But no really important event occurred until 1916. At this time the union
loggers, organized in the Industrial Workers of the World, had started a
drive for membership around Puget Sound. Loggers and mill hands were eager
for the message of Industrial Unionism. Meetings were well attended and
the sentiment in favor of the organization was steadily growing. The A.F.
of L. shingle weavers and longshoremen were on strike and had asked the
I.W.W. to help them secure free speech in Everett. The ever-watchful
lumber interests decided the time to strike had again arrived. The events
of "Bloody Sunday" are too well known to need repeating here. Suffice to
say that after a summer replete with illegal beatings and jailings five
men were killed in cold blood and forty wounded in a final desperate
effort to drive the union out of the city of Everett, Washington. These
unarmed loggers were slaughtered and wounded by the gunfire of a gang of
business men and plug-uglies of the lumber interests. True to form, the
lumber trust had every union man in sight arrested and seventy-four
charged with the murder of a gunman who had been killed by the cross-fire
of his own comrades. None of the desperadoes who had done the actual
murdering was ever prosecuted or even reprimanded. The charge against the
members of the Industrial Workers of the World was pressed. The case was
tried in court and the Industrialists declared "not guilty." George
Vanderveer was attorney for the defense.
The lumber interests were infuriated at their defeat, and from this time
on the struggle raged in deadly earnest. Almost everything from mob law to
open assassination had been tried without avail. The execrated One Big
Union idea was gaining members and power every day. The situation was
truly alarming. Their heretofore trustworthy "wage plugs" were showing
unmistakable symptoms of intelligence. Workingmen were waking up. They
were, in appalling numbers, demanding the right to live like men.
Something must be done something new and drastic--to split asunder this
on-coming phalanx of industrial power.
But the gun-man-and-mob method was discarded, temporarily at least, in
favor of the machinations of lumber trust tools in the law making bodies.
Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them--and with as
little impunity. So the notorious Washington "Criminal Syndicalism" law
was devised. This law, however, struck a snag. The honest-minded governor
of the state, recognizing its transparent character and far-reaching
effects, promptly vetoed the measure. After the death of Governor Lister
the criminal syndicalism law was passed, however, by the next State
Legislature. Since that time it has been used against the American
Federation of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialist
Party and even common citizens not affiliated with any of these
organizations. The criminal syndicalism law registers the high water mark
of reaction. It infringes more on the liberties of the people than any of
the labor-crushing laws that blackened Russia during the dynasty of the
Romanoffs. It would disgrace the anti-Celestial legislation of Hell.