But Centralia was destined to be the scene of the most dramatic portion of
the struggle between the entrenched interests and the union loggers. Here
the long persecuted industrialists made a stand for their lives and fought
to defend their own, thus giving the glib-tongued lawyers of the
prosecution the opportunity of accusing them of "wantonly murdering
unoffending paraders" on Armistice Day.
Centralia in appearance is a creditable small American city--the kind of
city smug people show their friends with pride from the rose-scented
tranquility of a super-six in passage. The streets are wide and clean, the
buildings comfortable, the lawns and shade trees attractive. Centralia is
somewhat of a coquette but she is as sinister and cowardly as she is
pretty. There is a shudder lurking in every corner and a nameless fear
sucks the sweetness out of every breeze. Song birds warble at the
outskirts of the town but one is always haunted by the cries of the human
beings who have been tortured and killed within her confines.
A red-faced business man motors leisurely down the wet street. He shouts a
laughing greeting to a well dressed group at the curb who respond in kind.
But the roughly dressed lumberworkers drop their glances in passing one
another. The Fear is always upon them. As these lines are written several
hundred discontented shingle-weavers are threatened with deportation if
they dare to strike. They will not strike, for they know too well the
consequences. The man-hunt of a few months ago is not forgotten and the
terror of it grips their hearts whenever they think of opposing the will
of the Moloch that dominates their every move.
Around Centralia are wooded hills; men have been beaten beneath them and
lynched from their limbs. The beautiful Chehalis River flows near by;
Wesley Everest was left dangling from one of its bridges. But Centralia is
provokingly pretty for all that. It is small wonder that the lumber trust
and its henchmen wish to keep it all for themselves.
Well tended roads lead in every direction, bordered with clearings of
worked out camps and studded with occasional tree stumps of great age and
truly prodigious size. At intervals are busy saw mills with thousands of
feet of odorous lumber piled up in orderly rows. In all directions
stretches the pillared immensity of the forests. The vistas through the
trees seen enchanted rather than real--unbelievable green and of form and
depth that remind one of painted settings for a Maeterlinck fable rather
than matter-of-fact timber land.