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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]
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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