O, the rats all hate and fear me.
MEOW! MEOW!
The softest paw can be a claw;
They seldom venture near me,
Hurrah, they saw your Sabo-Tabby Kitten!
-Ralph Chaplin
Hellraisers Journal, Friday March 23, 1917
Seattle Tracy Trial – Dramatic Reading Provided by Prosecutor
In an article in Thursday’s edition of the The Northwest Worker, Katherine H. Hodgins provides further details on the reading of I. W. W. literature into the trial record and a closer look at the testimony of Mayor Merrill of Everett.
It seems that Prosecutor Cooley thought the courtroom a stage when he recited the lyrics to Ralph Chaplin’s song about a Sabo-Tabby Kitten:
Friday morning was enacted a scene that was worth any person’s time and money to have seen and heard, when Mr. Cooley read from the I. W. W. song-book. Imagine, if you can, a white-haired man, rather sever in countenance, reading with the utmost gravity to a solemn-faced jury, the songs “Casey Jones,” “Tabby Kitten,” etc. Mr. Cooley read them in an interesting and expressive manner which added color to the unique performance. Especially was this true when he “meowed” at the end of each chorus of one of the songs, exclaiming “sabotage” in the most fearful and dramatic manner of which he was capable.
On a more serious note, Mayor Merrill was confronted by the young I. W. W. member whose fingers the Mayor had crushed:
The most dramatic incident of the trial so far, was the introduction of Louis Skaroff, an unusually interesting, bright-faced Jewish lad, who had been arrested and detained at the city jail in Everett after having been arrested on the afternoon of Nov. 5th while speaking on the street. It has been alleged that this lad had been maltreated by officials at the city jail late one night, and that at the termination of a series of kickings and beatings, during which he sustained bruises about the head and body inflicted by the mayor, assisted by another official, his fingers were placed under the foot of an iron bed by the mayor, while he, with the other worthy, jumped upon the middle of the bed, thus crushing and bruising the poor lad’s hand. When confronted by Skaroff, Merrill denied having ever seen him. Again he refreshed his memory and admitted that he had seen him, but denied any connection with atrocity.
From The Northwest Worker of March 22, 1917:
MAYOR MERRILL OF EVERETT GETS
GRUELLING AT TRIAL
—–PROSECUTION FAILS IN ATTEMPT TO INTRODUCE ONLY
ONE SIDE OF THE WORKERS CASE TO JURY.
CLASS WAR IN THE LIME LIGHT
—–(By Katherine H. Hodgins)