Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 18, 1921 Olympia, Washington – State Supreme Court Rules Against Centralia Defendants
From Oregon’s La Grande Evening Observer of April 14, 1921:
I. W. W. MUST SERVE TERM ———-
OLYMPIA, Wash., Apr. 14.-The state supreme court today upheld the conviction of seven of the alleged I. W. W. members convicted of second degree murder in connection with the Centralia armistice day killings.The court refused to grant a new trial. the men will be transferred from the Montesano county jail to the state prison to begin serving their sentence of from twenty-five to forty years.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 3, 1920 Industrial Workers of the World – Some November Anniversaries
From The One Big Union Monthly of November 1920:
Some I. W. W. Anniversaries
The month of November is particularly rich in memories for the I. W. W.
The events of the day are crowding upon us so fast that we cannot devote much time or space in our publications to the memories of the past, but not for a moment should the workers of this country be allowed to forget the outrages committed upon us in years gone by.
For the time being we shall content ourselves with a very brief review of some of the most horrid anniversaries of the I. W. W., which should be “celebrated” this month, not forgetting such anniversaries as that of Frank Little, whose anniversary falls in a different month.
On November 19, 1915, Joe Hill was legally murdered in the prison of Salt Lake City, Utah. His ashes are scattered by loving friends, who believe in his innocence, over the flower beds of this and other countries, and his memory lives in the songs which the I. W. W. members sing on every occasion.
Besides being a writer of songs which made the workers of all countries listen, Joe Hill, the miner, was also an amateur cartoonist. We reproduce here with a couple of his cartoons.
On November 5th, 1916, The Everett Massacre took place. We shall not try to describe this terrible tragedy of the class struggle. We refer every body to the account of it, issued in a book of 302 pages by the I. W. W. This book, “The I. W. W. Massacre,” is written by Walker C. Smith and sold by the I. W. W. Should be read by every red- blooded worker. Five were killed and scores wounded.
The Everett Massacre was one of the foulest deeds ever committed by the dirty hirelings of the capitalist class. It can be compared only to the indescribable horrors of Armistice day in Centralia, Wash., on November 11, 1919. The gruesome death of our Fellow Worker Wesley Everest on that day is enough to stagger the world. We cannot go into details. Read the book “The Centralia Conspiracy,” by Ralph Chaplin. It describes in word and illustration those terrible days.
Fellow Worker Bert Bland, who with a number of others is now serving a sentence equal to life imprisonment in Montesano as a result of the Centralia conspiracy, writes a touching tribute to the memory of the martyr Wesley Everest, which is published herewith.
Wesley Everest’s last greeting was: “Tell all the boys I did my best.” Joe Hill’s last message was: “Don’t mourn. Organize!” Frank Little’s last message is known only to his murderers, but we have no doubt it was like Joe Hill’s.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 10, 1920
Butte, Montana – Metal Miners’ Honor Picket Line of Blood
From The One Big Union Monthly of June 1920:
“The Richest hill in the world” has once more been stained with the blood of workers. Its arrogant industrial autocrats of Butte have again taken refuge in murder to shield themselves from the organized power of the union miners. The lynching of Frank Little has been paralleled by the massacre on Anaconda road. Butte-naked, barren, black—the city of gun-men and widows, of “sweat-holes” and cemeteries, stands out before the world today a blot on what we call civilization. Machine guns and searchlights command the city from the heights. Armed soldiers guard the approaches to the mines and gun-men loiter at every corner, or whiz up and down the streets at all hours of the day and night. There is one place on Anaconda road where everything in sight has been riddled with bullets. The blood of the dead and wounded has hardly dried in the dust. Miners have been told in unmistakable language that their constitutional right to picket means nothing and that the will of the copper trust is mightier than the law of the land. Bloody Butte! It is an ignoble title—ignobly won. But it is a fitting title.
The overlords of Butte will not permit their right to exploit to be challenged. Drunk with unbridled power and the countless millions profiteered during the war, with lying phrases of “law and order” on their lips, the blood of workingmen dripping from their hands and the gold of the government bursting their coffers they face the nation unreprimanded and unashamed—reaction militant, capitalism at its worst. The copper trust can murder its slaves in broad daylight on any occasion and under any pretext. There is no law to call a halt. In the confines of this greed ruled city the gun-man has replaced the Constitution. Butte is a law unto herself.
This huge mining camp is typical of the present stage of capitalism. The parasites of big business, furious with the realization of their approaching doom, are striking at the working class more blindly,more ferociously and more frequently than ever before. Even their most savage anti-labor laws are proving themselves inadequate to darken the rising sun of solidarity.
The gunman and lynch-mob are more and more replacing the law as measures of labor repression. The old maxim “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” is finding daily confirmation.
Holy grove, Ludlow, Calumet, Everett and Bisbee still stand as grewsome monuments to the White Terror in America. Butte has been added to the list for a second time. Armistice Day in Centralia is only a few month past yet we can no longer refer to it as “yesterday” but the day before. Yesterday was the massacre on Anaconda road. Nobody knows where the blow will fall tomorrow. Things are moving rapidly these days.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 5, 1920
Centralia, Washington – The Story of Blind Tom Lassiter
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of April 28, 1920:
BLIND NEWSBOY VICTIM SECOND CENTRALIA MOB
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Because Tom Lassiter Sold Union Records and Butte Bulletins
Super-Patriots of Lumber Town Maltreated Him.
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(By JOHN NICHOLAS BEFFEL.) (Staff Correspondent, the Federated Press.)
Centralia, Wash., (By Mail).-It was the second of the three Centralia mobs that got Blind Tom Lassiter, newsboy.His crime was that he sold the Seattle Union Record, workers’ newspaper, and was a wobbly. Twice the mob burned all his possessions, then kidnaped him on the open street, and sped with him to another county.
Gov. Louis F. Hart knows the facts of this flagrant case. They were presented to him, substantiated by affidavits of reputable eye-witnesses. But the men who abused and exiled Lassiter, a law-abiding American citizen, have never been prosecuted.
Prosecuting Attorney Herman Allen of Lewis county knows the facts. They were presented to him with similar affidavits. But Allen has never taken any steps to punish the guilty men.
Judge John M. Wilson, who tried the ten I. W. W. in the Centralia labor case at Montesano, knows the facts about the Lassiter episode. They were offered to him in detail by Defense Counsel George F. Vanderveer. Those facts ought, by every tenet of justice, have been given to the jury. But the court said no.
So the story of what happened to Blind Tom Lassiter is little known outside of Centralia. Mention of it crept occasionally into the news stories published in perhaps four newspapers across the country; but its real significance needs to be made clear.
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.
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
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(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.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 21, 1920
Centralia Defendants Get Heavy Sentences; Anna Louise Strong Reports on Trial
From the Washington Standard of April 6, 1920:
HEAVY SENTENCES GIVEN I. I. W.’S
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TWENTY-FIVE TO FORY YEARS GIVEN MEN CONVICTED OF
SECOND DEGREE MURDER; PRACTICALLY MEANS LIFE
TO MOST OF THEM; CASE TO BE APPEALED.
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The seven men convicted at Montesano March 13 of second degree murder for the slaying of Warren O. Grimm, Centralia Armistice Day parade victim, were sentenced to not less than 25 years in state’s prison and not more than 40 years, by Judge John M. Wilson Monday afternoon.
Defense Attorney Vanderveer took exception to the sentences and gave notice of appeal.
Judge Wilson said that he could not pay any attention to the jury’s plea for leniency in the case of John Lamb and Ray Becker in the light of the evidence submitted. He said he regarded the case against all of the men as identical. Loren Roberts, whom the jury found insane, was ordered sent to the criminal insane ward at Walla Walla penitentiary.
The seven men sentenced to 25 to 40 years were O. C. Bland, Bert Bland, John Lamb, Eugene Barnett, James McInerney, Ray Becker and Britt Smith.
Motion for a new trial was made by Vanderveer, and argued at length but was denied by Judge Wilson before the sentence was passed.
The minimum sentence for second degree murder is 10 years, the maximum life imprisonment. The defense has 90 days in which, to carry the case to the supreme court.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From The Nation of April 17, 1920:
Centralia: An Unfinished Story
By ANNA LOUISE STRONG
NEITHER side was satisfied with the compromise verdict rendered by the jury at Montesano in the trial of the eleven members of the I. W. W. charged with the murder of Warren 0. Grimm in connection with the Centralia tragedy on Armistice Day. The prosecution asked that all eleven be convicted of murder in the first degree, as having conspired to commit murder. The defense asked that all be acquitted, as men who had planned only to defend themselves and their hall against a threatened raid. One of the defendants was freed on a directed verdict. Of the ten considered by the jury, two were acquitted, one adjudged insane, and seven convicted of murder in the second degree. Even to the jury itself this verdict was not satisfactory. It brought in first a verdict of murder in the third degree for two of the defendants, but was informed by the judge that this was inadmissible, and upon further consideration changed the verdict to that of murder in the second degree. It is generally conceded that three of the jurors held out for some time for absolute acquittal of all defendants.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 6, 1920
Montesano, Washington – John Nicholas Beffel Observes Centralia Trial
From The Liberator of April 1920:
Fear in the Jury Box
[-by John Nicholas Beffel]
Eugene Barnett
A NERVOUS little man is on the witness stand in Montesano. He is James T. McAllister, whose wife owns the Roderick Hotel next door to the raided I. W. W. hall in Centralia. He testifies that one of the defendants, Eugene Barnett, was in the Roderick lobby all during the Armistice Day shooting and not in the Avalon Hotel, as the prosecution asserts.
“But when you were arrested you said there was nobody in the lobby,” says a prosecutor for the lumber trust. “Why did you say that?”
“I wasn’t sworn then,” replies the little man. “I didn’t want to be drawed into no trouble.”
He cowers in his chair, remembering the mob. There was a list of people to be hung that night beside Wesley Everest.
“What’s the matter?” demands Vanderveer, counsel for the defense. “Are you afraid now?”
“N-no.” The little man shakes as with a chill.
Ten men sit facing the judge and jury and gallows. They are accused of killing Warren O. Grimm, service man, in the Armistice Day parade. But it is not a murder trial; it is a trial of organized labor; the lumber interests seek to crush their most dangerous enemy, the uncrushable I. W. W. The main legal issue is whether men still have a right to defend their lives and property against violence. If these ten workers get a fair trial and are judged solely by the evidence, they will without any doubt go free. But will the jury dare to acquit? A verdict of acquittal would mean ruin for the twelve. Each man’s history is known to the lumber trust; it knows how to break men; it has broken men before.
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