The Everett massacre Part 6

A few of the men broke the lines and ran into the woods, a bullet past their heads warning others from a like attempt. Across the cattle guard, often sprawling on hands and knees from the force of the last blows received, went the men who had cleared the gauntlet. Legs sank between the blades of the guard and strained ligaments and sprained ankles were the result. One man suffered a dislocated shoulder at the hands of a Doctor Allison, another had the bridge of his nose broken by a blow from McRae, and dangerously severe wounds and bruises were sustained by nearly all of the forty-one.

So horrible were the moans and outcries of the stricken men, so b.e.s.t.i.a.l were the actions of the infuriated deputies, that one of their own number, W. R. Booth, sickened at the sight and sound, went reeling up the roadway retching as he left the brutal scene.

Attracted by the curses of the deputies, the sound of the blows, and the moans and cries of the wounded men, Mrs. Ruby Ketchum came to the door of her house nearly a quarter of a mile away, and remained there listening to the hideous din, while her husband, Roy Ketchum, and his brother, Lew, went down to the scene of the outrage to investigate. The Ketchum brothers reported that the deputies were formed in two lines ending in six men, three on each side of the cattle guard. A man would be taken out of the car and two deputies would join his arms up behind him meanwhile hammering his unprotected face from both sides as hard as they could strike with their fists. Then the man was started down the line, one deputy following to club him on the back to make him hurry, and the other deputies striking with clubs and other weapons and kicking the prisoner as he progressed. Just before reaching the cattle guard he was made to run, and, in crossing the blades, the three men on the east side of the track would swing their clubs upon his back while the men on the west clubbed him across the face and stomach. This was repeated with the men as fast as they were dragged from the autos. They also heard the sound of blows and then cries of "Oh my G.o.d! Doc, don't hit me again, doc, you're killing me!" Lew Ketchum took deputy Fred Luke by the coat tails and pulled him back from the cattle guard, asking, "What are you doing, what is going on here?" and Luke replied, "We are beating up forty-one I. W. W.'s."

Harry Hubbard tells the story in these words from the time the autos arrived at Beverly:

"I got out of the car with another fellow, Rice, and I says, 'We had better stay together, it looks to me like we were going to get tamped up,' and somebody grabbed hold of him, and I stood a minute, and then I ran by one fellow up into the woods. Just as I got out of the radius of the automobile lights I fell over a stump on the edge of the embankment.

I was in kind of a peculiar predicament and I had to get hold of the stump to pull myself up, and just as I did that some fellow behind me swung with a blackjack and grazed my temple, knocking me to my knees. I got up and he grabbed hold of me and we both fell down the bank together. Then two or three others grabbed me, and this Hawse had me by the collar, and Sheriff McRae walked up and said 'You are the son-of-a---- that was over here last week,' and I answered, 'I was working here last week.' Then he said, 'Are you an I. W. W.?' I said, 'Yes,' and he hit me an upward swing on the nose. He repeated, 'You are an I. W. W., are you?' and again I said, 'Yes.' He then swore at me and said, 'Say that you ain't!' and I replied, 'No, I won't say that I ain't,' and he hit me three more times on the nose.

"Then the man who was holding my left wrist with one hand and my shoulder with the other, said, 'Wait a minute until I get a poke at him,' and McRae said, 'All right, doc,' and then someone else said 'All right Allison, hit him for me!' This fellow they called Doc Allison hit me and blackened my eye. McRae swore at me, he seemed to be intoxicated and he looked and acted like a maniac, he said 'If you fellows ever come back some of you will die, that's all there is to it.' I said, 'I don't think there is any necessity for killing anybody,' and he answered 'I will kill you if you come back,' and he raised his blackjack and said 'Run!' I said 'I wont run,' and he hit me again and I dropped to the ground. He raised his foot over my face, and used some pretty raw language, and as he stood there with his heel over my face I grabbed hold of a fellow's leg and pulled myself along so instead of hitting my face his heel sc.r.a.ped my side. Then I got some kicks, three of them in the small of the back around my kidneys.

"When I got up I walked thru the line, there were twenty or thirty different ones hollered for me to run, but I was stubborn and wouldn't do it. And when I got to the cattle guard and stood at the other side kind of wiping the blood off my face I heard some one coming and I said, 'Four Hundred," and he said 'Yes,' and he was crying. It was a young boy and I walked down the track with him afterward.

"At the City Hospital in Seattle next day the doctor told me my nose was badly fractured and that I had internal injuries. A few days later my back pained me severely and I pa.s.sed blood for a time after that."

C. H. Rice, whose shoulder was dislocated, gives about the same version.

"Two big fellows would hold a man until they were thru beating him and then turn him loose. I was turned loose and ran probably six or eight feet, something like that, and I was. .h.i.t and knocked down. As I scrambled to my feet and ran a few feet again I was. .h.i.t on the shoulder with a slingshot. This time I went down and I was dazed, I think I must have been unconscious for a moment because when I came to they were kicking me, and some of them said, 'He is faking,' and others said, 'No, he is knocked out.' I remember seeing some of the boys during that time running by me, and when they got me up I started to run a bit farther and was knocked down again.

"Then they called for somebody there, addressing him as Dr. Allison, and he grabbed my arm and pulled me up, and he raised my arm up and said, 'Aw, there is nothing the matter with you,' and jerked it down again. My arm was out of place, it seemed way over to one side, and I couldn't straighten it up.

"As I was going over the cattle guard several of them hit me and some one hollered 'Bring him back here, don't let him go over there.' They brought me back and this doctor said 'You touch your shoulder with your hand,' and I couldn't. He says 'There is nothing the matter with you.'

"Then the fellow who was on the dock, and who had been drinking pretty heavily, because they would have to shove him back every once in a while, he shouted out 'Let's burn him!' About that time Sheriff McRae came over and got hold of my throat and said, 'Now, d.a.m.n you, I will tell you I can kill you right here and there never would be nothing known about it, and you know it.' And some one said, 'Let's hang him!'

and this other fellow kept hollering 'Burn him! Burn him!' McRae kept hitting me, first on one side and then the other, smacking me that way, and then he turned me loose again and hit me with one of those slingshots, and finally he said 'Oh, let him go,' and he started me along, following behind and hitting me until I got over the cattleguard.

"I went down to the interurban track until I caught up with some of the boys. They tried to pull my shoulder back into place and then they took handkerchiefs and neckties, and one thing and another, and made a kind of a sling to hold it up. We then went down to the first station and the boys took up a collection and the eight of us who were hurt the worst got on the train and went to Seattle. The others had to walk the twenty-five miles into Seattle. Most of us had to go to the hospital next day."

Sam Rovinson was beaten with a piece of gaspipe, but taking advantage of the fact that the shooting when Archie Collins made his escape had attracted the attention of the deputies he got thru the gauntlet with only minor injuries. Rovinson testifies that McRae said to him:

"This time we will let you off with this, but next time you come up here we will pop you full of holes."

"I just came up here to exercise my const.i.tutional right of free speech," expostulated Rovinson.

"To h.e.l.l with free speech and the Const.i.tution!" shouted McRae, "You are now in Snohomish county, and we are running the county!"

After the deputies had returned to town the two Ketchum brothers took their lanterns and went out to the scene thinking they might find some of the men out there hurt, with a broken leg, or arm or something, and that they could be taken to their house to be cared for. No men were seen, but three covered with blood were found and after examination were returned to where they had been picked up.

Early next morning some of the deputies, frightened at their cowardly actions of the previous night, were seen at Beverly Park making an examination of the ground. Two of them approached the Ketchum residence and asked if any I. W. W.'s had been found lying around there. After being a.s.sured that they had stopped short of murder, the deputies departed.

A little later an investigation committee composed of Rev. Oscar McGill of Seattle, and Rev. Elbert E. Flint, Rev. Jos. P. Marlatt, Jake Michel, Robert Mills, Ernest Marsh, E. C. Dailey, Commissioner W. H. Clay, Messrs. Fawcett, Hedge, Ballou, Houghton and others from Everett, made a close examination of the grounds. In spite of the heavy rain and notwithstanding the fact that deputies had preceded them, the committee found blood-soaked hats and hat bands and big brown spots of blood soaked into the cement roadway. In the cattle guard was the sole of a shoe, evidently torn off as one of the fleeing men escaped his a.s.sailants.

"Hearing of the occurrence I accompanied several gentlemen, including a prominent minister of the gospel of Everett, next morning to the scene.

The tale of that struggle was plainly written. The roadway was stained with blood. The blades of the cattle guard were so stained, and between the blades was a fresh imprint of a shoe where plainly one man in his hurry to escape the shower of blows, missed his footing in the dark and went down between the blades. Early that morning workmen going into the city to work, picked up three hats from the ground, still damp with blood. There can be no excuse for nor extenuation of such an inhuman method of punishment," reported President E. P. Marsh to the State Federation of Labor.

J. M. Norland stated that "there were big brown blotches on the pavement which we took to be blood. They were perhaps two feet in diameter, and there were a number of smaller blotches for a distance of twenty-five feet. In the vicinity of the cattle guard the soil was disarranged and there were shoe marks near the cattle guard. You could also notice where, in their hurry to get across, they would go in between, and there would be little parts or shreds of clothing there, and on one there was a little hair."

All that day the talk in Everett centered around the crime of the preceding night. Little groups of citizens gathered here and there to discuss the matter. The deputies went about strenuously denying that they had a hand in the infamous affair, and friends of long standing refused to speak to those who were known positively to have been concerned in the outrage. A number of the ministers of the city conferred regarding a course of action, but finding the problem too deep for them to solve they left it to up to the individual. Various Everett citizens, representing a large degree of public sentiment, felt that the thing to do was to hold an immense ma.s.s meeting in order to present the facts of the hideous crime to the whole public. This plan met with immediate approval from many quarters, and the I. W. W. in Seattle was notified of this desire by mail, by telephone, and by means of citizens'

delegations. Rev. Oscar McGill conferred with secretary Herbert Mahler and was quite insistent upon the necessity for such a meeting, as the Everett papers had carried no real information about the affair in Beverly. He brought out the fact that there had been thousands in attendance at the ma.s.s meeting in the Everett city park a month or so previous to this occurrence, and the speakers were then escorted by a large body of citizens from the interurban depot to the meeting place, and the feelings of the people were such that similar or even more adequate protection would be given were another meeting held. He suggested that the meeting be held in broad daylight and on a Sunday.

That the plan met with the approval of the I. W. W. membership was shown by its adoption at a meeting the night following the trouble at Beverly Park. And the date selected was Sunday, November 5th.

Immediately steps were taken to inform the various I. W. W. branches in the Northwest of the proposed action. Telegrams were sent to Solidarity, and a ringing call for two thousand men to help in the fight for free speech was published in the Industrial Worker. In addition to telegraphing the story and its attendant call for action to the unions of the Pacific Coast there were various members selected from among the forty-one who had been beaten, and these were dispatched to different points to spread the tale of Everett's atrocities, and to gain new recruits for the "invading army" of free speech fighters.

Seeking the widest possible publicity the free speech committee had printed and circulated thousands of handbills in Everett to call attention to the proposed meeting.

CITIZENS OF EVERETT ATTENTION!

A meeting will be held at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Aves., on Sunday, Nov. 5th, 2 p. m. Come and help maintain your and our const.i.tutional right. +Committee.+

The authorities in Everett were notified, the editors of all the Seattle daily papers were requested to have representatives present at the meeting, and reporters were called in and told of the intentions of the organization. During the week frequent meetings were held in the hall in Seattle to arrange for the incoming free speech fighters, and without an exception all these meetings were held with no examination of membership books and were open to the public. With their cards laid upon the table the members of the Industrial Workers of the World were preparing to call the hand of the semi-legalized outlaws of Snohomish county who had cast aside the law, abrogated the Const.i.tution of the United States, and denied the right of free speech and free a.s.sembly.

Following the Beverly affair the Commercial Club redoubled its activities. Blackjacks and "Robinson-clubs," so called because they were manufactured especially for the deputies by the Robinson Mill, were set aside for revolvers and high power rifles, and the ranks of the deputies were enlarged by the off-scouring and sc.u.m of the open shop persuasion.

McRae entered the I. W. W. hall on Friday, Nov. 3rd, the day Thomas H.

Tracy turned the office over to Chester Micklin, and abruptly said "By G.o.d, I will introduce myself. I am Sheriff McRae! I won't have a lot of sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes hanging around this place like in Seattle."

Micklin looked at the drunken sheriff a moment and replied, "The const.i.tution guarantees us free speech, free a.s.sembly, and free----"

"To h.e.l.l with the Const.i.tution," broke in McRae. "We have a const.i.tution here that we will enforce."

"You believe in unions, you believe in organized labor, don't you?"

asked Micklin.

"Yes, I belonged to the shingle weavers at one time," returned McRae, "but when the shingle weavers went out on strike I donated $25.00 to their strike fund and they gave me a rotten deal and sent the check back to me, and to h.e.l.l with the shingle weavers and the rest of the unions!"

Then, as he was leaving the hall, McRae pulled from his pocket a letter; took from it a black cat cut from pasteboard and stuck it in the secretary's face, saying "That's the kind of ----s that is in your organization!"

Next morning the sheriff raided the hall and seized the men who were found there, with the exception of the secretary. Turning to Micklin he said boastfully "I'll bet you a hundred dollars you ----s won't hold that meeting tomorrow!" McRae was drunk.

The arrested men were searched and deported and, as was the case in every previous arrest and deportation, there was no resistance offered, no physical violence threatened, and no weapons of any character found upon any of the I. W. W. men.

That night the deputies were secretly a.s.sembled at the Commercial Club where they were given their final instructions by the lumber trust and ordered to report fully armed and ready for action at the blowing of the mill whistles. With these preparations the open shop forces were ready to go to still greater lengths to uphold "law and order!"

The answer of the I. W. W. to this d.a.m.nable act of violence at Beverly Park and to the four months of terrorism that had preceded it was a call for two thousand men to enter Everett, there to gain by sheer force of numbers that right of free speech and peaceable a.s.sembly supposed to have been guaranteed them by the Const.i.tution of the United States.[10]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Ketchum Home near Beverly Park]

FOOTNOTE:

[10] (The incidents in the foregoing chapter are corroborated by the sworn testimony of I. W. W. men who were shot at, beaten, robbed, and abused; by citizens of Everett and Seattle who were also beaten and mistreated or who witnessed the scenes; by physicians, attorneys, public officials, members of craft unions, and by deputies who hoped to make amends by testifying to the truth for the defense.)

CHAPTER IV.