The Centralia Conspiracy - Ralph Chaplin
The Centralia Conspiracy
By Ralph Chaplin
[Illustration: cover]
A Tongue of Flame
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of
flame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house
enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates
through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last
aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all
her work is ruin. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is
undone.--Emerson.
Murder or Self-Defense?
This booklet is not an apology for murder. It is an honest effort to
unravel the tangled mesh of circumstances that led up to the Armistice Day
tragedy in Centralia, Washington. The writer is one of those who believe
that the taking of human life is justifiable only in self-defense. Even
then the act is a horrible reversion to the brute--to the low plane of
savagery. Civilization, to be worthy of the name, must afford other
methods of settling human differences than those of blood letting.
The nation was shocked on November 11, 1919, to read of the killing of
four American Legion men by members of the Industrial Workers of the World
in Centralia. The capitalist newspapers announced to the world that these
unoffending paraders were killed in cold blood--that they were murdered
from ambush without provocation of any kind. If the author were convinced
that there was even a slight possibility of this being true, he would not
raise his voice to defend the perpetrators of such a cowardly crime.
But there are two sides to every question and perhaps the newspapers
presented only one of these. Dr. Frank Bickford, an ex-service man who
participated in the affair, testified at the coroner's inquest that the
Legion men were attempting to raid the union hall when they were killed.
Sworn testimony of various eyewitnesses has revealed the fact that some of
the "unoffending paraders" carried coils of rope and that others were
armed with such weapons as would work the demolition of the hall and
bodily injury to its occupants. These things throw an entirely different
light on the subject. If this is true it means that the union loggers
fired only in self-defense and not with the intention of committing wanton
and malicious murder as has been stated. Now, as at least two of the union
men who did the shooting were ex-soldiers, it appears that the tragedy
must have resulted from something more than a mere quarrel between loggers
and soldiers. There must be something back of it all that the public
generally doesn't know about.
There is only one body of men in the Northwest who would hate a union hall
enough to have it raided--the lumber "interests." And now we get at the
kernel of the matter, which is the fact that the affair was the outgrowth
of a struggle between the lumber trust and its employees--between
Organized Capital and Organized Labor.
A Labor Case
And so, after all, the famous trial at Montesano was not a murder trial
but a labor trial in the strict sense of the word. Under the law, it must
be remembered, a man is not committing murder in defending his life and
property from the felonious assault of a mob bent on killing and
destruction. There is no doubt whatever but what the lumber trust had
plotted to "make an example" of the loggers and destroy their hall on this
occasion. And this was not the first time that such atrocities had been
attempted and actually committed. Isn't it peculiar that, out of many
similar raids, you only heard of the one where the men defended
themselves? Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but the
preservation of its holy profits is the first law of the lumber trust. The
organized lumber workers were considered a menace to the super-prosperity
of a few profiteers--hence the attempted raid and the subsequent killing.
What is more significant is the fact the raid had been carefully planned
weeks in advance. There is a great deal of evidence to prove this point.
There is no question that the whole affair was the outcome of a
struggle--a class struggle, if you please--between the union loggers and
the lumber interests; the former seeking to organize the workers in the
woods and the latter fighting this movement with all the means at its
disposal.
In this light the Centralia affair does not appear as an isolated incident
but rather an incident in an eventful industrial conflict, little known
and less understood, between the lumber barons and loggers of the Pacific
Northwest. This viewpoint will place Centralia in its proper perspective
and enable one to trace the tragedy back to the circumstances and
conditions that gave it birth.
But was there a conspiracy on the part of the lumber interests to commit
murder and violence in an effort to drive organized labor from its domain?
Weeks of patient investigating in and around the scene or the occurrence
has convinced the present writer that such a conspiracy has existed. A
considerable amount of startling evidence has been unearthed that has
hitherto been suppressed. If you care to consider Labor's version of this
unfortunate incident you are urged to read the following truthful account
of this almost unbelievable piece of mediaeval intrigue and brutality.
The facts will speak for themselves. Credit them or not, but read!
The Forests of the Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is world famed for its timber. The first white
explorers to set foot upon its fertile soil were awed by the magnitude and
grandeur of its boundless stretches of virgin forests. Nature has never
endowed any section of our fair world with such an immensity of kingly
trees. Towering into the sky to unthinkable heights, they stand as living
monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast
wide region of the West coast, hills, slopes and valleys, covered with
millions of fir, spruce and cedar trees, raising their verdant crests a
hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into the air.
When Columbus first landed on the uncharted continent these trees were
already ancient. There they stood, straight and majestic with green and
foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, crowning the
rugged landscape with superlative beauty, overtopped only by the
snow-capped mountains--waiting for the hand of man to put them to the
multitudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the first
explorer, gazing awe-stricken down those "calm cathedral isles," wondering
at the lavish bounty of our Mother Earth in supplying her children with
such inexhaustible resources.
But little could the first explorer know that the criminal clutch of Greed
was soon to seize these mighty forests, guard them from the human race
with bayonets, hangman's ropes and legal statutes; and use them,
robber-baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of
the world who need them. Little did the first explorer dream that the day
would come when individuals would claim private ownership of that which
prolific nature had travailed through centuries to bestow upon mankind.
But that day has come and with it the struggle between master and man that
was to result in Centralia--or possibly many Centralias.
Lumber--A Basic Industry
It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural
resources of the Earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and
shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the
private property of a few social parasites. It seems that reason would
preclude the possibility of any other arrangement, and that it would be
considered as absurd for individuals to lay claim to forests, mines,
railroads and factories as it would be for individuals to lay claim to the
ownership of the sunlight that warms us or to the air we breathe. But the
poor human race, in its bungling efforts to learn how to live in our
beautiful world, appears destined to find out by bitter experience that
the private ownership of the means of life is both criminal and
disastrous.
Lumber is one of the basic industries--one of the industries mankind never
could have done without. The whole structure of what we call civilization
is built upon wooden timbers, ax-hewn or machine finished as the case may
be. Without the product of the forests humanity would never have learned
the use of fire, the primitive bow and arrow or the bulging galleys of
ancient commerce. Without the firm and fibrous flesh of the mighty
monarchs of the forest men might never have had barges for fishing or
weapons for the chase; they would not have had carts for their oxen or
kilns for the fashioning of pottery; they would not have had dwellings,
temples or cities; they would not have had furniture nor fittings nor
roofs above their heads. Wood is one of the most primitive and
indispensable of human necessities. Without its use we would still be
groping in the gloom and misery of early savagery, suffering from the cold
of outer space and defenseless in the midst of a harsh and hostile
environment.
From Pioneer to Parasite
So it happened that the first pioneers in the northern were forced to bare
their arms and match their strength with the wooded wilderness. At first
the subjugation of the forests was a social effort. The lives and future
prosperity of the settlers must be made secure from the raids of the
Indians and the inclemency of the elements. Manfully did these men labor
until their work was done. But this period did not last long, for the tide
of emigration was sweeping westward over the sun-baked prairies to the
promised land in the golden West.
[Illustration: Fir and Spruce Trees
The wood of the West coast abound with tall fir trees. Practically all
high grade spruce comes from this district also. Spruce was a war
necessity and the lumber trust profiteered unmercifully on the government.
U.S. prisons are full of loggers who struck for the 8 hour day in 1917.]
Towns sprang up like magic, new trees were felled, sawmills erected and
huge logs in ever increasing numbers were driven down the foaming torrents
each year at spring time. The country was new, the market for lumber
constantly growing and expanding. But the monopolist was unknown and the
lynch-mobs of the lumber trust still sleeping in the womb of the Future.
So passed the not unhappy period when opportunity was open to everyone,
when freedom was dear to the hearts of all. It was at this time that the
spirit of real Americanism was born, when the clean, sturdy name "America"
spelled freedom, justice and independence. Patriotism in these days was
not a mask for profiteers and murderers were not permitted to hide their
bloody hands in the folds of their nation's flag.
But modern capitalism was creeping like a black curse upon the land.
Stealing, coercing, cajoling, defrauding, it spread from its plague-center
in Wall St., leaving misery, class antagonism and resentment in its trial.
The old free America of our fathers was undergoing a profound change.
Equality of opportunity was doomed. A new social alignment was being
created. Monopoly was loosed upon the land. Fabulous fortunes were being
made as wealth was becoming centered into fewer and fewer hands. Modern
capitalism was entrenching itself for the final and inevitable struggle
for world domination. In due time the social parasites of the East,
foreseeing that the forests of Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin could not
last forever, began to look to the woods of the Northwest with covetous
eyes.
[Illustration: Cedar Trees of the Northwest
With these giants the logger daily matches his strength and skill. The
profit-greedy lumber trust has wasted enough trees of smaller size to
supply the world with wood for years to come.]
Stealing the People's Forest Land
The history of the acquisition of the forests of Washington, Montana,
Idaho, Oregon and California is a long, sordid story of thinly veiled
robbery and intrigue. The methods of the lumber barons in invading and
seizing its "holdings" did not differ greatly, however, from those of the
steel and oil kings, the railroad magnates or any of the other industrial
potentates who acquired great wealth by pilfering America and peonizing
its people. The whole sorry proceeding was disgraceful, high-handed and
treacherous, and only made possible by reason of the blindness of the
generous American people, drugged with the vanishing hope of "success" and
too confident of the continued possession of its blood-bought liberties.
And do the lumber barons were unhindered in their infamous work of
debauchery, bribery, murder and brazen fraud.
As a result the monopoly of the Northwestern woods became an established
fact. The lumber trust came into "its own." The new social alignment was
complete, with the idle, absentee landlord at one end and the migratory
and possessionless lumber jack at the other. The parasites had
appropriated to themselves the standing timber of the Northwest; but the
brawny logger whose labor had made possible the development of the
industry was given, as his share of the spoils, a crumby "bindle" and a
rebellious heart. The masters had gained undisputed control of the timber
of the country, three quarters of which is located in the Northwest; but
the workers who felled the trees, drove the logs, dressed, finished and
loaded the lumber were left in the state of helpless dependency from which
they could only extricate themselves by means of organization. And it is
this effort to form a union and establish union headquarters that led to
the tragedy at Centralia.
The lumber barons had not only achieved a monopoly of the woods but a
perfect feudal domination of the woods as well. Within their domain banks,
ships, railways and mills bore their private insignia-and politicians,
Employers' Associations, preachers, newspapers, fraternal orders and
judges and gun-men were always at their beck and call. The power they
wield is tremendous and their profits would ransom a kingdom. Naturally
they did not intend to permit either power or profits to be menaced by a
mass of weather-beaten slaves in stag shirts and overalls. And so the
struggle waxed fiercer just as the lumberjack learned to contend
successfully for living conditions and adequate remuneration. It was the
old, old conflict of human rights against property rights. Let us see how
they compared in strength.
The Triumph of Monopoly
The following extract from a document entitled "The Lumber Industry," by
the Honorable Herbert Knox Smith and published by the U.S. Department of
Commerce (Bureau of Corporations) will give some idea of the holdings and
influence of the lumber trust:
"Ten monopoly groups, aggregating only one thousand, eight hundred and two
holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight
hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber--each a
foot square and an inch thick. These figures are so stupendous that they
are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their meaning home.
These one thousand, eight hundred and two timber business monopolists held
enough standing timber; an indispensable natural resource, to yield the
planks necessary (over and above manufacturing wastage) to make a floating
bridge more than two feet thick and more than five miles wide from New
York to Liverpool. It would supply one inch planks for a roof over France,
Germany and Italy. It would build a fence eleven miles high along our
entire coast line. All monopolized by one thousand, eight hundred and two
holders, or interests more or less interlocked. One of those interests--a
grant of only three holders--monopolized at one time two hundred and
thirty-seven billion, five hundred million (237,500,000,000) feet which
would make a column one foot square and three million miles high. Although
controlled by only three holders, that interest comprised over eight
percent of all the standing timber in the United States at that time."
The above illuminating figures, quoted from "The I.W.A. in the Lumber
Industry," by James Rowan, will give some idea of the magnitude and power
of the lumber trust.
[Illustration: "Topping a Tree"
After one of these huge trees is "topped" it is called a "spar tree"--very
necessary in a certain kind of logging operations. As soon as the
chopped-off portion falls, the trunk vibrates rapidly from side to side
sometimes shaking the logger to certain death below.]
Opposing this colossal aggregation of wealth and cussedness were the
thousands of hard-driven and exploited lumberworkers in the woods and
sawmills. These had neither wealth nor influence--nothing but their hard,
bare hands and a growing sense of solidarity. And the masters of the
forests were more afraid of this solidarity than anything else in the
world--and they fought it more bitterly, as events will show. Centralia is
only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker. But
let us see what this hated and indispensable logger-the productive and
human basis of the lumber industry, the man who made all these things
possible, is like.
The Human Element--"The Timber Beast"
Lumber workers are, by nature of their employment, divided into two
categories--the saw-mill hand and the logger. The former, like his
brothers in the Eastern factories, is an indoor type while the latter is
essentially a man of the open air. Both types are necessary to the
production of finished lumber, and to both union organization is an
imperative necessity.
Sawmill work is machine work--rapid, tedious and often dangerous. There is
the uninteresting repetition of the same act of motions day in and day
out. The sights, sounds and smells of the mill are never varied. The fact
that the mill is permanently located tends to keep mill workers grouped
about the place of their employment. Many of them, especially in the
shingle mills, have lost fingers or hands in feeding the lumber to the
screaming saws. It has been estimated that fully a half of these men are
married and remain settled in the mill communities. The other half,
however, are not nearly so migratory as the lumberjack. Sawmill workers
are not the "rough-necks" of the industry. They are of the more
conservative "home-guard" element and characterized by the psychology of
all factory workers.
The logger, on the other hand, (and it is with him our narrative is
chiefly concerned), is accustomed to hard and hazardous work in the open
woods. His occupation makes him of necessity migratory. The camp,
following the uncut timber from place to place, makes it impossible for
him to acquire a family and settle down. Scarcely one out of ten has ever
dared assume the responsibility of matrimony. The necessity of shipping
from a central point in going from one job to another usually forces a
migratory existence upon the lumberjack in spite of his best intentions to
live otherwise.
What Is a Casual Laborer?
The problem of the logger is that of the casual laborer in general.
Broadly speaking, there are three distinct classes of casual laborers:
First, the "harvest stiff" of the middle West who follows the ripening
crops from Kansas to the Dakotas, finding winter employment in the North,
Middle Western woods, in construction camps or on the ice fields. Then
there is the harvest worker of "the Coast" who garners the fruit, hops and
grain, and does the canning of California, Washington and Oregon, finding
out-of-season employment wherever possible. Finally there is the
Northwestern logger, whose work, unlike that of the Middle Western "jack"
is not seasonal, but who is compelled nevertheless to remain migratory. As
a rule, however, his habitat is confined, according to preference or force
of circumstances, to either the "long log" country of Western Washington
and Oregon as well as California, or to the "short log" country of Eastern
Washington and Oregon, Northern Idaho and Western Montana. Minnesota,
Michigan, and Wisconsin are in what is called the "short log" region.
[Illustration: A Logger of the Pacific Northwest
This is a type of the men who work in the "long log" region of the West
coast. His is a man's sized job, and his efforts to organize and better
the working conditions in the lumber industry have been manly efforts--and
bitterly opposed.]
As a rule the logger of the Northwest follows the woods to the exclusion
of all other employment. He is militantly a lumberjack and is inclined to
be a trifle "patriotic" and disputatious as to the relative importance of
his own particular branch of the industry. "Long loggers," for instance,
view with a suspicion of disdain the work of "short loggers" and vice
versa.
"Lumber-Jack" The Giant Killer
But the lumber-jack is a casual worker and he is the finished product of
modern capitalism. He is the perfect proletarian type--possessionless,
homeless, and rebellious. He is the reverse side of the gilded medal of
present day society. On the one side is the third generation idle
rich--arrogant and parasitical, and on the other, the actual producer,
economically helpless and denied access to the means of production unless
he "beg his lordly fellow worm to give him leave to toil," as Robert Burns
has it.
The logger of the Northwest has his faults. He is not any more perfect
than the rest of us. The years of degradation and struggle he has endured
in the woods have not failed to leave their mark upon him. But, as the
wage workers go, he is not the common but the uncommon type both as
regards physical strength and cleanliness and mental alertness. He is
generous to a fault and has all the qualities Lincoln and Whitman loved in
men.
In the first place, whether as faller, rigging man or on the "drive," his
work is muscular and out of doors. He must at all times conquer the forest
and battle with the elements. There is a tang and adventure to his labor
in the impressive solitude of the woods that gives him a steady eye, a
strong arm and a clear brain. Being constantly close to the great green
heart of Nature, he acquires the dignity and independence of the savage
rather than the passive and unresisting submission of the factory worker.
The fact that he is free from family ties also tends to make him ready for
an industrial frolic or fight at any time. In daily matching his prowess
and skill with the products of the earth he feels in a way, that the woods
"belong" to him and develops a contempt for the unseen and unknown
employers who kindly permit him to enrich them with his labor. He is
constantly reminded of the glaring absurdity of the private ownership of
natural resources. Instinctively he becomes a rebel against the injustice
and contradictions of capitalist society.
Dwarfed to ant-like insignificance by the verdant immensity around him,
the logger toils daily with ax, saw and cable. One after another forest
giants of dizzy height crash to the earth with a sound like thunder. In a
short time they are loaded on flat cars and hurried across the
stump-dotted clearing to the river, whence they are dispatched to the
noisy, ever-waiting saws at the mill. And always the logger knows in his
heart that this is not done that people may have lumber for their needs,
but rather that some overfed parasite may first add to his holy dividends.
Production for profit always strikes the logger with the full force of
objective observation. And is it any wonder, with the process of
exploitation thus naked always before his eyes, that he should have been
among the very first workers to challenge the flimsy title of the lumber
barons to the private ownership of the woods?
The Factory Worker and the Lumber-Jack
Without wishing to disparage the ultimate worth of either; it might be
well to contrast for a moment the factory worker of the East with the
lumber-jack of the Pacific Northwest. To the factory hand the master's
claim to the exclusive title of the means of production is not so
evidently absurd. Around him are huge, smoking buildings filled with
roaring machinery--all man-made. As a rule he simply takes for granted
that his employers--whoever they are--own these just as he himself owns,
for instance, his pipe or his furniture. Only when he learns, from
thoughtful observation or study, that such things are the appropriated
products of the labor of himself and his kind, does the truth dawn upon
him that labor produces all and is entitled to its own.
[Illustration: Logging Operations
Look around you at the present moment and you will see wood used for many
different purposes. Have you ever stopped to think where the raw material
comes from or what the workers are like who produce it? Here is a scene
from a lumber camp showing the loggers at their daily tasks. The lumber
trust is willing that these men should work-but not organize.]
It must be admitted that factory life tends to dispirit and cow the
workers who spend their lives in the gloomy confines of the modern mill or
shop. Obedient to the shrill whistle they pour out of their clustered grey
dwellings in the early morning. Out of the labor ghettos they swarm and
into their dismal slave-pens. Then the long monotonous, daily "grind," and
home again to repeat the identical proceeding on the following day. Almost
always, tired, trained to harsh discipline or content with low comfort;
they are all too liable to feel that capitalism is invincibly colossal and
that the possibility of a better day is hopelessly remote. Most of them
are unacquainted with their neighbors. They live in small family or
boarding house units and, having no common meeting place, realize only
with difficulty the mighty potency of their vast numbers. To them
organization appears desirable at times but unattainable. The dickering
conservatism of craft unionism appeals to their cautious natures. They act
only en masse, under awful compulsion and then their release of repressed
slave emotion is sudden and terrible.