Don’t Mourn! Organize!
-Joe Hill
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 5, 1917
From the Snohomish County Jail – Everett Class-War Prisoners Speak Out
The Industrial Worker of March 3rd offers the story of our I. W. W. Class-War prisoners who have spent the last few months behind the bars of the Snohomish County Jail in Everett, Washington. Despite the harsh conditions, the usual I. W. W. organizational and educational activities continue unabated.
PRISONERS WRITE EVERETT JAIL CONDITIONS AND ACTIVITIES
—–
Will get Freedom, If There Exists Shadow of Justice in America;
Bring order and Cleanliness Out of Filth and Disorder;
Abused by Drunken Deputies.
——
“Everything is fine and dandy on the outside, don’t worry, boys.”
This is the first thing we have heard from visitors ever since we seventy-four have been incarcerated in the Snohomish County Jail at Everett.
While “everything is fine and dandy on the outside” there are no doubt, hundreds who would like to hear how things are on the inside. Let us assure everyone on the outside that “everything is fine and dandy” on the inside. We are not worrying as it is but a short time till the beginning of the trials, the outcome of which we are certain will be one of the greatest victories Labor has ever known, if there exists a shadow of justice in the courts of America.
One hundred days in jail so far-and for nothing! Stop and think what one hundred days in jail means to seventy-four men! It means that in the aggregate the Master Class have deprived us of more than twenty years of liberty. Twenty years! Think of it, and a prospect of twenty more before all are at liberty.
And why?
There can be one reason, one answer: We are spending this time in Jail and will go thru the mockery of trial because the masters of Everett are trying to shield themselves from the atrocious murders of Bloody November Fifth.
After being held in Seattle, convicted without a trial, except such as was given us by the press carrying the advertising of the boss and dependent on him for support, on November 10th forty-one of us were brought to Everett. A few days later thirty more were brought here.
Russianized Jail Conditions.
We found the jail conditions barbarous. There were no mattresses and only one blanket to keep off the chill of a Puget Sound night in the cold, unheated steel cells. There were no towels. We were supplied laundry soap for toilet purposes, when we could get even that. Workers confined in the lower cells were forced to sleep on the floors. There were five of them in each cell and in order to keep any semblance of heat in their bodies they had to sleep all huddled together in all their clothing.
The first few days we were in the jail we spent in cleaning it, as it was reeking with filth and had probably never been cleaned out since it was built. It was alive with vermin. There were armies of bed bugs and body lice. We boiled up everything in the jail and it is safe to say that it is now cleaner than it has ever been before or ever will be after the wobblies are gone.
Abused by Drunken Deputies.
When we first came here the lower floor was covered with barrels, boxes and cases of whiskey and beer. This was moved in a few days, but evidently not so far but McRae and his deputies had access to it, as their breath was always charged with the odor of whiskey. It was an every day occurence to have several of the deputies-emboldened by liquid courage and our defenseless conditions-walk around the cell blocks and indulge in the pastimes of calling us vulgar and profane names. Threats were also very common, but we held our peace and were content with the thought that “A barking dog seldom bites.”
The worst of these deputies are gone since the advent of Sheriff McCulloch, but there are some on the job yet who like their “tea.” About two weeks ago every deputy that came into the jail was drunk; some of them to the extent of staggering.
Organize to Maintain Order.
When we first entered the jail, true to the principles of the I. W. W., we proceeded to organize ourselves for the betterment of our conditions even in jail. A “grub” committee, a sanitary committee and floor committee were appointed. Certain rules and regulations were adopted. By the end of a week, instead of a growling fighting crowd of men, such as one would expect to find where seventy-four men are thrown together, there was an orderly bunch of real I. W. W.’s, who got up at certain hour every morning, and all of whose actions were part of a prearranged routine. Even though every man of the seventy-four was talking as loud as he might a few seconds before ten p. m., the instant the town clock struck ten all was hushed. If a sentence was unfinished, it remained unfinished until the following day.
When the jailor came to the door, instead of seventy-four men crowding up to the door and trying to talk at once three men stepped forward and conversed with him. Our conduct was astonishing to the jail officials. One of the jailors remarked that he had certainly been given a wrong impression of the I. W. W. by McRae. He said, “This bunch is sure different from what I heard they were. You fellows are all right.” The answer was simple: “Organization.” Instead of a cursing, swearing, fighting mob of seventy-four men, such as Sheriff McRae would like to have had us, we were entirely the opposite.
Time has not hung heavy on our hands. One scarcely noticed the length of the days. Educational meetings are frequent and discussions are constantly in order. Our imprisonment has been a matter of experience. We will all be better able to talk Industrial Unionism than when we entered the jail.
Terrible Food Served.
The meals! Did we say “meals?” A thousand pardons! Next time we meet a meal we will apologize to it. Up to the time we asserted our displeasure at the stinky, indigestible messes thrown up to us by a drunken brute, who could not qualify as head waiter in a “nickel plate” restaurant, we had garbage pure and simple. For breakfast we were given mush, bread, and what they called coffee. Think of it! Mush, bread and coffee at 7:30 a. m., and not another bite until 4 p. m. Then they handed us a mess which some of us called “slumgullion,” composed of diseased beef. Is it any wonder that four of the boys were taken to the hospital. But we will not dwell on the grub. Suffice it to say we were all more or less sick from the junk dished out to us. We were all hungry from November 10 until January 22.
One day in November we had beans. Little did we surmise the pain, the agony, contained in that dish of innocent looking erstwhile nutriment, beans. At two in the morning every man in the jail was taken violently ill. We roused the guards and they sent for the doctor. He came about eight hours later and looked disappointed that we were not all dead. This doctor always had the same remedy in all cases. His prescription was: “Stop smoking and you will be all right.” This is the same quack who helped beat up the forty-one members of the I. W. W. at Beverly Park on October 31, 1916. His nerve must have failed him, or his pills would have finished what his pick handle had started.
During the entire time of our confinement under McRae, drunken deputies came into the jail and did everything in their power to make conditions as miserable as possible for us. McRae was usually the leader in vilification of the I. W. W.
Refused Their Attorney.
When on January 8 a change of administration took place we called a meeting which resulted in an interview with Sheriff McCulloch. Among other things we demanded a cook. For days the sheriff stalled us off. He professed that he wanted to do things for our comfort. We gave him two weeks-but there was no change in the conditions. On January 15 the matter came to a climax. For five days previously we had been served with what some called mulligan. In reality it was nothing more nor less than water slightly colored with the juice of carrots. If there had ever been any meat in it it was taken out before it was served.
We called for the sheriff and were informed that he had gone away. We called for one of our attorneys, who was in one of the outer offices at the time, but Jailor Bridges refused to let us see him. Having tried peaceful methods which failed, we decided we would forcibly bring the matter to the attention of the authorities. We poured the contents of the container out through the bars and onto the floor. The boys in the upper tank did the same thing. For doing this we were given a terrible cursing by Jailor Bridges and the drunken cook, who threw a piece of iron through the bars, striking one of the boys on the head, and inflicting a long, ugly wound. The cook also threatened to poison us.
That night when we were to be locked in, one of our jailors, decidedly under the influence of liquor, was in such a condition that he was unable to handle the levers properly and in some manner put the locking system out of commission. After probably three-quarters of an hour, during which all of us and every I. W. W. in the world was consigned, to Hell many times, the doors were finally locked.
“By god, You s— of a b—- will wish you ate that stew” was the way in which the jailor said “good night” to us. The significance of his words were brought back to us next morning when the time came for us to be unlocked. We were left in our cells without food and with the water turned off so we could not even have a drink of water. We might have remained there hours longer without toilet facilities only that we took matters in our own hands. With one accord we decided to get out of the cells. There was only one way to do this-“battleship!”
Did Not Try to Escape.
Battleship we did! Such a din had never been heard before in Everett. Strong hands and shoulders were placed to the doors which gave up their hold on the locks, as if they had been made of pasteboard, and we emerged into the recreation corridors. The Lumber Trust papers of Everett, who thought the events of November fifth and the murder of five workers but a picnic next day reported that we had wrecked the jail and attempted to escape. We did do a little wrecking, but as far as trying to escape was concerned that is a huge joke. The jail has not been built that can hold seventy-four I. W. W. members if they want to escape. We had but decided to forcibly bring to the attention of the authorities and the citizens the jail conditions. We were not willing to die of hunger and thirst. We told Sheriff McCulloch that we were not attempting to escape; he knew we were not. Yet the papers came out with an alleged interview in which the sheriff was made to say that we were. It also said that tomato skins had been thrown against the walls of the jail. There were none to throw.
Voluntarily Give Themselves Up to be Tried.
Summing up this matter: we are here and here we are determined to remain till we are freed. Not a man in this jail would accept his liberty if the doors were opened. This is proved by the fact that one man voluntarily came to the jail here and gave himself up, while still another was allowed his liberty, but sent for the Everett authorities to come and get him while he was in Seattle. He was brought out of jail illegally while under the charge of murder, but preferred to stand trial to being made a party to schemes of framing up to perjure the liberties of his fellow workers away.
Signed by the workers in the Snohomish County Jail.
———-
[Paragraph breaks and photographs added.]
SOURCE
Industrial Workers
(Seattle, Washington)
-March 3, 1917, page 2
https://libcom.org/files/Industrial%20Worker%20(March%203,%201917).pdf
IMAGES
Everett Massacre, Snohomish County Jail, WCS p116
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?num=116&u=1&seq=241&view=image&size=75&id=mdp.39015002672635
Everett Class War Prisoners 1916-17, Jack Leonard (John L. Miller)
-Jack Leonard is on page 3 of Rebel Faces Collection
Everett Class War Prisoners 1916-17, J. H. Beyer
-Beyer is on page 4 of Rebel Faces Collection
http://www.nw.epls.org/cdm/search/searchterm/Rebel%20Faces/mode/exact/page/1
See also:
“Faces of the IWW: The Men Arrested after the Everett Massacre”
by James Gregory
http://depts.washington.edu/iww/faces_of_iww.shtml
Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology
-ed by Joyce L. Kornbluh
PM Press, Mar 1, 2013
(search with: jack leonard)
https://books.google.com/books?id=sE0Qc0M61fkC
Included in Kornbluh’s “IWW Anthology,” is an article from the October 30, 1946 edition of the Industrial Worker: “Jails Didn’t Make Them Weaken” by Jack Leonard, in which Leonard had this to say about his name:
As was customary in those days, we migrants seldom had occasion to use the names by which our births were or were not registered, and mine had been changed from John L. Miller to J. Leonard Miller to Jack Leonard. The last seemed to stick, like burrs to a water spaniel.
As we were being booked at the Seattle city jail I got my first chuckle as the booking sergeant said: “The Leonard family is damn well represented here tonight,” especially as I knew the man’s name he was registering was really Leonard and since Leonard had become my moniker that was what I was going to give.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday November 15, 1916
Hellraisers Journal: IWWs Held in Seattle, Charged with Murder, Transferred to Jail in Everett
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-iwws-held-in-seattle-charged-with-murder-transferred-to-jail-in-everett/
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday December 21, 1916
Attempt to Suppress Everett’s Northwest Worker; 38 Prisoners Released; Beyer Turns Himself In
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-attempt-to-suppress-everetts-northwest-worker-38-prisoners-released-beyer-turns-himself-in/
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