This unprecedented struggle was really a test of strength between
industrial autocracy and militant unionism. The former was determined to
restore the palmy days of peonage for all time to come, the latter to
fight to the last ditch in spite of hell and high water. The lumber trust
sought to break the strike of the loggers and destroy their organization.
In the ensuing fracas the lumber barons came out only second best--and
they were bad losers. After the war-fever had died down--one year after
the signing of the Armistice--they were still trying in Centralia to
attain their ignoble ends by means of mob violence.
But at this time the ranks of the strikers were unbroken. The heads of the
loggers were "bloody but unbowed." Even at last, when compelled to yield
to privation and brute force and return to work, they turned defeat to
victory by "carrying the strike onto the job." As a body they refused to
work more than eight hours. Secretary of War Baker and President Wilson
had both vainly urged the lumber interests to grant the eight hour day.
The determined industrialists gained this demand, after all else had
failed, by simply blowing a whistle when the time was up. Most of their
other demands were won as well. In spite of even the Disque despotism,
mattresses, clean linen and shower baths were reluctantly granted as the
fruits of victory.
But even as these lines are written the jails and prisons of America are
filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime is loyalty to
the working class. The war profiteers are still wallowing in luxury. None
has ever been placed behind the bars. Before he was lynched in Butte,
Frank Little had said, "I stand for the solidarity of labor." That was
enough. The vials of wrath were poured on his head for no other reason.
And for no other reason was the hatred of the employing class directed at
the valiant hundreds who now rot in prison for longer terms than those
meted out to felons. William Haywood and Eugene Debs are behind steel bars
today for the same cause. The boys at Centralia were conspired against
because they too stood "for the solidarity of labor." It is simply lying
and camouflage to attempt to trace such persecutions to any other source.
These are things America will be ashamed of when she comes to her senses.
Such gruesome events are paralleled in no country save the Germany of
Kaiser Wilhelm or the Russia of the Czar.
This picture of labor persecution in free America--terrible but true--will
serve as a background for the dramatic history of the events leading up to
the climactic tragedy at Centralia on Armistice Day, 1919.
While in Washington...
All over the state of Washington the mobbing, jailing and tar and
feathering of workers continued the order of the day until long after the
cessation of hostilities in Europe. The organization had always urged and
disciplined its members to avoid violence as an unworthy weapon. Usually
the loggers have left their halls to the mercy of the mobs when they knew
a raid was contemplated. Centralia is the one exception. Here the outrages
heaped upon them could be no longer endured.
In Yakima and Sedro Woolley, among other places in 1918, union men were
stripped of their clothing, beaten with rope ends and hot tar applied to
the bleeding flesh. They were then driven half naked into the woods. A man
was hanged at night in South Montesano about this time and another had
been tarred and feathered. As a rule the men were taken unaware before
being treated in this manner. In one instance a stationary delegate of the
Industrial Workers of the World received word that he was to be
"decorated" and rode out of town on a rail. He slit a pillow open and
placed it in the window with a note attached stating that he knew of the
plan; would be ready for them, and would gladly supply his own feathers.
He did not leave town either on a rail or otherwise.
In Seattle, Tacoma and many other towns, union halls and print shops were
raided and their contents destroyed or burned. In the former city in 1919,
men, women and children were knocked insensible by policemen and
detectives riding up and down the sidewalks in automobiles, striking to
right and left with "billy" and night stick as they went. These were
accompanied by auto trucks filled with hidden riflemen and an armored tank
bristling with machine guns. A peaceable meeting of union men was being
dispersed.
[Illustration: Loren Roberts
American. Logger. 19 years old. Loren's mother said of him at the trial:
"Loren was a good boy, he brought his money home regularly for three
years. After his father took sick he was the only support for his father
and me and the three younger ones." The father was a sawyer in a mill and
died of tuberculosis after an accident had broken his strength. This boy,
the weakest of the men on trial, was driven insane by the unspeakable
"third degree" administered in the city jail. One of the lumber trust
lawyers was in the jail at the time Roberts signed his so-called
"confession." "Tell him to quit stalling," said a prosecutor to
Vanderveer, when Roberts left the witness stand. "You cur!" replied the
defense attorney in a low voice, "you know who is responsible for this
boy's condition." Roberts was one of the loggers on Seminary Hill.]
In Centralia, Aberdeen and Montesano, in Grays Harbor County, the struggle
was more local but not less intense. No fewer than twenty-five loggers on
different occasions were taken from their beds at night and treated to tar
and feathers. A great number were jailed for indefinite periods on
indefinite charges. As an additional punishment these were frequently
locked in their cells and the fire hose played on their drenched and
shivering bodies. "Breech of jail discipline" was the reason given for
this "cruel and unusual" form of lumber trust punishment.
In Aberdeen and Montesano there were several raids and many deportations
of the tar and feather variety. In Aberdeen in the fall of 1917 during a
"patriotic" parade, the battered hall of the union loggers was again
forcibly entered in the absence of its owners. Furniture, office fixtures,
Victrola and books were dumped into the street and destroyed. In the town
of Centralia, about a year before the tragedy, the Union Secretary was
kidnapped and taken into the woods by a mob of well dressed business men.
He was made to "run the gauntlet" and severely beaten. There was a strong
sentiment in favor of lynching him on the spot, but one of the mob
objected saying it would be "too raw." The victim was then escorted to the
outskirts of the city and warned not to return under pain of usual
penalty. On more than one occasion loggers who had expressed themselves in
favor of the Industrial Workers of the World, were found in the morning
dangling from trees in the neighborhood. No explanation but that of
"suicide" was ever offered. The whole story of the atrocities perpetrated
during these days of the White Terror, in all probability, will never be
published. The criminals are all well known but their influence is too
powerful to ever make it expedient to expose their crimes. Besides, who
would care to get a gentleman in trouble for killing a mere "Wobbly"? The
few instances noted above will, however, give the reader some slight idea
of the gruesome events that were leading inevitably to that grim day in
Centralia in November, 1919.