Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 3, 1920
Centralia, Washington – Lumber Barons Plot Murder, Never Charged
From the New York Liberator of February 1920:
Murder in Centralia
By J. T. Doran of the I. W. W.
ON Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1919, a mob broke into the I. W. W. hall at Centralia, Washington, and five of them were killed. The attackers came from a passing parade of ex-service men. The same day an ex-serviceman, Wesley Everetts [Everest] by name, was seized by a mob, dragged through the streets and lynched.
The Truth About Centralia by Maurice Becker —–
The lynchers of Wesley Everetts are known. They have not been indicted. They will never be tried for their crime. That is because Wesley Everetts was a member of the I. W. W.
But ten members of the I. W. W. (including five ex-servicemen) have been arrested and charged with conspiring to fire upon and kill the men in the parade as it passed their hall; they are charged with having plotted and planned to do this thing for two weeks in advance of the act; they are charged with doing this as an attack upon the Government. They are going to be tried for murder.
The trial has been set for the 26th of this month [January]. By the time this article is printed, the trial will be in progress. You will read the accounts of it in the daily newspapers. I want to tell you some things to remember when you read those accounts.
You will read about “confessions” said to have been made by some of those men. The police are busy trying to get those “confessions” now. They have not yet succeeded in getting the kind of confessions they want, but they are trying hard. I am privately informed that they are heating soldering irons red hot and holding them a few inches away from the bare feet of those prisoners-not so near as to make a scar that, could be shown in court as proof of torture-but near enough to cause almost unendurable agony. Then they ask: “Well, are you ready to admit that you fired on the parade?” That is the first thing I want you to remember.
Second, about the judge. There isn’t any judge in the State of Washington who has any love lost on the I. W. W. But there is one judge who is reputed to be strict about the law. He is known to be in the habit of demanding evidence. This case was originally scheduled to come up before him. But the prosecution is taking no chances, so they engaged his brother as an assistant in the prosecution, and then applied for a change of venue-on the ground that the judge might be too favorably disposed toward their side! So the Governor appointed a special judge to try the case. Remember, when you read about some of his decisions, that he is hand-picked for the occasion.
Next,the governor. His name is Hart. If you want to know what he is like, think of Ole Hansen. Governor Hart is another one just like him. He was put in office by the West Coast Lumbermen’s Association, which together with the shipping combine, rules the State of Washington. He was put in office to use the powers of the State against the I. W. W., and to let the lumber combine do anything it damn pleased to protect its profits. Remember that.
For nine years, ever since 1911, there has been open and merciless war against the I. W. W. in the State of Washington. In 1911 began the attempt of the lumber workers to organize. They wanted decent living conditions and decent wages. In 1912 they, created the Lumber Workers International Union No. 500 of the I. W. W. This organization was quickly crushed, but in the battered heads and embittered hearts of the workers the determination to organize and fight for their rights at the first opportunity was only made stronger. The opportunity came with the outbreak of the European war. The scarcity of labor gave them the upper hand, and in spite of every effort, by police brutality and imported gunmen and legislative enactment, to destroy their union, it increased to vast proportions. Union organizers were illegally arrested, their property and the ,property of the union was destroyed by officials and by thugs in the employ of the lumber barons. Finally, on Nov. 5, 1916, an armed band of Vigilantes organized by the Commercial Club of Everett-a body dominated by the lumber interests-shot and killed eight men, and drowned an unknown number of others, in an attack upon them when they attempted to return to the homes from which they had been illegally driven away.
When you read about the Centralia trial remember this Everett incident. Remember that the newspapers then reported that the I. W. ·W. had made an armed attack upon the town; remember that 74 of these workingmen were arrested and charged with murder. Only one of these cases was ever tried; the jury brought in a. verdict of not guilty, and the other 73 indictments were dismissed. Remember that; but remember also that the lumber interests are determined not to let anything like that happen this time!
The Everett outrage resulted in an increased membership in the union, and in 1917 the men declared a general strike for the eight-hour day and improved camp conditions. The United States had now entered the war against Germany, and the lumber interests were quick to use patriotism as a cloak for their purposes. They took advantage of the war-hysteria, and arrested the supposed leaders of the strike, held them in filthy jails for months, and shipped them at last to Chicago, where they were convicted along with others in the famous I. W. W. case under the Espionage Act, and sent to prison for [up to] twenty years.[Note: J. T. “Red” Doran was one of the “five-year men” convicted at Chicago.]
But the imprisoning of these men did not improve the situation in the lumber industry. Press and pulpit joined in a demand for the destruction of the I. W. W., and in some instances for the murder of its members. But sheer inability to produce enough lumber finally led to the granting of the demands of the I. W. W. These demands were:
Running hot and cold water, and bathing facilities.
Spring-beds and mattresses.
The employment of a “crumb-buck”-a man to take care of the bunks and keep them free from lice.
Lights to read by.
A basic 8-hour day.
The union has seen to it that these standards were maintained-and they are maintained to this day. To the lumber-camps during the war came many men from all over the country, drafted into the military service and sent to do this kind of work; they came hating the I. W. W., but when they worked beside them, getting inferior wages, inferior food, inferior camp-conditions, they realized what the union was for, and envied their I. W. W. comrades the protection it gave them-and they went away sold to the I. W. W. idea!
After the war there was danger that the long story of graft and profiteering and lawlessness in the lumber industry would be exposed to the public, and it became necessary to manufacture sentiment against the I. W. W.-especially as its organization was growing ever larger and more powerful, and included great numbers of ex-servicemen within its ranks. You will read, in the accounts of the Centralia trial, of the alleged hostility of the I. W. W. in the Northwest toward the returned soldiers. It is not true.
The American Legion in Butte, Montana, is, so far as voting power goes, absolutely in the control of the I.W.W.
In Seattle the ex-service men have organized a Workers’, Soldiers’, and Sailors’ council and kindred organizations sympathetic to the program of awakened labor. They have preferred not to join the American Legion because it has throughout the state of Washington a universal ill-repute among workingmen as a subsidized police-force used by the lumber interests. Many of the members of these organizations, however, are now in favor of joining and controlling by their numbers the American Legion.
The American soldier who bears more medals for bravery than any other in the United States (seven of them in all, including the Distinguished Service Medal, the British war cross, and the Croix de Guerre) is a member of the Washington I. W. W.-Private La May. He was wounded half a dozen times in action in France, and is now lying with a broken spine, hurt perhaps irrecoverably by a falling tree in a logging camp after his return home. He was a friend of the ex-service man, Wesley Everetts, secretary of the Centralia I. W. W., who was lynched after the attack on the I. W. W. hall on Armistice Day. If La May had not been lying with a broken back he would have been at Everett’s side that day, shoulder to shoulder with him facing the invading mob.
And remember this: the bodies of the dead attackers were found inside the door and on the threshold of the I. W. W. hall. The lumber interests had planned the attack, someone had arranged that the parade should go out of its way, far from the chief thoroughfares, so as to pass through the obscure street in which the I. W. W. hall was situated. And Dr. Frank Bickford one of the paraders, testified at the coroner’s inquest that he had led the attack upon the hall.
Remember that the raiding of I. W. W. halls is no new thing. It is a form of sport which the lumber interests and the newspapers have promoted enthusiastically all over the northwest. Pianos which the boys have saved their dimes to buy have been wantonly destroyed, and adding machines and typewriters carried away. The police would laughingly flip a coin to see who should get the next typewriter.
The men who are going to be tried in Centralia, the men who were in the hall when the locked door was broken open by the mob, are typical workers of the lumber camps, ordinary hard-handed not-easy-to-bluff loggers. All of them with, I think, only one exception, are natives of that section. Five are ex-soldiers. They were in that hall on Armistice Day for the same reason that they are members of the I. W. W.-because they had a right to be. They live in a place where rights are not respected-unless they are protected. They didn’t expect the Constitution to protect them in their right to join a union, and they didn’t expect it to protect them in their right of peaceful assemblage. But they were going to belong to their union, and they were going to have a place to meet in, or know the reason why.
When the trial comes-if a real trial ever does come-you will know the reason why; you will know a good many interesting things which I cannot tell you now.
But it’s going to be hard to get a real trial for these men. If they are not to be legally lynched by the lumber barons before we can get their story to the workers of America, it will only be because people like you who are now reading this article do what you can to help them. You can do this in two ways: by sending us money-:-a little will help a great deal if you send it in promptly (and if you make it just a little more than you can really afford to give, we promise that you will never regret it)-and by stirring up other people about the case. If the workingmen-and women-of this country know the truth about Centralia, the additional murders that are planned by the lumber barons of the northwest will not happen.
(Money sent to this magazine for the Centralia Defense Fund will be forwarded promptly to the proper recipients.-The Editor.)
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