The Everett massacre Part 20

"We object to this!" shouted Mr. Cooley, and the court sustained the objection.

Despite continual protests from the prosecution Thompson gave the ideas of the I. W. W. on many questions. Speaking of free speech the witness said:

"Free speech is vital. It is a point that has been threshed out and settled before we were born. If we do not have free speech, the children of the race will die in the dark."

The message of industrial unionism delivered thru the sworn testimony of a labor organizer was indeed an amazing spectacle. Judge Ronald never relaxed his attention during the entire examination, the jury was spell-bound, and it was only by an obvious effort that the spectators kept from applauding the various telling points.

"There is overwork on one hand," said Thompson, "and out-of-work on the other. The length of the working day should be determined by the amount of work and the number of workers. You have no more right to do eight or ten or twelve hours of labor when others are out of work, despondent, committing suicide, than you have to drink all the water, if that were possible, while others are dying of thirst.

"Solidarity is the I. W. W. way to get their demands. We do not advocate that the workers should organize in a military way and use guns and dynamite. The most effective weapon of labor is economic power: the modern wage workers are the living parts of industry and if they fold their arms, they immediately precipitate a crisis, they paralyze the world. No other cla.s.s has that power. The other cla.s.s can fold their arms, and they do most of the time, but our cla.s.s has the economic power. The I. W. W. preaches and teaches all the time that a far more effective weapon than brickbats or dynamite is solidarity.

"We have developed from individual production, to social production, yet we still have private owners.h.i.+p of the means of production. One cla.s.s owns the industries and doesn't operate them, another cla.s.s operates the industries and does not own them. We are going to have a revolution. No one is more mistaken than those who believe that this system is the final state of society. As the industrial revolution takes place, as the labor process takes on the co-operative form, as the tool of production becomes social, the idea of social owners.h.i.+p is suggested, and so the idea that things that are used collectively should be owned collectively, presents itself with irresistible force to the people of the twentieth century. So there is a struggle for industrial democracy.

We are the modern abolitionists fighting against wage slavery as the other abolitionists fought against chattel slavery. The solution for our modern problems is this, that the industries should be owned by the people, operated by the people for the people, and the little busy bees who make the honey of the world should eat that honey, and there should be no drones at all in the hives of industry.

"When we have industrial democracy you will know that the mills, the mines, the factories, the earth itself, will be the collective property of the people, and if a little baby should be born that baby would be as much an owner of the earth as any other of the children of men. Then the war, the commercial struggles, the clashes between groups of conflicting interests, will be a night-mare of the past. In the place of capitalism with its one cla.s.s working and its other cla.s.s enjoying, in the place of the wages system with its strife and strikes, lockouts and grinding poverty, we will have a co-operative system where the interests of one will be to promote the interests of all--that will be Industrial Democracy."

Thompson explained the meaning of the sarcastic song, "Christians at War," to the evident amus.e.m.e.nt of the jury and spectators. The witness was then asked about Herve's work on anti-patriotism in this question by attorney Moore:

"What is the att.i.tude of your organization relative to internationalism and national patriotism?"

"We object to that as incompetent and immaterial," cried Veitch of the prosecution.

"What did you put this book in for then?" said Judge Ronald in a testy manner as he motioned the witness to proceed with his answer.

"In the broader sense," answered Thompson, "there is no such thing as a foreigner. We are all native born members of this planet, and for the members of it to be divided into groups or units and to be taught that each nation is better than the other leads to clashes and the world war.

We ought to have in the place of national patriotism--the idea that one people is better than another,--a broader conception, that of international solidarity. The idea that we are better than others is contrary to the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are born free and equal. The I. W. W. believes that in order to do away with wars we should remove the cause of wars; we should establish industrial democracy and the co-operative system instead of commercialism and capitalism and the struggles that come from them. We are trying to make America a better land, a land without child slaves, a land without poverty, and so also with the world, a world without a master and without a slave."

When the lengthy direct examination of Thompson had been finished, the prosecution questioned him but five minutes and united in a sigh of relief as he left the stand.

The next witness called was Ernest Nordstrom, companion of Oscar Carlson who was severely wounded on the Verona. Nordstrom testified rather out of his logical order in the trial by reason of the fact that he was about to leave on a lengthy fis.h.i.+ng trip to Alaska. His testimony was that he purchased a regular ticket at the same time as his friend Carlson, but these tickets were not taken up by the purser. The original ticket of this pa.s.senger was then offered in evidence. The witness stated that the first shot came from almost the same place on the dock as did the words "You can't land here." He fell to the deck and saw Carlson fall also. Carlson tried to rise once, but a bullet hit him and he dropped; there were nine bullet holes in him. Nordstrom was asked:

"Did you have a gun?"

"No sir."

"Did Carlson have a gun?"

"No sir."

"Did you see anybody with a gun on the boat?"

"No. I didn't."

Organizer James Rowan then gave his experiences in Everett, ending with a vivid recital of the terrible beating he had received at the hands of deputies near Silver Lake. Upon telling of the photograph that was taken of his lacerated back he was asked by Veitch:

"What was the reason you had that picture taken?"

"Well," said Rowan, in his inimitable manner, "I thought it would be a good thing to get that taken to show up the kind of civilization that they had in Everett."

Dr. E. J. Brown, a Seattle dentist, and Thomas Horner, Seattle attorney, corroborated Rowan's testimony as to the condition of his back. They had seen the wounds and bruises shortly after the beating had been administered and were of the opinion that a false light was reflected on the photograph in such a way that the severest marks did not appear as bad as they really were.

Otto Nelson, Everett s.h.i.+ngle weaver, gave testimony regarding the s.h.i.+ngle weavers' strikes of 1915 and 1916 but was stopped from going into detail by the rulings of the court. He told also of the peaceful character of all the I. W. W. meetings in Everett, and stated that on one occasion police officer Daniels had fired two shots down one of the city streets at an I. W. W. man who had been made to run the gauntlet.

H. P. Whartenby, owner of a five-ten-fifteen cent store in Everett, said that the I. W. W. meetings were orderly, and further testified that he had been ordered out of the Commercial Club on the evening of November 5th but not until he had seen that the club was a regular a.r.s.enal, with guns stacked all over the place.

To establish the fact that the sidewalks were kept clear, that there was no advocacy of violence, that no resistance was offered to arrest, and that the I. W. W. meetings were well conducted in every particular, the defense put on in fairly rapid succession a number of Everett citizens: Mrs. Ina M. Salter, Mrs. Elizabeth Maloney, Mrs. Letelsia Fye, Bruce J.

Hatch, Mrs. Dollie Gustaffson, Miss Avis Mathison, Mrs. Peter Aiken, Mrs. Annie Pomeroy, Mrs. Rebecca Wade, F. G. Crosby, and Mrs. Hannah Crosby. The fact that these citizens, and a number of other women who were mentioned in the testimony, attended the I. W. W. meetings quite regularly, impressed the jury favorably. Some of these women witnesses had been roughly handled by the deputies. Mrs. Pomeroy stated that the deputies, armed with clubs and distinguished by white handkerchiefs around their necks, invaded one meeting and struck right and left. "And they punched me at that!" said the indignant witness.

"Punched you where?" inquired Vanderveer in order to locate the injury.

"They punched me on the sidewalk!" answered the witness, and the solemn bailiff had to rap for order in the court room.

Cooley caught a Tartar in his cross-examination of Mrs. Crosby. He inquired:

"Did you hear the I. W. W.'s say that when they got a majority of the workers into this big union they would take possession of the industries and run them themselves?"

"Why certainly!"

"You did hear them say they would take possession?"

"Why certainly!" flashed back the witness. "That's the way the North did with the slaves, isn't it? They took possession without ever asking them. My people came from the South and they had slaves taken away from them and never got anything for it, and quite right, too!"

"Then you do believe it would be all right, yourself?" said Cooley.

"I believe that confiscation would be perfectly right in the case of taking things that are publicly used for the public good of the people----."

"That's all," hastily cut in Cooley.

"That they should be used then by the people and for the people!"

finished the witness.

"That's all!" cried Cooley loudly and more anxiously.

Frank Henig, the next witness, told of having been blackjacked by Sheriff McRae and exhibited the large scar on his forehead that plainly showed where the brutal blow had landed. He stated that he had tried to secure the arrest of McRae for the entirely unwarranted attack but was denied a warrant.

Jake Michel, secretary of the Everett Building Trades Council, gave evidence regarding a number of the I. W. W. street meetings. He was questioned at length about what he had inferred from the speeches of Rowan, Thompson and others. Replying to one question he said:

"I think the American Federation of Labor uses the most direct action that any organization could use."

"In a strike?"

"Yes."

"And by that you mean a peaceful strike?" said Cooley suggestively.

"Well, I haven't seen them carry on very many peaceful ones yet,"

replied Michel.