Let us see for a moment how the conspiracy of the lumber barons operated
to achieve the unlawful ends for which it was designed. Let us see how
they were driven by their own failure at intrigue to adopt methods so
brutal that they would have disgraced the head-hunter; how they tried to
gain with murder-lust what they had failed to gain lawfully and with
public approval.
The campaign of lies and slander inaugurated by their private newspapers
failed to convince the workers of the undesirability of labor
organization. In spite of the armies of editors and news-whelps assembled
to its aid, it served only to lash to a murderous frenzy the low instincts
of the anti-labor elements in the community. The campaign of legal
repression, admittedly instituted by the Employers' Association, failed
also in spite of the fact that all the machinery of the state from
dog-catcher down to Governor was at its beck and call on all occasions and
for all purposes.
Having made a mess of things with these methods the lumber barons threw
all scruples to the winds--if they ever had any--threw aside all
pretension of living within the law. They started out, mad-dog like, to
rent, wreck and destroy the last vestige of labor organization from the
woods of the Northwest, and furthermore, to hunt down union men and
martyrize them with the club, the gun, the rope and the courthouse.
It was to cover up their own crimes that the heartless beasts of Big
Business beat the tom-toms of the press in order to lash the "patriotism"
of their dupes and hirelings into hysteria. It was to hide their own
infamy that the loathsome war dance was started that developed perceptibly
from uncomprehending belligerency into the lawless tumult of mobs, raids
and lynching! And it will be an everlasting blot upon the fair name of
America that they were permitted to do so.
The Centralia tragedy was the culmination of a long series of unpunished
atrocities against labor. What is expected of men who have been treated as
these men were treated and who were denied redress or protection under the
law? Every worker in the Northwest knows about the wrongs lumberworkers
have endured--they are matters of common knowledge. It was common
knowledge in Centralia and adjoining towns that the I.W.W. hall was to be
raided on Armistice Day. Yet eight loggers have been sentenced from
twenty-five to forty years in prison for the crime of defending themselves
from the mob that set out to murder them! But let us see how the
conspiracy was operating in Centralia to make the Armistice Day tragedy
inevitable.