pending in the Federal Court.

On several other occasions Vanderveer was called to testify in this case and there were times when it was thought that he also would be indicted and brought to trial, yet with this extra work and the threat of imprisonment hanging over him, Vanderveer never flagged in his keen attention to the work of the defense. It was commonly thought that the case against Gill and the attempt to involve Vanderveer were moves of the lumber trust and Chamber of Commerce directed toward the I. W. W., for in the background were the same interested parties who had been forced to abandon the recall against Seattle's mayor. Gill's final acquittal in this case was hailed as an I. W. W. victory.

Upon the resumption of the trial the prosecution temporarily withdrew Clapp and placed Clyde Gibbons on the stand. This witness was the son of James Gibbons, a deceased member of the I. W. W., well and favorable known in the Northwest. James Gibbons was killed by a speeding automobile about a year prior to the trial, and his widow and son, Clyde, were supported by the I. W. W. and the Boiler Makers' Union for several months thereafter.

Clyde Gibbons, altho but seventeen years old, joined the Navy by falsifying his age. Charity demands that the veil be drawn over the early days of Clyde's training, yet his strong imagination and general untruthfulness are matters of record. He was shown in court to have stolen funds left in trust with him by Mrs. Peters, one of the persons against whom his testimony was directed. It is quite probable that the deceit about his age, or some other of his queer actions, were discovered and used to force him to testify as the prosecution desired.

The following testimony bears out this idea:

"Who was it that you met at the Naval Recruiting Station and took you to McLaren?"

"I don't know his name."

"Well, how did you get to talking to this total stranger about the Everett matter?"

"He told me he wanted to see me in the judge's office."

"And they took you down to the judge's office, did they?"

"Yes, sir."

"And when you got to the judge's office you found you were in Mr.

McLaren's and Mr. Veitch's and Mr. Black's office in the Smith Building?"

"Yes, sir."

Gibbons testified as to certain alleged conversations in an apartment house frequented by members of the I. W. W., stating that a party of members laid plans to go to Everett and to take with them red pepper, olive oil and bandages. Harston Peters, one of the defendants, had a gun that wouldn't shoot and so went unarmed, according to this witness.

Gibbons also stated that Mrs. Frenette took part in the conversation in this apartment house on the morning of the tragedy, whereupon Attorney Moore asked him:

"On directing your attention to it, don't you remember that you didn't see Mrs. Frenette at all in Seattle, anywhere, at any time subsequent to Sat.u.r.day night; that she went to Everett on Sat.u.r.day night?"

"Well, I am quite sure I saw her Sunday, but maybe I am mistaken."

The judge upheld the defense attorneys in their numerous objections to the leading questions propounded by prosecutor Black during the examination of this witness.

Clapp was recalled to the stand and testified further that Scott Rainey, head of the U. S. Naval Militia at Everett, had ordered Ensign McLean to take rifles to the dock, and that the witness and McLean had loaded the guns, placed them in an auto and taken them to the dock, where they were distributed to the deputies just as the Verona started to steam away.

Ignorance as to the meaning of simple labor terms that are in the every-day vocabulary of the "blanketstiff" was shown by Clapp in his answers to these queries:

"What is direct action?"

"Using force instead of lawful means."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, either physical force, or conspiracy."

"You understand conspiracy to be some kind of force, do you?"