Hellraisers Journal: Anna Louise Strong for The Survey: “The Everett Verdict”

There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday May 21, 1917
Seattle, Washington – Tom Tracy Acquitted , Free-Speech Prisoners Released

From The Survey of May 19, 1917:

The Verdict at Everett

Acquittal for the Man Tried, Release for the Other I. W. W.’s
By Anna Louise Strong

“Not guilty!” With these words the great labor trial growing out of the battle on the Everett dock last November drew to a close, on May 5. “We are making history,” said the judge in his opening remarks to the jury. They were, indeed. Although driven from public notice by the opening of war, the trial of the seventy-four I. W. W.’s, represented technically in the person of one of their number, Thomas Tracy, is in many respects the greatest labor trial in our history. Tracy has been adjudged not guilty, after nine weeks of trial, and the others have been released without trial.

The main events leading up to the trial were covered in the SURVEY of January 27, and the evidence coming in at the trial has shown that statement to have been correct, except for one or two irrelevant details. A boatload of I. W. W.’s went to Everett on November 5, having previously announced a meeting on the streets of that city, and invited by circular the citizens of Everett to “come and help defend your and our constitutional rights.” They were met at the dock by the sheriff and 150 deputies. In the fight that ensued two deputies and five I. W. W.’s are known to have been killed, and there is a strong probability that three or four more I. W. W.’s were lost in the waters of the sound. On the return of the steamer Verona to Seattle, the entire load of passengers was arrested, and subsequently seventy-four were held on a charge of murder in the first degree.

The trial moved forward like a great drama, unfolding a background of life little known to the comfortable dwellers in city homes. “They that follow the harvest,” they whom modern conditions of industry have turned into wanderers upon the face of the earth, with no home, no settled abode, no property—yet they upon whose labors rest all the homes and the settled cities and the civilization of western United States—this was the group that came forth into the light of publicity through the trial. The old-time peasant, the “man with the hoe,” bound to one spot of earth, exists no longer; the machines have overthrown him. His place is taken by thousands of men, no longer stationary but passing from state to state, beginning in Kansas and Oklahoma in the spring, traveling north to the Dakotas, then on into Montana, and over into Washington and Oregon for the autumn fruit- picking, dropping finally into the big cities for the winter, to live on the proceeds of their summer work while they search for odd jobs. For a few brief weeks in each community they are the most desired of men; farmers pull them off freight trains as they are on their way, even under contract, to other jobs. But, in a day, with the last hours of harvest, they cease to be desirable. Vagrants now, not needed, they are driven relentlessly from one community to the next. Our civilization has as yet found no way to deal with them; each little town knows only that it no longer wants them.

And among these migratory workers the Industrial Workers of the World has begun its work. A man belonging to the organization has already a sort of standing; freight-train crews through the West usually recognize their union cards as passports. At the end of the season, into whatever town they drift, the workers know that they can find the I. W. W. hall, paid for by their own dues, a meeting-place for fellow-workers, with a gymnasium perhaps and shower-baths, and at least with a reading-room, an office, a bulletin board with notice of jobs. If they have no money, they can put their blankets on the floor of the hall and sleep there, or leave their few possessions with the secretary while they look for work. No charity, either, but paid for with their own money, the membership dues collected during the season of plenty.

Here is companionship—men who have worked in the open as they have; here is a place to get mail; here is the only element of continuity, the only home, in lives that are otherwise like the waves of the sea. And the I. W. W. preaches to them the gospel which they, of all men, most crave—that they are not wasters, not useless wanderers, but that upon them and their work all modern civilization rests. There is roughness in the doctrine they are taught, there is bitterness, there is revolution, there is hope.

Perhaps the most surprising thing to the general public in the course of the entire trial was the type of witness put on the stand by the I. W. W. defense. Men of intelligence, men with experience in many states and with many varieties of human being. Roughly dressed often, but keen. Varying from the slow-moving logger, whose mind held doggedly through a driving cross-examination to the solid definite facts that he knew, to the impassioned son of a Jewish rabbi, who told how he came from Portland in order to defend free speech, prepared to go to jail if necessary, in order to bring conditions to the attention of the American world.

The “conditions” in Everett were not strikingly different from those in other parts of our country. Its working conditions, its public officials, its methods of passing on to the next town the men without work, may be duplicated in many other places. And a similar chain of circumstances may lead, at any time, to another Everett tragedy, unless the towns and cities of the United States awaken to the situation, and learn to deal with the migratory workers and their desire for organization and self-expression in some less stupid manner than just shoving them along and making them shut up.

Everett was in the midst of labor troubles of its own when the organizer for the industrial workers appeared in its streets on a speaking tour of the state. There was a strike on among the shingle-weavers, and there had been some disorder. There can be no doubt that scores of Everett citizens honestly believed that they owed it to the fair name of their town to drive out the invaders. The first few speakers were arrested and told to keep out. They replied what in fact was the truth, that they were breaking no law, and that they had a right to speak where they had spoken and discuss the subjects they had discussed. They were deported from town without trial, and the fight was on.

New speakers and foot-loose rebels came to Everett to speak; they were thrown into jail and deported. They spoke at a place where, under the city ordinances, they had a right to speak. They never resisted arrest; this is one fact on which the testimony of every witness, for defense and state, is clear. They even provoked the police by their non-resistance and by saying to the crowd of listening citizens: “Stand back, don’t get excited. We’ll show you what brutes you have for officers.” As the prosecuting attorney said in his plea: “The I. W. W. have learned a very dangerous truth, that when a large number of people dislike a law they can make it ineffective by violating it in such numbers that only a small proportion can be punished. The jails won’t hold them; the machinery of justice breaks down.”

A meeting of citizens was called at the Commercial Club in Everett. The mayor stated on the stand, “The Commercial Club took my authority and gave it to Sheriff McRae.” Hundreds of deputy sheriffs were enrolled; they signed up at the Commercial Club and were given such oath of office as they took by a man at the club. The minutes of the Commercial Club show that meetings of the deputies were called at which the doctrines of the open shop were guardedly presented and were found to be favorably received. Clubs were also bought by the Commercial Club, and guns were kept there.

Obviously the Commercial Club assumed the right to run the city of Everett. And obviously many men thought that this was necessary in order to protect their town. And yet, up to this time, no I. W. W. had violated any ordinance or law, or had resisted arrest or used violence toward any citizen or officer in Everett.

In breaking up the crowds gathered to hear the speakers, the deputies tied white handkerchiefs around their necks “so we wouldn’t hammer our own men,” as one of them explained on the stand. An emergency ordinance was passed making speaking unlawful at the street corner where the I. W. W.’s had been speaking. After that time no meeting was held at this corner, no speakers were ever allowed to reach it.

Long before speaking on Hewitt and Wetmore became unlawful, the sheriff and his deputies, taking the law into their own hands, had broken up meetings, beaten citizens and I. W. W.’s and even made raids into surrounding towns for the purpose of driving away all incoming migratory workers. Placards were mailed by the I. W. W. organization to harvest fields and lumber camps warning their members to keep out of Everett in order to avoid mistreatment. *

The Fight at the Dock

MANY individual claims of severe beatings were denied by the sheriff and his deputies on the stand. They did not, however, deny the fact that they had met the launch Wanderer, coming into Everett with some twenty I. W. W.’s, and had fired at the boatload of men. The captain claims that five or six shots were fired, one striking his iron bunk; the sheriff admits but one shot. That the sheriff struck three men over the head with a club and kicked the captain, inflicting serious injuries, and then threw all the men into jail for nine days, not even allowing the captain to get bail, is not denied except as to the extent of the injuries.

On another occasion, during the breaking up of a street meeting, an Everett citizen was beaten over the head by mistake and taken to jail sobbing and bleeding. The two I. W. W. speakers were taken on the same night. The citizen was released through the side door, and told “not to go out in front or he’d get killed”; the two I. W. W.’s were sent out through the front door to be beaten by a group of armed deputies. All this is admitted except as to the extent of the beating; Roberts claims that he was hit over the head and twice knocked unconscious; the sheriff claims that there was merely some beating around the legs and body. All this took place before the street speaking-ordinance was passed, and was done to men who had violated no law whatever.

On the night of October 30, some forty-one I. W. W.’s coming to Everett to hold a meeting, were met at the dock, taken to Beverly Park, a small interurban station outside town, and made to run the gauntlet between rows of men who beat them over the head with clubs. The sheriff claimed that the beating was unauthorized and that he was not present, but his two chief deputies swore on the stand that the sheriff was in charge of the whole proceeding and did not leave until it was over. Citizens living near who came over were warned to get away or they would be beaten themselves. A gun was fired at one man who tried to escape into the woods.

“We’re All Leaders”

A GROUP of Everett ministers held an indignation meeting and one minister went to the I. W. W. hall in Seattle and advised them to hold a big meeting to inform the citizens of Everett of the facts. The Verona was chartered, a call was sent out to other towns for volunteers, and over 200 members went to Everett on Sunday afternoon. They were met at the dock by the sheriff and his deputies. The conversation that followed is repeated by all in substantially the same words.

“Who’s your leader?”

“We’re all leaders.”

“You can’t land here.”

“The hell we can’t.”

A shot rang out, then two, then a fusillade. Each side claims that the other side fired first. Witnesses on both sides admit, however, that the sheriff’s hand went to his gun before the shooting began. Dozens of witnesses, Everett citizens who, forbidden to go out on the dock, watched the tragedy from the beach and the hills, state that with the very first shot the men on the boat rushed away from the dock in such numbers that the boat nearly turned over, and several men fell into the water. The inference is that the men on the boat did not expect shooting and that, wherever the first three shots came from, the fusillade did not come from a group of men who were piling up on each other in an effort to get away.

The evidence also tends to show that the boat was raked by fire from several directions, and that men swimming in the water were shot from the dock. High-power rifles and shotguns as well as revolvers, were shown to have been used from the dock. One deputy confessed to shooting at a man who was trying to dodge out of the pilot-house, not because the man was armed, but because “I thought he might untie the boat and we wanted to get them all.”

Two trials were going on in the crowded courtroom in Seattle. This was clear to me as I watched. The trial of Thomas Tracy, the first of the I. W. W. prisoners before the court of King county, and the trial of our whole system of dealing with workers, including our arrangement of courts and laws, before the bar of the working-people of America. Over and over again I heard: “If they convict these men, there is no justice in America,” by men and women not members of the I. W. W. or of any revolutionary group, but ordinary working people of Seattle. The prisoners were judged not guilty by the jury; but until the conspiracy laws are changed on our statute books, our system of law and justice will remain under suspicion in the minds of all organized workers. For they know clearly that it was not the law which saved Tom Tracy, but the common human sense of the jury, which refused to convict of murder a man who, as far as clear evidence went, may not have fired a shot or even desired the killing of any person. According to our conspiracy laws as they now stand, such a man may still be guilty of murder in the first degree.

So the I. W. W.’s come out of jail, many of them, perhaps all. And these boys, some very attractive, very intelligent and capable, presumed to be innocent until proved guilty, and now indeed proved innocent, have lost six months of their lives with no redress. One of them was telling me about it.

There’s no exercise, and not much air, and you can’t expect very good food, of course, and there’s nothing to do but read. There’s not enough daylight for that, and lots of us have hurt our eyesight trying to read. There’s one boy, ‘Happy’ we all call him, he wouldn’t hurt a flea; he’s had a bad cough for some time, we think it’s consumption. You see, it can’t be called exactly a healthy place for anyone.

This is what we do with human beings. And while doing it, we stir up a situation which breeds discord and hate. Everett is divided into two hostile camps. I received an anonymous letter which was evidently, by handwriting, paper and style, from a lady of culture and gentle breeding. In her treatment of me she was most courteous. Yet in speaking of the I. W. Wt’s she said: “If the militia had only reached the docks in time, we should have been spared the heavy expense of this trial. There would have been no I. W. W.’s left to prosecute.” She told me of little boys in school who were called I. W. W.’s and “nearly thrashed to death” by older boys, “a good lesson to the parents who teach them to sympathize with that God-forsaken organization.”

And the fruit of war is war and yet more war.

[Photograph of Anna Louise Strong added.]