The Centralia Conspiracy - Ralph Chaplin
Not so with the weather-tanned husky of the Northwestern woods. His job
life is a group life. He walks to his daily task with his fellow workers.
He is seldom employed for long away from them. At a common table he eats
with them, and they all sleep in common bunk houses. The trees themselves
teach him to scorn his master's adventitious claim to exclusive ownership.
The circumstances of his daily occupation show him the need of class
solidarity. His strong body clamours constantly for the sweetness and
comforts of life that are denied him, his alert brain urges him to
organize and his independent spirit gives him the courage and tenacity to
achieve his aims. The union hall is often his only home and the One Big
Union his best-beloved. He is fond of reading and discussion. He resents
industrial slavery as an insult. He resented filth, overwork and poverty,
he resented being made to carry his own bundle of blankets from job to
job; he gritted his teeth together and fought until he had ground these
obnoxious things under his iron-caulked heel. The lumber trust hated him
just in proportion as he gained and used his industrial power; but neither
curses, promises nor blows could make him budge. He knew what he wanted
and he knew how to get what he wanted. And his boss didn't like it very
well.
The lumber-jack is secretive and not given to expressed emotion--excepting
in his union songs. The bosses don't like his songs either. But the logger
isn't worried a bit. Working away in the woods every day, or in his bunk
at night, he dreams his dream of the world as he thinks it should be--that
"wild wobbly dream" that every passing day brings closer to
realization--and he wants all who work around him to share his vision and
his determination to win so that all will be ready and worthy to live in
the New Day that is dawning.
In a word the Northwestern lumber-jack was too human and too stubborn ever
to repudiate his red-blooded manhood at the behest of his masters and
become a serf. His union meant to him all that he possessed or hoped to
gain. Is it any wonder that he endured the tortures of hell during the
period of the war rather than yield his Red Card--or that he is still
determined and still undefeated? Is it any wonder the lumber barons hated
him, and sought to break his spirit with brute force and legal cunning--or
that they conspired to murder it at Centralia with mob violence--and
failed?
Why the Loggers Organized
The condition of the logger previous to the period of organization beggars
description. Modern industrial autocracy seemed with him to develop its
most inhuman characteristics. The evil plant of wage slavery appeared to
bear its most noxious blossoms in the woods.
The hours of labor were unendurably long, ten hours being the general
rule--with the exception of the Grays Harbor district, where the eleven or
even twelve hour day prevailed. In addition to this men were compelled to
walk considerable distances to and from their work and meals through the
wet brush.
Not infrequently the noon lunch was made almost impossible because of the
order to be back on the job when work commenced. A ten hour stretch of
arduous labor, in a climate where incessant rain is the rule for at least
six months of the year, was enough to try the strength and patience of
even the strongest. The wages too were pitiably inadequate.
The camps themselves, always more or less temporary affairs, were inferior
to the cow-shed accommodations of a cattle ranch. The bunk house were
over-crowded, ill-smelling and unsanitary. In these ramshackle affairs the
loggers were packed like sardines. The bunks were arranged tier over tier
and nearly always without mattresses. They were uniformly vermin-infested
and sometimes of the "muzzle-loading" variety. No blankets were furnished,
each logger being compelled to supply his own. There were no facilities
for bathing or the washing and drying of sweaty clothing. Lighting and
ventilation were of course, always poor.
In addition to these discomforts the unorganized logger was charged a
monthly hospital fee for imaginary medical service. Also it was nearly
always necessary to pay for the opportunity of enjoying these privileges
by purchasing employment from a "job shark" or securing the good graces of
a "man catcher." The former often had "business agreements" with the camp
foreman and, in many cases, a man could not get a job unless he had a
ticket from a labor agent in some shipping point.
It may be said that the conditions just described were more prevalent in
some parts of the lumber country than in others. Nevertheless, these
prevailed pretty generally in all sections of the industry before the
workers attempted to better them by organizing. At all events such were
the conditions the lumber barons sought with all their power to preserve
and the loggers to change.
Organization and the Opening Struggle
A few years before the birth of the Industrial workers of the World the
lumber workers had started to organize. By 1905, when the above mentioned
union was launched, lumber-workers were already united in considerable
numbers in the old Western afterwards the American Labor Union. This
organization took steps to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the
World and was thus among the very first to seek a larger share of life in
the ranks of that militant and maligned organization. Strike followed
strike with varying success and the conditions of the loggers began
perceptibly to improve.
Scattered here and there in the cities of the Northwest were many locals
of the Industrial Workers of the World. Not until 1912, however, were
these consolidated into a real industrial unit. For the first time a
sufficient number of loggers and saw mill men were organized to be grouped
into an integral part of the One Big Union. This was done with reasonable
success. In the following year the American Federation of Labor attempted
a similar task but without lasting results, the loggers preferring the
industrial to the craft form of organization. Besides this, they were
predisposed to sympathize with the ideal of solidarity and Industrial
Democracy for which their own union had stood from the beginning.
The "timber beast" was starting to reap the benefits of his organized
power. Also he was about to feel the force and hatred of the "interests"
arrayed against him. He was soon to learn that the path of labor unionism
is strewn with more rocks than roses. He was making an earnest effort to
emerge from the squalor and misery of peonage and was soon to see that his
overlords were satisfied to keep him right where he had always been.
Strange to say, almost the first really important clash occurred in the
very heart of the lumber trust's domain, in the little city of Aberdeen,
Grays Harbor County--only a short distance from Centralia, of mob fame!
[Illustration: Eugene Barnett
(After the man-hunt)
Coal miner. Born in North Carolina. Member of U.M.W.A. and I.W.W. Went to
work underground at the age of eight. Self educated, a student and
philosopher. Upon reaching home Barnett, fearful of the mob, took to the
woods with his rifle. He surrendered to the posse only after he had
convinced himself that their purpose was not to lynch him.]
This was in 1912. A strike had started in the saw mills over demands of a
$2.50 daily wage. Some of the saw mill workers were members of the
Industrial Workers of the World. They were supported by the union loggers
of Western Washington. The struggle was bitterly contested and lasted for
several weeks. The lumber trust bared its fangs and struck viciously at
the workers in a manner that has since characterized its tactics in all
labor disputes.
The jails of Aberdeen and adjoining towns were filled with strikers.
Picket lines were broken up and the pickets arrested. When the wives of
the strikers with babies in their arms, took the places of their
imprisoned husbands, the fire hose was turned on them with great force, in
many instances knocking them to the ground. Loggers and sawmill men alike
were unmercifully beaten. Many were slugged by mobs with pick handles,
taken to the outskirts of the city and told that their return would be the
occasion of a lynching. At one time an armed mob of business men dragged
nearly four hundred strikers from their homes or boarding houses, herded
them into waiting boxcars, sealed up the doors and were about to deport
them en masse. The sheriff, getting wind of this unheard-of proceeding,
stopped it at the last moment. Many men were badly scarred by beatings
they received. One logger was crippled for life by the brutal treatment
accorded him.
But the strikers won their demands and conditions were materially
improved. The Industrial Workers of the World continued to grow in numbers
and prestige. This event may be considered the beginning of the labor
movement on Grays Harbor that the lumber trust sought finally to crush
with mob violence on a certain memorable day in Centralia seven years
later.
Following the Aberdeen strike one or two minor clashes occurred. The
lumber workers were usually successful. During this period they were
quietly but effectually spreading One Big Union propaganda throughout the
camps and mills in the district. Also they were organizing their fellow
workers in increasing numbers into their union. The lumber trust, smarting
under its last defeat, was alarmed and alert.
[Illustration: Bert Faulkner
American. Logger. 21 years of age. Member of the Industrial Workers of the
World since 1917. Was in the hall when raid occurred. Faulkner personally
knew Grimm, McElfresh and a number of others who marched in the parade. He
is an ex-soldier himself. The prosecution used a great deal of pressure to
make this boy turn state's evidence. He refused stating that he would tell
nothing but the truth. At the last moment he was discharged from the case
after being held in jail four months.]
A Massacre and a New Law
But no really important event occurred until 1916. At this time the union
loggers, organized in the Industrial Workers of the World, had started a
drive for membership around Puget Sound. Loggers and mill hands were eager
for the message of Industrial Unionism. Meetings were well attended and
the sentiment in favor of the organization was steadily growing. The A.F.
of L. shingle weavers and longshoremen were on strike and had asked the
I.W.W. to help them secure free speech in Everett. The ever-watchful
lumber interests decided the time to strike had again arrived. The events
of "Bloody Sunday" are too well known to need repeating here. Suffice to
say that after a summer replete with illegal beatings and jailings five
men were killed in cold blood and forty wounded in a final desperate
effort to drive the union out of the city of Everett, Washington. These
unarmed loggers were slaughtered and wounded by the gunfire of a gang of
business men and plug-uglies of the lumber interests. True to form, the
lumber trust had every union man in sight arrested and seventy-four
charged with the murder of a gunman who had been killed by the cross-fire
of his own comrades. None of the desperadoes who had done the actual
murdering was ever prosecuted or even reprimanded. The charge against the
members of the Industrial Workers of the World was pressed. The case was
tried in court and the Industrialists declared "not guilty." George
Vanderveer was attorney for the defense.
The lumber interests were infuriated at their defeat, and from this time
on the struggle raged in deadly earnest. Almost everything from mob law to
open assassination had been tried without avail. The execrated One Big
Union idea was gaining members and power every day. The situation was
truly alarming. Their heretofore trustworthy "wage plugs" were showing
unmistakable symptoms of intelligence. Workingmen were waking up. They
were, in appalling numbers, demanding the right to live like men.
Something must be done something new and drastic--to split asunder this
on-coming phalanx of industrial power.
But the gun-man-and-mob method was discarded, temporarily at least, in
favor of the machinations of lumber trust tools in the law making bodies.
Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them--and with as
little impunity. So the notorious Washington "Criminal Syndicalism" law
was devised. This law, however, struck a snag. The honest-minded governor
of the state, recognizing its transparent character and far-reaching
effects, promptly vetoed the measure. After the death of Governor Lister
the criminal syndicalism law was passed, however, by the next State
Legislature. Since that time it has been used against the American
Federation of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialist
Party and even common citizens not affiliated with any of these
organizations. The criminal syndicalism law registers the high water mark
of reaction. It infringes more on the liberties of the people than any of
the labor-crushing laws that blackened Russia during the dynasty of the
Romanoffs. It would disgrace the anti-Celestial legislation of Hell.
The Eight Hour Day and "Treason"
Nineteen hundred and seventeen was an eventful year. It was then the
greatest strike in the history of the lumber industry occurred-the strike
for the eight hour day. For years the logger and mill hand had fought
against the unrestrained greed of the lumber interests. Step by step, in
the face of fiercest opposition, they had fought for the right to live
like men; and step by step they had been gaining. Each failure or success
had shown them the weakness or the strength of their union. They had been
consolidating their forces as well as learning how to use them. The lumber
trust had been making huge profits the while, but the lumber workers were
still working ten hours or more and the logger was still packing his dirty
blankets from job to job. Dissatisfaction with conditions was wider and
more prevalent then ever before. Then came the war.
As soon as this country had taken its stand with the allied imperialists
the price of lumber, needed for war purposes, was boosted to sky high
figures. From $16.00 to $116.00 per thousand feet is quite a jump; but
recent disclosures show that the Government paid as high as $1200.00 per
thousand for spruce that private concerns were purchasing for less than
one tenth of that sum. Gay parties with plenty of wild women and hard
drink are alleged to have been instrumental in enabling the "patriotic"
lumber trust to put these little deals across. Due to the duplicity of
this same bunch of predatory gentlemen the airplane and ship building
program of the United States turned out to be a scandal instead of a
success. Out of 21,000 feet of spruce delivered to a Massachusetts
factory, inspectors could only pass 400 feet as fit for use. Keep these
facts and figures in mind when you read about what happened to the
"disloyal" lumber workers during the war-and afterwards.
[Illustration: Mrs. Elmer Smith and Baby Girl
Mrs. Elmer Smith is the cultured daughter of a Washington judge. Since
Elmer Smith got into trouble many efforts have been made to induce his
wife to leave him. Mrs. Smith prefers, however, to stick with her rebel
lawyer whom she loves and admires.]
Discontent had been smouldering in the woods for a long time. It was soon
fanned to a flame by the brazen profiteering of the lumber trust. The
loggers had been biding their time--rather sullenly it is true--for the
day when the wrongs they had endured so patiently and so long might be
rectified. Their quarrel with the lumber interests was an old one. The
time was becoming propitious.
In the early summer of 1917 the strike started. Sweeping through the short
log country it spread like wild-fire over nearly all the Northwestern
lumber districts. The tie-up was practically complete. The industry was
paralyzed. The lumber trust, its mouth drooling in anticipation of the
many millions it was about to make in profits, shattered high heaven with
its cries of rage. Immediately its loyal henchmen in the Wilson
administration rushed to the rescue. Profiteering might be condoned,
moralized over or winked at, but militant labor unionism was a menace to
the government and the prosecution of the war. It must be crushed. For was
it not treacherous and treasonable for loggers to strike for living
conditions when Uncle Sam needed the wood and the lumber interests the
money? So Woodrow Wilson and his coterie of political troglodytes from the
slave-owning districts of the old South, started out to teach militant
labor a lesson. Corporation lawyers were assembled. Indictments were made
to order. The bloodhounds of the Department of "Justice" were unleashed.
Grand Juries of "patriotic" business men were impaneled and did their
expected work not wisely but too well. All the gun-men and stool-pigeons
of Big Business got busy. And the opera bouffe of "saving our form of
government" was staged.
Industrial Heretics and the White Terror
For a time it seemed as though the strikers would surely be defeated. The
onslaught was terrific, but the loggers held out bravely. Workers were
beaten and jailed by the hundreds. Men were herded like cattle in
blistering "bull-pens," to be freed after months of misery, looking more
like skeletons than human beings. Ellensburg and Yakima will never be
forgotten in Washington. One logger was even burned to death while locked
in a small iron-barred shack that had been dignified with the title of
"jail." In the Northwest even the military were used and the bayonet of
the soldier could be seen glistening beside the cold steel of the hired
thug. Union halls were raided in all parts of the land. Thousands of
workers were deported. Dozens were tarred and feathered and mobbed. Some
were even taken out in the dead of night and hanged to railway bridges.
Hundreds were convicted of imaginary offenses and sent to prison for terms
from one to twenty years. Scores were held in filthy jails for as long as
twenty-six months awaiting trial. The Espionage Law, which never convicted
a spy, and the Criminal Syndicalism Laws, which never convicted a
criminal, were used savagely and with full force against the workers in
their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war
hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public
opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has
become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to
convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose
backs they were trying to break, were working for the best interests of
the American people. Our form of government, forsooth, must be saved. Our
institutions must be rescued from the clutch of the "reds." Thus was the
war-frenzy of their dupes lashed to madness and the guarantees of the
constitution suspended as far as the working class was concerned.
So all the good, wise and noisy men of the nation were induced by diverse
means to cry out against the strikers and their union. The worst passions
of the respectable people were appealed to. The hoarse blood-cry of the
mob was raised. It was echoed and re-echoed from press and pulpit. The
very air quivered from its reverberations. Lynching parties became
"respectable." Indictments were flourished. Hand-cuffs flashed. The
clinking feet of workers going to prison rivaled the sound of the soldiers
marching to war. And while all this was happening, a certain paunchy
little English Jew with moth-eaten hair and blotchy jowls the accredited
head of a great labor union glared through his thick spectacles and nodded
his perverse approval. But the lumber trust licked its fat lips and leered
at its swollen dividends. All was well and the world was being made "safe
for democracy!"
[Illustration: Britt Smith
American. Logger. 35 years old. Had followed the woods for twenty years.
Smith made his home in the hall that was raided and was secretary of the
Union. When the mob broke into the jail and seized Wesley Everest to
torture and lynch him they cried, "We've got Britt Smith!" Smith was the
man they wanted and it was to break his neck that ropes were carried in
the "parade." Not until Everest's body was brought back to the city jail
was it discovered that the mob had lynched the wrong man.]
Autocracy vs. Unionism
This unprecedented struggle was really a test of strength between
industrial autocracy and militant unionism. The former was determined to
restore the palmy days of peonage for all time to come, the latter to
fight to the last ditch in spite of hell and high water. The lumber trust
sought to break the strike of the loggers and destroy their organization.
In the ensuing fracas the lumber barons came out only second best--and
they were bad losers. After the war-fever had died down--one year after
the signing of the Armistice--they were still trying in Centralia to
attain their ignoble ends by means of mob violence.
But at this time the ranks of the strikers were unbroken. The heads of the
loggers were "bloody but unbowed." Even at last, when compelled to yield
to privation and brute force and return to work, they turned defeat to
victory by "carrying the strike onto the job." As a body they refused to
work more than eight hours. Secretary of War Baker and President Wilson
had both vainly urged the lumber interests to grant the eight hour day.
The determined industrialists gained this demand, after all else had
failed, by simply blowing a whistle when the time was up. Most of their
other demands were won as well. In spite of even the Disque despotism,
mattresses, clean linen and shower baths were reluctantly granted as the
fruits of victory.
But even as these lines are written the jails and prisons of America are
filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime is loyalty to
the working class. The war profiteers are still wallowing in luxury. None
has ever been placed behind the bars. Before he was lynched in Butte,
Frank Little had said, "I stand for the solidarity of labor." That was
enough. The vials of wrath were poured on his head for no other reason.
And for no other reason was the hatred of the employing class directed at
the valiant hundreds who now rot in prison for longer terms than those
meted out to felons. William Haywood and Eugene Debs are behind steel bars
today for the same cause. The boys at Centralia were conspired against
because they too stood "for the solidarity of labor." It is simply lying
and camouflage to attempt to trace such persecutions to any other source.
These are things America will be ashamed of when she comes to her senses.
Such gruesome events are paralleled in no country save the Germany of
Kaiser Wilhelm or the Russia of the Czar.
This picture of labor persecution in free America--terrible but true--will
serve as a background for the dramatic history of the events leading up to
the climactic tragedy at Centralia on Armistice Day, 1919.
While in Washington...
All over the state of Washington the mobbing, jailing and tar and
feathering of workers continued the order of the day until long after the
cessation of hostilities in Europe. The organization had always urged and
disciplined its members to avoid violence as an unworthy weapon. Usually
the loggers have left their halls to the mercy of the mobs when they knew
a raid was contemplated. Centralia is the one exception. Here the outrages
heaped upon them could be no longer endured.
In Yakima and Sedro Woolley, among other places in 1918, union men were
stripped of their clothing, beaten with rope ends and hot tar applied to
the bleeding flesh. They were then driven half naked into the woods. A man
was hanged at night in South Montesano about this time and another had
been tarred and feathered. As a rule the men were taken unaware before
being treated in this manner. In one instance a stationary delegate of the
Industrial Workers of the World received word that he was to be
"decorated" and rode out of town on a rail. He slit a pillow open and
placed it in the window with a note attached stating that he knew of the
plan; would be ready for them, and would gladly supply his own feathers.
He did not leave town either on a rail or otherwise.
In Seattle, Tacoma and many other towns, union halls and print shops were
raided and their contents destroyed or burned. In the former city in 1919,
men, women and children were knocked insensible by policemen and
detectives riding up and down the sidewalks in automobiles, striking to
right and left with "billy" and night stick as they went. These were
accompanied by auto trucks filled with hidden riflemen and an armored tank
bristling with machine guns. A peaceable meeting of union men was being
dispersed.
[Illustration: Loren Roberts
American. Logger. 19 years old. Loren's mother said of him at the trial:
"Loren was a good boy, he brought his money home regularly for three
years. After his father took sick he was the only support for his father
and me and the three younger ones." The father was a sawyer in a mill and
died of tuberculosis after an accident had broken his strength. This boy,
the weakest of the men on trial, was driven insane by the unspeakable
"third degree" administered in the city jail. One of the lumber trust
lawyers was in the jail at the time Roberts signed his so-called
"confession." "Tell him to quit stalling," said a prosecutor to
Vanderveer, when Roberts left the witness stand. "You cur!" replied the
defense attorney in a low voice, "you know who is responsible for this
boy's condition." Roberts was one of the loggers on Seminary Hill.]