For a time it seemed as though the strikers would surely be defeated. The
onslaught was terrific, but the loggers held out bravely. Workers were
beaten and jailed by the hundreds. Men were herded like cattle in
blistering "bull-pens," to be freed after months of misery, looking more
like skeletons than human beings. Ellensburg and Yakima will never be
forgotten in Washington. One logger was even burned to death while locked
in a small iron-barred shack that had been dignified with the title of
"jail." In the Northwest even the military were used and the bayonet of
the soldier could be seen glistening beside the cold steel of the hired
thug. Union halls were raided in all parts of the land. Thousands of
workers were deported. Dozens were tarred and feathered and mobbed. Some
were even taken out in the dead of night and hanged to railway bridges.
Hundreds were convicted of imaginary offenses and sent to prison for terms
from one to twenty years. Scores were held in filthy jails for as long as
twenty-six months awaiting trial. The Espionage Law, which never convicted
a spy, and the Criminal Syndicalism Laws, which never convicted a
criminal, were used savagely and with full force against the workers in
their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war
hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public
opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has
become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to
convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose
backs they were trying to break, were working for the best interests of
the American people. Our form of government, forsooth, must be saved. Our
institutions must be rescued from the clutch of the "reds." Thus was the
war-frenzy of their dupes lashed to madness and the guarantees of the
constitution suspended as far as the working class was concerned.
So all the good, wise and noisy men of the nation were induced by diverse
means to cry out against the strikers and their union. The worst passions
of the respectable people were appealed to. The hoarse blood-cry of the
mob was raised. It was echoed and re-echoed from press and pulpit. The
very air quivered from its reverberations. Lynching parties became
"respectable." Indictments were flourished. Hand-cuffs flashed. The
clinking feet of workers going to prison rivaled the sound of the soldiers
marching to war. And while all this was happening, a certain paunchy
little English Jew with moth-eaten hair and blotchy jowls the accredited
head of a great labor union glared through his thick spectacles and nodded
his perverse approval. But the lumber trust licked its fat lips and leered
at its swollen dividends. All was well and the world was being made "safe
for democracy!"
[Illustration: Britt Smith
American. Logger. 35 years old. Had followed the woods for twenty years.
Smith made his home in the hall that was raided and was secretary of the
Union. When the mob broke into the jail and seized Wesley Everest to
torture and lynch him they cried, "We've got Britt Smith!" Smith was the
man they wanted and it was to break his neck that ropes were carried in
the "parade." Not until Everest's body was brought back to the city jail
was it discovered that the mob had lynched the wrong man.]