When the paraders smashed the door in, the I.W.W.'s, as every lover of
free speech and every respecter of his person--they had appealed to the
citizens, they had appealed to the officers, and some of their members had
been tarred and feathered, beaten up and hung--they said in thought:
"Patience has ceased to be a virtue." And if the law will not protect us,
and the people won't protect us, we will protect ourselves. And they did.
And in deciding this case, I want each of you, members of the jury, to ask
yourself what would you have done?
There had been discussions of this character in the I.W.W. hall, and so
have there been discussions everywhere. There had never been a plot laid
to murder anybody, nor to shoot anybody in any parade. I want you to ask
yourself: "Why would anybody want to shoot anybody in a parade," and to
particularly ask yourself why anyone would want to shoot upon soldiers?
He who was a soldier himself, Wesley Everest, the man who did most of the
shooting, and the man whom they beat until he was unconscious and whom
they grabbed from the street and put a rope around his neck, the man whom
they nearly shot to pieces, and the man whom they hung, once dropping him
ten feet, and when what didn't kill him lengthened the rope to 15 feet and
dropped him again--why would one soldier want to kill another soldier, or
soldiers, who had never done him nor his fellows any harm?
I exonerate the American Legion as an organization of the responsibility
of this. For I say they didn't know about it. The day will come when they
will realize that they have been mere catspaws in the hands of the
Centralia commercial interests. That is the story. I don't know what the
verdict will be today, but the verdict ten years hence will be the verdict
in the Lovejoy case; that these men were within their rights and that they
fought for a cause, that these men fought for liberty. They fought for
these things for which we stand and for which all true lovers of liberty
stand, and those who smashed them up are the real enemies of our country.
This is a big case, counsel says, the biggest case that has ever been
tried in this country, but the biggest thing about these big things is
from beginning to end it has been a struggle on the one side for ideals
and on the other side to suppress those ideals. This thing was started
with Hubbard at its head. It is being started today with Hubbard at its
head in this courtroom, and I don't believe you will fall for it.