But another jury had been watching the trial. Their verdict came as a
surprise to those who had read the newspaper version of the case. No
sooner had the twelve bewildered and frightened men in the jury box paid
tribute to the power of the Lumber Trust with a ludicrous and tragic
verdict than the six workingmen of the Labor Jury returned their verdict
also. Those six men represented as many labor organizations in the Pacific
Northwest with a combined membership of many thousands of wage earners.
The last echoes of the prolonged legal battle had hardly died away when
these six men sojourned to Tacoma to ballot, deliberate and to reach their
decision about the disputed facts of the case. At the very moment when the
trust-controlled newspapers, frantic with disappointment, were again
raising the blood-cry of their pack, the frank and positive statement of
these six workers came like a thunderclap out of a clear sky,--"Not
Guilty!"
The Labor Jury had studied the development of the case with earnest
attention from the beginning. Day by day they had watched with increasing
astonishment the efforts of the defense to present, and of the prosecution
and the judge to exclude, from the consideration of the trial jury, the
things everybody knew to be true about the tragedy at Centralia. Day by
day the sordid drama had been unfolded before their eyes. Day by day the
conviction had grown upon them that the loggers on trial for their lives
were being railroaded to the gallows by the legal hirelings of the Lumber
Trust. The Labor Jury was composed of men with experience in the labor
movement. They had eyes to see through a maze of red tape and legal
mummery to the simple truth that was being hidden or obscured. The Lumber
Trust did not fool these men and it could not intimidate them. They had
the courage to give the truth to the world just as they saw it. They were
convinced in their hearts and minds that the loggers on trial were
innocent. And they would have been just as honest and just as fearless had
their convictions been otherwise.
It cannot be said that the Labor Jury was biased in favor of the
defendants or of the I.W.W. If anything, they were predisposed to believe
the defendants guilty and their union an outlaw organization. It must be
remembered that all the labor jury knew of the case was what it had read
in the capitalist newspapers prior to their arrival at the scene of the
trial. These men were not radicals but representative working men--members
of conservative unions--who had been instructed by their organizations to
observe impartially the progress of the trial and to report back to their
unions the result of their observations. Read their report: