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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 4, 1920
Ralph Chaplin on the Truth Behind the Centralia Conspiracy
From The One Big Union Monthly of May 1920:
THE BACKGROUND OF CENTRALIA
By RALPH CHAPLIN
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IN ORDER to get the truth of the Centralia conspiracy it is necessary to understand the circumstances leading up to the tragedy on Armistice Day, 1919. There are two distinct viewpoints from which this unfortunate affair may be observed: That of the lumber interests, which is to isolate the incident from its anteceeding circumstances and make it a “plain murder case”; and that of working people of the Northwest generally to consider all the facts in the case in order to find out, not only how the tragedy occurred, but what brought it about as well.
It is well to state here that the lumber interests, with the aid of the trial judge, the prosecuting attorneys and the press, succeeded in keeping from the consideration of the jury, all but the actual happenings on November 11th. The long and unbroken chain of threats, raids, deportations and murders perpetrated against the I. W. W. boys before they made a last stand for their lives in their union hall, was objected to by the lumber trust’s attorneys and ruled out by the lumber trust’s lackey on the judicial bench. In this manner men who were simply defending their lives and property from a mob were shown to be deliberate and wanton assassins, while their tormentors were held up to the world as splendid examples of unquestioned and persecuted patriotism.
The efforts of the defense to prove the existence of a conspiracy on the part of the lumber interests to raid and demolish union halls and to murder their occupants were painstakingly ignored by the press.
The prosecution claimed that on November 11th a dozen or more union loggers, acting in accordance with a prearranged plan, had fired into a parade, killing and wounding several ex-service men without warning and without excuse. It was made to appear that this deed was an act of wilful and malicious murder. That is as far as the prosecution sought to go. Just what the handful of loggers hoped to gain by causing the death of unoffending paraders the persecution neglected to state. Also they failed to explain the embarrassing fact that at least two of the “unoffending paraders” carried coils of rope and that gas-pipe, guns and bayonets came into evidence as soon as the dirty work was about to be started.
There is no doubt that the whole affair is the out come of a struggle—a class struggle, if you please—between the union loggers and the lumber interests; the former seeking to organize the workers in the woods, and the latter fighting this movement with all the means at its disposal.
In this light the Centralia affair does not appear as an isolated incident but rather an incident in an industrial conflict, little known and less understood, between the lumber barons and the loggers of the Pacific Northwest. This viewpoint alone will place Centralia in its proper perspective and enable one to trace the tragedy back to the circumstances and conditions that gave it birth.
But was there a conspiracy on the part of the lumber interests to commit murder and violence in an effort to drive organized labor from its domain? The facts themselves will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that such a conspiracy existed, that it was expressly designed for the above mentioned purpose and that the Armistice Day shooting was the direct outgrowth of this same premeditated plan. It will furthermore be shown how this conspiracy is the concern of every union man and woman in the country. Believe it or not, just as you please; but read.
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The Pacific Northwest is world famed for its timber. The first white explorers to set foot upon its fertile shore were no doubt awed by the magnitude and grandeur of its boundless stretches of virgin forests. Nature has never endowed any section of our fair world with such an immensity of kingly trees. Towering into the sky to unbelievable heights they stand as living monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast wide region of the Northwest hills, slopes and valleys—covered with myriads of the fir, spruce and cedar; raising their verdant crests a hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into the air!
When Columbus first set foot on the uncharted continent these threes were already ancient. There they stood, straight, silent and majestic, crowning the rugged landscape with superlative beauty, some of these with green and foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, overtopped only by the snow capped mountains; waiting for the hand of man to put them to the multitudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the first explorer, gazing awe-stricken down those “calm cathedral isles” wondering at the lavish bounty of our Mother Earth in supplying her children with such inexhaustible resources.
But little could the first explorer know that the criminal clutch of greed was soon to seize these forests, guard them from the human race with bayonets, hangman’s ropes and legal statutes; and use them, robber baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of the world who needed them that they might live. Little did the first explorer dream that the day would come when individuals would claim private ownership of that which bounteous nature had travailed through centuries to bestow upon humankind.
But that day has come, and with it the struggle between master and man that was to result in Centralia—or possibly many Centralias.
It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural resources of the earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the private property of a few social parasites.It seems that reason would preclude the possibility of any other arrangement, that it would be considered as absurd for individuals to lay claim to forests, mines, railroads and factories as it would be for individuals to lay claim to the ownership of the sunlight that warms us or the air we breathe. But the poor human race, in its bungling efforts to learn how to live in our beautiful world, appears to be destined to learn only from bitter experience that the private ownership of the means o£ life is both criminal and disastrous.
Lumber is one of the basic industries—one of the industries mankind never could have done without. The whole structure of what we call civilization is built upon wooden timbers, ax-hewn or machine finished as the case may be. Without the product of the forests humanity could never have learned the use of fire, the primitive bow and arrow or the bulging galleys of ancient commerce. Without the firm and fibrous flesh of the mighty monarchs of the forest men never would have had barges for fishing or weapons for the chase; they would not have had dwellings, temples, cities, furniture nor fittings nor roofs above their heads. Wood is one of the most primitive and indispensable of human necessities. Without its use we would still be groping in the gloom and misery of early savagery, suffering from the cold of outer space and defenseless in the midst of a harsh and hostile environment.
So it happened that the first pioneers in the northern forests were forced to bare their arms and match their strength with the wooded wilderness. At first the subjugation of the virgin forests was a a social effort. The lives and future prosperity of the settlers must be made secure from the raids of the Indians and the inclemency of the elements. Manfully did they labor till their work was done. But this period did not last long, for the tide of immigration was sweeping westwards over the sun-baked prairies to the promised land in the golden West.
Towns sprang up like magic, new trees were felled, saw mills erected and huge logs, in ever-increasing numbers, driven down the foaming torrents each year at spring time. The country was new, the market for lumber constantly growing and expanding. But the monopolist was unknown and the lynch-mobs of the lumber trust still sleeping in the womb of the Future.
So passed the not unhappy period when opportunity was open to everyone, when freedom was dear to the hearts of all and the spirit of real Americanism was born. Patriotism, in these days was not a mask for profiteers and murderers were not permitted to hide their bloody hands in the folds of their nation’s flag.
But modern capitalism was creeping like a black curse upon the land, stealing, coercing, cajoling, defrauding; it spread from its plague center in Wall street leaving misery, class antagonism and resentment in its trail. The old free America of our fathers was undergoing a profound change. Equality of opportunity was doomed. A new social alignment was being created. Monopoly was loosed upon the land. Fabulous fortunes were being made as wealth was being centered into fewer and fewer hands. Modern capitalism was entrenching itself in preparation of the final struggle for world domination. In due course of time the ruthless and insatiable social parasites of the East, foreseeing that the forests of Maine, Michigan and Minnesota were shortly to be exhausted, began to look to the woods of the Northwest with covetous eyes and to reach out for them with unscrupulous hands.
The history of the acquisition of the forests of Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California is a long sordid story of thinly veiled robbery and intrigue. The methods of the lumber barons in invading and seizing its “holdings” did not differ greatly, however, from those of the steel and oil kings, the railroad magnates or any of the other industrial potentates who acquired great wealth by pilfering America and peonizing its people. The whole story proceeding was disgraceful, high-handed and treacherous, and only made possible by reason of the blindness of the population, drugged with the vanishing hope of “success” and too confident of the continued possession of its blood-bought liberties. And so the lumber barons were unhindered in their infamous work of debauchery, bribery, murder and brazen fraud.
As a result the monopoly of the Northwestern woods became an established fact. The lumber trust came into “its own.” The new social alignment was complete, with the idle, absentee overlord at one end and the migratory and possessionless lumber jack at the other. The parasites had appropriated to themselves the standing timber of the Northwest. But the brawny loggers whose labor had made possible the development of the industry was given, as his share of the spoils, a crumby bundle and a rebellious heart. The masters had undisputed control of the timber of the country, three quarters of which is located in the Northwest; but the slaves who felled the trees, drove the logs, dressed, finished and loaded the lumber were left in a state of helpless dependency from which they could only extricate themselves by means of organization. And it is this effort to form a union and to establish union headquarters that led to the tragedy at Centralia.
The lumber barons had not only achieved a monopoly of the woods but a perfect feudal domination of the woods as well. Within their domain banks, ships, railways and mills bore their private insignia, and politicians, Employers’ Associations, preachers, newspapers, fraternal orders and judges and gunmen were always at their beck and call. Their power is tremendous and their profits would ransom a king. Naturally they did not intend to surrender power or profits menaced by a mass of weather-beaten slaves in stag shirts and overalls, and so the struggle waxed fiercer just as the lumber jack learned to contend for living conditions and adequate remunerations. It was the old, old conflict of human rights against property rights; let us see how they compared in strength.
The following extract from a document entitled “The Lumber Industry” by the Honorable Herbert Knox Smith and published by the U. S. Department of Commerce (Bureau of Corporations) will give some idea of the holdings and influence of the lumber trust.
Ten monopoly groups, aggregating only one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber—each a foot square and an inch thick. These figures are so stupendous that they are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their meaning home. These one thousand, eight hundred and two timber business monopolists held enough standing timber, an indispensable natural resource to yield the planks necessary (over and above manufacturing wastage) to make a floating bridge more than two feet thick and more than five miles wide from New York to Liverpool. It would supply one inch planks for a roof over France, Germany and Italy. It would build a fence eleven miles high along our entire coast line. All monopolized by one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, or interests more or less interlocked. One of those interests—a grant of only three holders—monopolized at one time two hundred and thirty seven billion, five hundred million (237,500,000,000) feet which would make a column one foot square and three million miles high. Although controlled by only three holders, that interest comprised over eight per cent of all the standing timber in the United States at that time.
The above illuminating figures, quoted from “The I. W. W. in the Lumber Industry” by James Rowan, will give some idea of the magnitude and power of the lumber trust.
Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the thousands of hard driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and sawmills. These had neither wealth nor influence—nothing but their hard, bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity. And the masters of the forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the world. And they fought it more bitterly, as events will show. Centralia is only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and workers.
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[Photograph added from May issue, page 11, of O. B. U. Monthly.]
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
The One Big Union Monthly
“Published Monthly by the General Executive Board
of the Industrial Workers of the World”
-John Sandgren, Editor
(Chicago Illinois)
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008910402
Volumes 2-3, 1920-1921
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101058908474&view=image&seq=9
OBU Mly – May 1920
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101058908474&view=image&seq=267
“The Background of Centralia” by Ralph Chaplin
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101058908474&view=2up&seq=282
IMAGE
Centralia Defendants, OBU Mly p11, May 1920
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101058908474&view=2up&seq=276
See also:
Tag: Centralia Armistice Day Conspiracy of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/centralia-armistice-day-conspiracy-of-1919/
Tag: Ralph Chaplin
https://weneverforget.org/tag/ralph-chaplin/
The IWW in the Lumber Industry
-by James Rowan,
Lumber Workers Industrial Union #500, 1920
https://www.iww.org/es/history/library/Rowan/lumberindustry
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50,000 Lumberjacks – The Wakami Wailers
A Song to Honor the Striking Lumberjacks of #500
From The Northwest Worker of August 24, 1917