Part 5 (1/2)
”There was quite a crowd and I got up pretty close in front so I could hear the speaker. I stood there a little while and finally the sheriff came along with a bunch of deputies, and the speaker said, 'Here they come, but now people, I will tell you, don't start anything, let them start it.'
”They took him off the box and arrested a couple of others with him, and then immediately after that the Commercial Club deputies came along in a row. They had white handkerchiefs around their necks. So I looked out there and the crowd commenced to yell and cheer like, and McRae got excited and started toward me, saying, 'We have been looking for you before.' When he said that I stopped--before that I had tried to get farther back--I stopped and he got hold of me. Meanwhile Commissioner Kelley came up and took care of me and McRae walked away a little way.
Kelley had hold of my right arm and he pinched me a little bit, and I said 'Let go Kelley and I will go with you.'
”We stood there a few minutes longer and McRae came back. Kelley said 'Come along with me,' and just as I said 'All right,' McRae grabbed me by the coat and hit me on the head with a black club fastened to his strap with a leather thong. I was looking right at him and he knocked me unconscious. Then Kelley picked me up and shook me and I came to again, and I fell over the curb of the sidewalk.
”Kelley then turned me over to Daniels, a policeman in Everett, and he turned me over to a couple of Commercial Club deputies. Then Fred Luke came along and said, 'I will take care of him.' So we walked a little ways and he said, 'You better go to the doctor and have that dressed.' I said to him, 'Oh, I guess it ain't so bad,' and so he said, 'Come along with me and we will wash up at the jail.' I said, 'All right,' and while I was going up the steps to the jail, why a policeman by the name of Bryan or something like that,--a little short fellow, well anyhow he got canned off the force for being drunk, that is how I heard of him,--when I was kind of slow walking along because I was bleeding pretty bad, he said, 'Hurry up and get in there, you low-down, dirty son-of-a-b----'
And I answered, 'I guess I ain't arrested, I don't have to hurry in there.' So he cursed some more.
”I went into the jail and washed up and came back into the office of the county jail. The fellows that they had arrested were sitting in the chairs and McRae came in and grabbed one of the I. W. W.'s--I guess they were I. W. W.'s, anyway one of them that was arrested--and he says, 'What in h.e.l.l are you doing up here, don't you know I told you to keep away from here?' and while he was going in the door into the back office I saw him haul off with his sap, but I don't see him hit him, but the little fellow cried like a baby.
”McRae came back and he looked at me and said, 'What in h.e.l.l are you doing up here?' I didn't know what to say for a little while and then I said, 'I didn't do nothing, Mac, I don't see what you wanted to sap me for.' And he said, 'I didn't sap you,' he said, 'Kelley hit you.' Then I said to him, 'My wife says for me to meet her down at the corner of Wetmore and Hewitt at nine o'clock and I would like to go down there and meet her.' So he said, 'All right, you go; you hurry and go.' I was going out the front door and he said, 'No, don't go out there. If you go out there, they will kill you!' He led me to the back door of the jail, I don't know where it was, I never was in jail in my life before, and he said, 'Hurry and beat it, and pull your hat down over your head so they wont know you.' But when I got to town everybody knew, because there was blood still running all over my face after I washed up.”
Henig endeavored to prosecute McRae for his illegal and unwarranted a.s.sault but all attempts to secure a warrant met with failure. Lumber trust law operates only in one direction.
In this raid upon the meeting McRae smashed citizens right and left, women as well as men. He was even seen to kick a small boy who happened to get in his path. Deputy Sam Walker beat up Harry Woods, an Everett music teacher; another deputy was seen smas.h.i.+ng an elderly gentleman on the head; still another knocked Mrs. Louise McGuire, who was just recovering from a sprained knee, into the gutter; and Ed Morton, G. W.
Carr and many other old-time residents of Everett were struck by the drunken Commercial Club thugs.
Mrs. Leota Carr called up Chief of Police Kelley next morning, the following being an account of the conversation that ensued:
”I said, 'What are you trying to kill my husband for?' and he kind of laughed and said he didn't believe it, and I said, 'Did you know they struck him over the head last night and he could hardly go to work today?' He said, 'My G.o.d, they didn't strike him, did they?' and I said, 'They surely did!' And he said 'Why there isn't a better man in town than he is,' and I said, 'I know it.' It surprised me to think that he thought I didn't know it myself. And then I said, 'These here deputies are making more I. W. W.'s in town than the I. W. W.'s would in fifty years.' And he said, 'I know it.' Then I said, 'Why do you allow them to do it? You are the head of the police department.' He replied, 'McRae has taken it out of my hands; the sheriff is ahead of me and it is his men who are doing it, and I am not to blame.'”
At the city park four nights after this outrage, only one arrest for street speaking having occurred in the meantime, the aroused citizens of Everett met to hear Attorney E. C. Dailey, T. Webber, and various local speakers deal with the situation, and to view at first hand the wounds of Ovist, Henig and other towns people who had been injured. Thousands attended the meeting, and disapproval of the actions of the Commercial Club and its tools was vehemently expressed.
This remonstrance from the people had some effect. The Commercial Club, knowing that all arrests so far had been unlawful, took steps to ”legalize” any further seizing of street speakers at Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues. The lumber interests issued an ordinance preventing street speaking on that corner. The Mayor signed it without ever putting it to a reading, thus invalidating the proposed measure. This made no difference; henceforth it was a law of the city of Everett and as such was due to be enforced by the lumber trust.
During the whole controversy there had not been an arrest made on the charge of violation of any street speaking ordinance. With the new ordinance a.s.sumed to be a law, Mrs. Frennette went to Everett and interviewed Chief Kelley. After telling him that the I. W. W. members were being disturbed and mistreated by men who were not in uniform, she said:
”It seems that there is an ordinance here against street speaking and we feel that it is unjust. We feel that we have a right to speak here.
We are not blocking traffic and we propose to make a test of the ordinance. Will you have one of your men arrest me or any other speaker who chooses to take the box, personally, and bring me to jail and put a charge against me, and protect me from the vigilantes who are beating the men on the street?”
Kelley replied that so far as he was concerned he would do the best he could but McRae had practically taken the authority out of his hands and that he really could not guarantee protection. So a legal test was practically denied.
Quiet again reigned in Everett following the brutalities cited. A few citizens were manhandled for too openly expressing their opinion of mob methods and several wearers of overalls were searched and deported, but the effects of bootleg whiskey seemed to have left the vigilantes.
On Wednesday, Sept. 20th, a committee of 2000 citizens met at the Labor Temple and arranged for a ma.s.s meeting to be held in the public park on the following Friday. The meeting brought forth between ten and fifteen thousand citizens, one-third of the total population at least, who listened to speakers representing the I. W. W., Socialists, trades unions and citizens generally. Testimony was given by some of the citizens who had been clubbed by the vigilantes. Recognizing the hostile public opinion, Sheriff McRae promised that the office of the I. W. W.
would not again be molested. As he had lied before he was not believed, but, as a test, Earl Osborne went from Seattle to open up the hall once more.
For a period thereafter the energies of the deputies were given to a course of action confined to the outskirts of the city. Migratory workers traveling to and from various jobs were taken from the trains, beaten, robbed and deported. As an example of McRae's methods and as depicting a phase of the life of the migratory worker the story of ”Sergeant” John J. Keenan, sixty-five years old, and still actively at work, is of particular interest:
”I left Great Falls, Mont., about the 5th of September after I had been working on a machine in the harvest about nine miles from town. The boys gathered together--they were coming from North Dakota--and we all came thru together. We had an organization among ourselves. We carried our cards. There was a delegate with us, a field delegate, and I was spokesman, elected by the rank and file of the twenty-two. There was another division from North Dakota on the same train with us, going to Wenatchee to pick apples. We were going to Seattle. I winter in Seattle every year and work on the snow sheds.
”We carried our cooking utensils with us, and when we got off at a station we sent our committee of three and bought our provisions in the store, and two of the cooks cooked the food, and we ate it and took the next train and came on. This happened wherever we stopped.
”We arrived in Snohomish, Wash., on Sept. 23rd at about 8:45 in the morning. When the committee came down I sent out and they brought me back the bills--I was the treasurer as well--one man carried the funds, and they brought back $4.90 worth of food down, including two frying pans, and when I was about cooking, a freight train from Everett pulled in and a little boy, who was maybe about ten years old, he says, 'Dad, are you an I. W. W.?' I says, 'I am, son.' 'Well,' he says, 'there are a whole bunch of deputies coming out after you.' I laughed at the boy, I thought he was jos.h.i.+ng me.
”About half an hour after the boy told me this the deputies appeared. In the first bunch were forty-two, and then Sheriff McRae came with more, making altogether, what I counted, sixty-four. The first bunch came around the bush alongside the railroad track where I was and the sheriff came in about twenty minutes later with his bunch from the opposite way.
”In the first bunch was a fat, stout fellow with two guns. He had a chief's badge--a chief of police's badge--on him. He was facing toward the fire and he says, 'If you move a step, I will fill you full of lead!' I laughed at him, says I, 'What does this outrage mean?' There was another old gentleman with a chin beard, fat, middling fat, probably my own age, and he picked up my coat which was lying alongside me and looked at my b.u.t.ton. He says, 'Oh, undesirable citizen!' I says, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Are you an I. W. W.?' I says, 'I am, and I am more than proud of it!' 'Well,' he says, 'we don't want you in this county.' I says, 'Sure?' He says, 'Yes.' I says, 'Well, I am not going to stay in this county, I am going to cook breakfast and go to Seattle.'
He says, 'Do you understand what this means?' I says, 'No.' He says, 'The sheriff will be here in a few minutes and he will tell you what it means.' I heard afterward that this man was the mayor of Snohomish.