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.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 27, 1919
William D. Haywood on Lynching of Wesley Everest at Centralia, Washington
From The New Solidarity of November 25, 1919:
[Lynching of Wesley Everest by Maurice Becker]
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WILL YOU HELP NOW?
[-by William D. Haywood]
Another member of the Industrial Workers of the World has been murdered. Wesley Everest was lynched at Centralia, Washington [Armistice Day, November 11th]. He was hung to a bridge, the body riddle with bullets. The corpse was afterwards cut down and by the murderers dragged back to the jail and thrown in among the many fellow workers who had been imprisoned after the [illegal] raid on the I. W. W. hall. Four of them under an armed guard were escorted with the body of their dead fellow worker out into a yard where they were compelled to dig a grave and bury the dead.
Fellow Worker Everest, the murdered man, was an overseas veteran. He fought for the United States of America against the Imperial German government. When he returned from the war he took up his membership in the Industrial Workers of the World, beginning again the battle against the lumber trusts of the Northwest.
When the I. W. W. hall was raided several of the aggressors were killed, but this in no way justified the un-American, unlawful, inhuman murder of their comrade who had fought with them in the trenches of Flanders.
The Centralia outrage was followed by many others all over the country. Halls were raided, furniture destroyed, literature confiscated, and it is reported that over a thousand men have been arrested,-that is, thrown into prison without warrant, and denied the privilege of seeing friends or lawyers.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1919
May Day Celebrated at Ft. Leavenworth by Reds of All Stripes
From The Liberator of June 1919:
May Day in Ft. Leavenworth
By a Socialist C. O.
WHILE Cleveland was having its fatal May Day demonstration and while other free American cities were engaged in bloody rioting and fighting between citizens and police, with soldiers pitching in on both sides and shavetail ex-officers going into “action” for the first time, the militant Socialists imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth were observing the international revolutionary Labor Day under U. S. military sanction.
The open air red flag parade was witnessed by a crowd of soldiers who offered no opposition but viewed it with apparent approbation. The one day stoppage of prison work by the celebrants met with the approval in advance of the prison authorities who made special arrangements to permit the rebel group to assemble and observe the day. Civilians and Q. M. sergeants and children on their way to school looked with amazement on the unprecedented prison scene as it unfolded itself behind the double lines of barbed wire surrounding the stockade-annex of the Disciplinary Barracks.
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 7, 1916
New York, New York – Frank P. Walsh on Bayonne Strike
From The Labor World of November 4, 1916:
BAYONNE TROUBLE FAULT OF OIL CO. SAYS FRANK WALSH
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NEW YORK, Nov. 2.-“Wherever there is a big Rockefeller interest, there you find brutal slave driving methods in the treatment of underpaid workers,” declared Frank P. Walsh, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Relations, in New York, at the height of the Bayonne strike.
[Mr. Walsh continued:]
The most dangerous as well as brutal feature of the Rockefeller treatment of labor, is the close control that the Rockefeller concerns gain over the police and other public authorities. With the mayor of Bayonne confessing that he is a hired attorney for the Rockefeller interests, and with the police department using its full force, and hundreds of special deputies [deputized company gunthugs] to beat and kill the revolting strikers, the American public has its latest demonstration of what Rockefellerism means.