There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 17, 1917
Everett, Washington – McRae’s Bloody Suppression of Free Speech
Today we present one of two pamphlets, published by the Everett Prisoners’ Defense Committee, which tells the actually story of events leading up to the Everett Massacre. Tomorrow we will feature the second pamphlet which tells the horrific story of that day in Everett now known far and wide as “Bloody Sunday.”
THE EVENTS LEADING TO THE CRIME
OF BLOODY SUNDAY
———-WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE
EVERETT MASSACRE
———-
A review of the activities in Everett prior to the events of Bloody Sunday, Nov. 5, will serve to give a better understanding of that tragedy.
On the First of May, 1916, the Shingle Weavers’ Union called a strike in the Pacific Northwest and by August the strike had been won or called off in practically every place but Everett. In that city the Jameson Mill was the bitterest foe of unionism, and before the mill gates the union maintained twenty pickets.
On Saturday, Aug. 19, the Everett police searched every picket to make sure that they were unarmed; and when that fact was determined, the Jameson Mill owners turned loose their entire bunch of thugs and scabs upon the defenseless men. The pickets were unmercifully beaten.
That night there was another clash between the pickets and the scabs, who were aided by the police. In the melee, one union man was shot in the leg.
No attempt had been made by the city to stop I. W. W. speakers from speaking on the streets until after the Shingle Weavers’ strike had been on for some time. James P. Thompson had spoken in Everett several times during the winter and spring of 1916.
James Rowan was arrested on, or about, August 2nd, on a trumped-up charge of selling literature without a license. He was given 30 days, with the choice of leaving town. He chose to leave town. He was not told how long he was to remain away from town and he afterwards came back. This was the first attempt on the part of the authorities to suppress Free Speech. They were not so boldly ruthless at first; they used the absurd pretext of charging absence of a license when selling literature.
On August 19, the I. W. W. opened a headquarters at 1219½ Hewitt Avenue, but made no attempt to hold street meetings. A large number of workers in Everett were very desirous of hearing James P. Thompson speak and therefore asked the Seattle locals to arrange a meeting for him in Everett. The date was accordingly set for August 22nd, and the meeting was to be held at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues, the usual place for street meetings. On Monday, Aug. 21, the police notified L. Remick, who was in charge of the hall, to close up the place or he would be arrested on charge of vagrancy. Remick closed the hall up and came to Seattle on Tuesday morning. The members of the Seattle locals felt that there would be no interference with the Thompson meeting and decided to go ahead with it.
On Tuesday night as scheduled the meeting took place. Thompson was arrested after speaking about 20 minutes. Fifteen police officers were present and in turn they arrested James Rowan and Edith Frenette as they attempted to speak, and after stopping several local speakers the police surrounded 14 other I. W. W. members and marched them off to jail. A delegation of about 800 citizens marched to the jail and expressed their indignation at the high-handed actions of the police. The prisoners, with the exception of Rowan and Beck, were deported to Seattle without any legal process having been taken. Rowan and Beck were released later and they remained in Everett. During the balance of the week street meetings were held and there was no trouble of any kind.
The orderly work of the I. W. W. continued with no disturbances of any kind until on Thursday Sept. 7, when six more I. W. W.s were arrested, Edith Frenette was released, but the others were given 30 days each on a charge of vagrancy. On Friday Fred Reed was arrested and given 6 months.
On Saturday, Sept. 9th, Sheriff McRae, backed by some of his vigilante committee which had been secretly organized, left Everett in a launch to meet the launch “Wonder,” which had been chartered by members of the I. W. W. for the purpose of going to Everett. A volley of shots was fired at the “Wonder,” and its captain and 20 members of the I. W. W. were arrested. The men were unarmed, as had been the case in all previous arrests. After the I. W. W. men had been placed in the jail they were severely beaten. The I. W. W. hall was unlawfully invaded and the secretary, Dan Emett, and all members present were arrested. All these men were denied the jury trials they demanded and were given from 30 days to 6 months.
Instead of being allowed to serve out their sentences the prisoners were turned over to the vigilante mob, sometimes on the jail steps and even inside of the jail. The men were then brutally beaten and deported.
On the Monday night following these outrages further attempts were made to speak upon the streets. Harry Feinberg spoke first to about 1000 people. His signed statement of what happened is in part as follows:
Three companies of deputies and vigilantes, about one hundred and fifty thugs in all, marched down the street and divided into three companies. One of the deputies came up and told me he wanted me and grabbed me off the box.
They took me up to jail, took my description, my money and valuables, which were not returned. By that time Fellow Worker Roberts was brought in. A drunken deputy came in and grabbed me by the coat and dragged me out of jail with the evident permission of the officers. The vigilantes proceeded to beat me up on the jail steps. There were anyway fifty vigilantes waiting outside and all of them crowded to get a chance to hit me. They gave me a chance to get away finally and shot after me, or in the air, I could not tell which, but I was not hit by any of the bullets.
James Rowan was again arrested without warrant, searched and thrown in jail, after which Sheriff McRae and a deputy took him to a lonely spot out of town and released him. Almost immediately following his release Rowan was set upon by a gang of masked and armed men and was beaten with gun butts and clubs after having been stripped of his clothes. (Many saw both Feinberg and Rowan on the day following this trouble and can testify to the fact that both men had been brutally handled. The cuts and bruises on Rowan’s head and back were especially sever.)
The statement of W. Roberts is as follows:
I took the box after Fellow Worker Feinberg had been arrested. The crowd were extreme in their hostility to the lawlessness of the officers. I told them to keep cool, that the I. W. W. would handle the situation, in their own time and way. They arrested me, and, right there, they clubbed me on the head. They brought me to the jail, where Feinberg was at the desk. They took me out of the jail and threw me into the bunch of vigilantes with clubs. They started beating me around the body. One of them said: “Do anything, but don’t kill him!”
Finally one of them hit me on the head and I came out of it and as I was getting away they shot in the air. A bunch of them then jumped into an automobile, came after me and again clubbed me. One of them knocked me out for ten minutes, according to one of the women who were watching.
While we were in the jail, two men we did not know were brought into the jail with their heads cut open. The vigilantes were clubbing women right and left and a young girl, about eight years of age, had her head cut open by one of Sheriff MacRae’s Commercial Club tools.
Quiet again reigned in Everett following these brutalities. A few citizens were manhandled for too openly expressing their opinion of mob methods and several wearers of overalls were searched and deported, but the effects of bootlegged whiskey seemed to have left the vigilantes.
On Wednesday, Sept. 20, a committee of 2000 citizens met at the Labor Temple and arranged for a mass meeting to be held in the public park on the following Friday. The meeting brought forth between ten and fifteen thousand citizens, who listened to speakers representing the I. W. W., Socialists, trades unions and citizens generally. Testimony was given by some of the citizens who had been clubbed by the vigilantes. Recognizing the hostile public opinion, Sheriff McRae promised that the office of the I. W. W. would not again be molested but as he had lied before he was not believed.
On Tuesday, Sept. 26, despite his promise, McRae and a bunch of vigilantes entered the I. W. W. hall and seized Earl Osborn who was temporarily in charge. No warrant was issued and instead of taking Osborn to jail, McRae placed him in an automobile and after driving six miles out of town started him toward Seattle on foot.
On Sunday Osborn again entered Everett in company with James P. Thompson, Mrs. Thompson and Geo. Bradley, and after speaking to an enthusiastic audience of 1,200 people the little party returned to Seattle.
From this time until Oct. 30 no vigilante violence was noted, but scores of workers passing through Everett were held up and searched and, after illegally being held over night in jail, were deported from the city. Those who had money were forced to pay their own fare.
Then on October 30 occurred an outrage greater than all the preceding ones-an outrage exceeded only by the wanton murder of the I. W. W. men on the steamer Verona. Forty-one I. W. W. men, entirely unarmed and accused of no crime, were taken from a boat on which they were passengers and at the point of guns were searched and abused by a mob of deputized drunks. They were then thrown into automobiles and with armed guards, who outnumbered them five to one, were taken to Beverly Park, a lonely country spot, where they were forced to run the gauntlet of the vigilantes who rained blows upon their unprotected heads and bodies with saps, clubs, pick-handles and other weapons. In this mob of 200 fiends were lawyers, doctors, business men, members of the chamber of commerce, “patriotic” militiamen, ignorant university students, deputies and Sheriff McRae. As a result of the peaceful attempt to assert a constitutional right, forty-one members of the I. W. W. were sent to Seattle hospitals, with injuries ranging from bruises to internal injuries and broken shoulders. To these dastardly actions, as to all others in the past, the I. W. W. did not respond with a single act of retaliative violence on the persons of those who were responsible.
The answer of the I. W. W. to this damnable act of violence and to the four months of terrorism that had preceded it was a call issued through the Industrial Worker for men to enter Everett, there to gain by sheer publicity that right of free speech and peaceable assemblage supposed to have been guaranteed them by the constitution of the United States. Then came the tragedy on the steamer Verona on Sunday, November 5, the latest outbreak of employers’ mob-violence, as a result of which five workers are dead and over a hundred in jail.
[Photograph of Industrial Worker added.]
SOURCE
“The Events Leading to the Crime of Bloody Sunday
What Happened Before the Everett Massacre”
Pamphlet of the Everett Prisoners’ Defense Committee
of Seattle, Washington
http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/search/collection/pnwlabor
Note: Publication of pamphlet is estimated from content to have been after November 23rd and before Dec 16th of 1916, see:
“Women Released” from Northwest Worker of Nov 23, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/64154189/
“38 Men Released” from Dec 16, 1916, editions of
SUR (020) & Def News Letter #3 (042)
http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/search/collection/pnwlabor
IMAGES
Industrial Worker, IWW Seattle, Everett Massacre P1, Oct 21, 1916
http://depts.washington.edu/iww/newspapers.shtml
Everett Massacre, Def Com Pamph 2, Events Leading to, Nov/Dec 1916
http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/search/collection/pnwlabor
See also:
The Everett Massacre
A History of the Class Struggle in the Lumber Industry
-by Walker C. Smith
IWW, 1918
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001106557
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31810/31810-h/31810-h.htm
Industrial Worker by Chris Perry & Victoria Thorpe
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/laborpress/Industrial_Worker.htm
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