Tag: Industrial Warfare

Hellraisers Journal: Part II-Report on Everett’s Industrial Warfare by E. P. Marsh, President Washington State F. of L.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday February 16, 1917
From Everett Labor Journal: Report on Industrial Warfare, Part II

Over a period of three weeks, from January 26th to February 9th, The Labor Journal of Everett, Washington, published the “Report on Everett’s Industrial Warfare,” by E. P. Marsh, President of the Washington State Federation of Labor, which report he had delivered on the first day of that bodies annual convention, Monday January 22, 1917. Hellraisers Journal republished Part I of that report yesterday; we offer Part II today, and we will concluded the series with Part III of the report tomorrow.

EVERETT’S INDUSTRIAL WARFARE, PART II

Everett Labor Journal, Feb 2, 1917

EVERETT’S INDUSTRIAL WARFARE;
REPORT OF PRESIDENT E. P. MARSH

E. P. Marsh, Pres WA FoL, Everett Labor Journal, July 23, 1915, small

Activity of the Everett Commercial Club.

I wish it were possible with a short homily to end the story here, for the sorriest part of it now begins. It is to be expected that when two men are in a fist fight, the bystander will at least keep his hands off, or, when one has been terribly beaten, insist that the fight end and the men patch up their differences. The business interests of the city were the bystanders in this struggle, but by no means “innocent.” They had every right to say to the contending parties: “You fellows have fought long enough; why don’t you quit, find out what it is all about, and see if you can’t be good friends again?”

The business interests were suffering keenly because of this struggle. The strikers [striking Shingle Weavers of Everett] were living on short rations, little money to spend for groceries, meat and shoes. The strikebreakers were being housed on mill property, fed from a commissary, spending none of their money with Everett merchants. If the Commercial Club members had a right to take a hand in the proceedings, and naturally they felt they had, for they were being hurt, it was their bounden duty to honestly investigate the truth of the statements of the contending parties, approach the whole problem in a spirit of community good, offer conciliation and mediation to both contending parties. Now notice how they went about it.

Some months previously the Commercial Club had been reorganized on the bureau plan, the various activities of the business life of the city being chartered out and turned over to various bureaus. There was an advertising bureau, a transportation bureau, etc. It became a stock concern, stock memberships being issued in blocks to employers and business houses and some distributed among employers and their employes. What a field for an industrial bureau that would have kept in touch with the human side of the city’s industries, striven for industrial peace by studying the vexatious labor problem with an eye to helping along friendly relations between employers and their men. But there was no such bureau, at least not equipped to function in the social relationship of industry. Mistake No. 1 of the Commercial Club.

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Hellraisers Journal: Part I-Report on Everett’s Industrial Warfare by E. P. Marsh, President Washington State F. of L.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 15, 1917
From Everett Labor Journal: Report on Industrial Warfare, Part I

Over a period of three weeks, from January 26th to February 9th, The Labor Journal of Everett, Washington, published the “Report on Everett’s Industrial Warfare,” by E. P. Marsh, President of the Washington State Federation of Labor, which report he had delivered on the first day of that bodies annual convention, Monday January 22, 1917. Hellraisers Journal will republish the entire report, in three parts, beginning today with Part I:

EVERETT’S INDUSTRIAL WARFARE, PART I

EVERETT’S INDUSTRIAL WARFARE
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SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT BY PRESIDENT MARSH
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E. P. Marsh, Pres WA FoL, Everett Labor Journal, July 23, 1915, small

For several reasons I have thought best to cover the stirring industrial events transpiring in the city of Everett during the past year in a separate report from that printed and mailed to the delegates prior to the opening of this convention. The main part of my annual report was prepared early in December. This report was prepared one month later that it might bring the situation as near as possible up to date. The seriousness of the situation, the tragedies and clashes that marked the struggle, has attracted the attention of the entire United States and the situation deserves to be dealt with quite apart from any other subject.

To relate in circumstantial detail each step of the conflict that has soiled the pages of Everett’s industrial history, would require more printer’s ink than I am at liberty to use in the Federation proceedings. It shall be my task to attempt to give you a word picture of the restless, resistless forces at work in this community which have produced near anarchy, lessened respect for constituted authority, wounded nigh unto death the community spirit which ought to prevail in every hamlet, city and town, and brought bloodshed and death in their wake. It will not be a pretty picture to look upon, but it is drawn with the hope that it will be truthful rather than fanciful, may point the way toward a different viewpoint upon the part of those who have hitherto held aloof from the industrial struggle, holding the eternal conflict between capital and labor to be no particular concern of theirs.

The labor interests, the manufacturing and commercial interests; the business and professional interests, all played a part, some unwittingly, in the weaving of their drama which ended in tragedy, and all have suffered alike from the misunderstandings, the cupidity, the bigotry, the hatred, which, mixed in the alchemy of class conflict, brought forth class hatred and its handmaiden, the law of physical force, as an arbiter of human problems. If this report shall be some times narrative, sometimes argumentative, it is with a very definite end in view. Dame Rumor shall play small part in this report, but I shall try to set forth clearly established facts. You may not agree in the end with the deductions I shall draw from the struggle, but I intend that at least none shall successfully dispute the statement of facts set forth.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Part I-Report on Everett’s Industrial Warfare by E. P. Marsh, President Washington State F. of L.” →