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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 28, 1920
Chehalis, Washington – Mike Sheehan and Elmer Smith Back Behind Bars
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of April 23, 1920:
CHEHALIS JAILOR CHARY ABOUT RECEIVING VISITS
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Correspondent Tells of Conditions in Prison Where
Victims of Centralia Lumber Barons Were Confined
—–(By John Nicholas Beffel.)
Centralia, Wash.-It’s difficult to get into the decrepit old jail at Chehalis unless you are a Wobbly. I wanted to get inside, but Sheriff John Berry wouldn’t let me. He was firm about it, and a bit peevish. Sanitary conditions within were a delicate subject, a cause for official sensitiveness.
That jail has an important relation to the Centralia tragedy story. Some of the I. W. W. defendants consented to make statements while confined there. Mrs. Mary McAllister, one of the vital witnesses for the defense, who testified that Eugene Barnett was in the Roderick hotel during the rioting and not in the Avalon hotel, was held in the Chehalis jail twenty days without warrant or charge, and then released.
And now Mike Sheehan and Elmer Smith, acquitted at Montesano, were back at Chehalis, imprisoned in a little cell, suffering for lack of proper ventilation, fighting live rats and enduring the odor of dead ones. Sheehan and Smith had been found innocent of connection with the death of Warren O. Grim, and then were immediately rearrested charged with conspiring to murder Arthur McElfresh, another slain Armistice Day parader.
I asked Sheriff Berry if I could see the interior of the jail.
“Who are you investigatin’ jails for?” he demanded suspiciously.
“For the labor press,” I said.
“It won’t be necessary for you to see the inside of this jail,” he decreed. “It ain’t the kind of place it ought to be, but I can’t help that. I’ve tried to get the county commissioners to fix things, but they won’t loosen up.”
Already I knew that Berry would not permit the prisoners to receive any copies of the Seattle Union Record or any other labor paper.
So I asked him: “Are there any restrictions on the kind of literature that people may send to the boys inside?”
Berry’s face reddened. “That’s none of your business,” he answered, ‘I’m runnin’ this jail.”
From all accounts, the Chehalis jail is one of the worst in all Washington. I doubt if even the Centralia jail, with its terrible memories, is worse, anyhow, the Centralia structure has more windows to let in air. Both the Chehalis jail and the wretched three-story brick courthouse which adjoins it are apparently fire-traps.
The courthouse used to be a hotel, I understand. It is of red brick, architectured in the style of the Civil war, and the wooden stairs inside are rickety. All about is the odor of decay; a scene of shadowy things; I remember a row of small-eyed men sitting on a wooden bench in the hall outside of one of the courtrooms.
Squat against the back wall of the courthouse is the jail-of acrid orange hue rather than red, it is a low two-story box-like pile, and the window facing the street is closed airtight with iron shutters. There are a couple of barred windows on the back end of the jail. But the third wall is not in view of the street.
Elmer Smith’s mother [Mrs. Thomas (Isabelle) Smith] got inside the jail recently, permission for her to enter was given inadvertently by one of the deputies in the absence of the sheriff. Leading Mrs. Smith into the fetid air of the cell-room the deputy was apologetic for the conditions there.
What Mrs. Smith saw and heard about the place made her shudder. The building measures about 25 by 30 feet. Entering from the sheriff’s office, one looks lengthwise into the bull-pen. On either side of this mingling hall are two cells, seven by seven. The floor of the bull-pen is about six inches above the floor of the cells.
There is but little light from the outside in the bull-pen, this little coming through two small windows at either end, and those windows afford the only ventilation. Throughout the day the men move about in the bull-pen. This is their only chance for exercise. Sheehan and Smith are kept in one cell, having separate bunks of steel, covered by blankets.
Sanitary conditions are accurately described as rotten. No bathing facilities exist, there being only a sink in which the prisoners may wash. Rats pervade the building, and the men must burn the electric lights all night to keep them from their beds. These lights cause some of the prisoners to sleep fitfully. Odors of the dead rodents rise from beneath the bull-pen floor.
Prisoners are also housed upstairs. Men with venereal diseases are thrown in with the uncontaminated ones, no safeguards being provided. All are compelled to use the same toilets.
Earlier on the day of brush with Sheriff Berry, I had visited his office in his absence, and found Sheehan and Smith seated there conversing with members of Smith’s family. The two prisoners talked with me at length. They were cheerful, and expected that shortly the new charge against them would be dropped.
Vandeveer, their attorney, was to argue a motion shortly for their dismissal, contending that if they were not guilty of conspiring to murder Warren Grimm on Armistice day, they were certainly not guilty of conspiring to murder Arthur McElfresh. No evidence had ever been presented by the prosecution to show that any of the Wobbly hall’s defender’s had planned to kill any particular marcher in the parade-nor, indeed, had it ever shown that any of the Wobblies had ever intended to kill anybody at all. Their only plan was to defend their lives and property if attacked, as they had a right to do under the law.
Talking that day with Prosecuting Attorney Herman Allen. I asked him if the new charges against Sheehan and Smith could hold. He said that in all probability they would be dropped.
“The warrants against Sheehan and Smith the McElfresh charge were filed largely as a precaution,” Allen declared. “We figured that they might be acquitted; and we thought somebody might attempt to do violence to them.”
“Who would have been likely to pull any rough stuff?” I inquired.
“We feared some of the American Legion fellows might try it,” he answered.
“But there was never any disorder during the trial, and the legion boys were a pretty decent lot, I thought.”
“In every organization of men,” explained Allen, “there are always a few hotheads-and it was that possibility that caused us to take no chance.”
If Allen gave that explanation honestly, I feel that he was mistaken. For all the stories that went out of Montesano about the danger of violence-and it is true that threats and rumors of threats were widely circulated-I believe that there was never any great danger of violence from the legionaires.
They were brought there, 150 in a bunch at first, to aid the prosecution by sitting in the courtroom and looking sternly at the jury-for $4 a day and expenses. But there came a time when many of them saw how they were being used, as some of them had been used by the employing interests in the Centralia raid; and they became resentful.
Too, the payers of the $4 a day finally ceased paying, and the legion had to send two of its members across the state soliciting funds-and that helped to make the Montesano trial a discouraging and boresome episode to numerous legion men.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Wesley Everest, Died for my class. Chaplin Part 15
https://www.iww.org/history/library/Chaplin/centralia-conspiracy/15
The Butte Daily Bulletin
(Butte, Montana)
-Apr 23, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-04-23/ed-1/seq-5/
For name of mother and father of Elmer Smith, see:
The Centralia Tragedy of 1919
Elmer Smith and the Wobblies
-by Tom Copeland
University of Washington Press, Jul 1, 2011
https://books.google.com/books?id=K8cKidBft4cC
IMAGE
IWW Centralia, Sheehan n Smith, Stt Str p11, Jan 24, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/1920-01-24/ed-1/seq-11/
See also:
Centralia Armistice Day Conspiracy of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/centralia-armistice-day-conspiracy-of-1919/
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Better World A Comin’ – Woody Guthrie