Labor Wars of the Northwest (2024)

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We shall not, shall not be moved,

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we shall not. We shall not
be moved just like a tree,

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standing by the water.

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We shall not be.

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The.

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Union is behind us. We shall not be moved.

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The union is behind us. We shall
not be moved just like a tree,

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standing by the water.

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We shall not be.

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We're fighting for our freedom.

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We shall not be moved
fighting for our freedom.

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We shall not be moved a
tree standing by the water.

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We shall not be.

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We shall not union.

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We shall tree by the

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we, shall we,

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shall we shall

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we shall not. We shall.

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On September 8th, 1883 at Gold
Creek in Montana territory,

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a crowd of foreign
dignitaries and politicians,

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including former president Ulysses S.
Grant, watched his railroad magnet.

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Henry Villard pounded the last spike
in the Northern Pacific Railroad line

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connecting St. Paul,
Minnesota with Puget Sound.

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The industrial revolution had
arrived in the Pacific Northwest,

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igniting the region's economy and
creating an untold number of jobs.

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Workers poured into the
region by the thousands,

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but instead of the security of a steady
job, workers found poverty level wages,

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crushing hours and dreadful conditions.

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So they protested, picketed and struck.

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They sang in the streets
troubadours with a cause,

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and they bled struck down
in cities like Spokane,

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Everett and Cilia. And
at the battle's peak,

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they shut down a city, 65,000 workers,

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men and women standing together united.

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It was intended as a blow
against exploitation,

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a fight for dignity and pay
equity, a precursor to revolution.

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It was the Seattle general
strike for six days.

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In February, 1919, Seattle
was closed for business.

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Virtually all businesses and all but the
most essential city services shut down

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America.

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And much of the world watched as workers
struck for a living wage for reasonable

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hours and for the right to organize.

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The working class stood up to capitalists
and government forces and walked off

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the job. This is their story,
the labor wars of the northwest.

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This was a time where not just in
Seattle, but across the United States,

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and for that matter,

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it's the western world of vibrant
economic change and growth.

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The Pacific Northwest was
rapidly expanding in the 1890s,

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19 hundreds, 1910s.

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But we don't see the large industries
like you see in Chicago or New York.

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There's not huge factories where women
would be working By the thousands.

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The Yukon and Klondike Gold strikes
propelled Seattle to new economic heights.

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Between 1,919 10,

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its population tripled to over 237,000.

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Bypassing Portland. As
the region's largest city,

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city leaders embarked
on civic improvements,

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beginning with the massive regrade
of downtown to expand the commercial

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district. In 1909,

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they hosted the Alaska Yukon Pacific
Exposition. Seattle's first World's Fair,

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permanently linking its fate
with Alaska. Five years later,

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the 42 story Smith Tower opened making
Seattle the home of America's tallest

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building outside of New York City.

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Its grandeur symbolized
Seattle's emergence as a
vital metropolis and permanent

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force in global trade.

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But much of the success came on
the backs of the working poor.

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As more and more workers are
going from farms are going from

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being independent
craftsmen into the factory,

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they start using the term wage
slavery because it has some cultural

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currency.

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Workers coming and settling in
Washington state and Seattle often

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had high hopes they were going to find
great jobs and wages were higher in the

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West than they were elsewhere. That's
one of the big reasons for coming.

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But then prices could be higher too.

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So there was often a disappointment over
what the working conditions and wages

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were.

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Well, part of the problem is that the
cycles of good times and bad times

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were hellaciously close together
in the Pacific Northwest.

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Nowhere were the inequities
of the wage earners,

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plight more apparent than in logging.

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Workers were pawns in a boomer
bust, go for broke world,

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hired when needed and fired when not,

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they were taken off the
board without apology.

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Logging camps were by young single men,

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mostly European immigrants
drifting from camp to camp.

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One logger wrote to his
wife that the grub is fair,

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but the bunkhouses are
packed like sardines,

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uneducated and undervalued.

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They worked 12 to 14 hour days
for as little as 20 cents an hour.

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And danger was everywhere.

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I think serious studies have said that
working in the logging camps in the early

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days of the Pacific Northwest settlement

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and industrialization was as dangerous
as being in the front lines of a war.

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When thinking about a guy who was going
to spend his life in the woods working,

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I think

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there was an understanding that there
was a certain amount of danger that each

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individual would face on a daily
basis. And I think they saw it in

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what would happen to their
coworkers each day or each week,

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each month there was bound to be
at least one injury, one death,

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one dismemberment, one, some
sort of skull crushing injury.

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And that is maybe a
bit of an exaggeration,

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but if you looked at the
broad picture, not so much.

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It was a horribly dangerous
way to make a living.

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And what you had was
an influx of humanity.

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Immigration patterns meant
that there was a vast supply of

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individuals in many cases who
didn't even speak English,

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who could find their ways into the woods.

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And if they were strong and lucky
could make a living doing that.

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Talk about fallers for starters. So a guy
who's employed as a faller, first off,

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he's expected to basically
produce two logs a day.

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And we're talking pretty big stuff here.

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Old growth logs that would be in the
neighborhood of four feet at the small end

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to eight feet, 10 feet in diameter,

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and bringing those things down required.
A, they had to get up on springboards,

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they had to put a notch in the side of
that tree, get a springboard attached,

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and then stay elevated while they're
using their ax to put in an undercut,

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work their way around to
the backside of the tree,

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take a back cut and then
get that tree on the ground.

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So you're working under a
tree that's 400, 500, 600

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years old, and they have what the
loggers referred to as widow makers.

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Those are your dead limbs that are kind
of hanging above you. And a widowmaker,

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a limb of old growth. Tree
size is in its own right.

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A hundreds of pounds per
limb had that fallen.

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If you crush a guy,

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a crew of guys who are employed as boom
men who work out on the mill pond area.

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So this is the area right in front of
a sawmill where you've got your chute

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that's bringing logs up into the head rig.

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Those guys worked with no
life jackets in tidal water,

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standing on rotating logs that had
a tendency to want to spin you off

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into the water and their was
their best friend certainly.

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But their ability to get those logs
moving in the right direction so that they

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could keep production up was of course
the demand put upon them by their job.

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But the danger of drowning was a
very real thing for those guys.

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So bringing a log into a mill was again,
came from the mill pond. Up a chute,

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you've got a conveyor chain that's
dragging those logs up into the head rig

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area. You've got a carriage,

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which there's a man who
rides that carriage back and
forth where you're taking

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slab cuts off the log with bandsaws.

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There was danger at every
point of that process.

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There were no safety guards
that kept flying debris away

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from workers. There was no real good way,

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or at least there hadn't been
a way developed to protect
workers physically from

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that machinery.

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While sudden death awaited the lager,
shingle weavers faced a slow death,

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one digit at a time to say
nothing of the clouds of sawdust

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that invaded their lungs.

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But on a regular daily mundane basis,

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people sacrificed their fingers and
their hands and their arms into the

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machinery and shingle mills.

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Shingle mills were a deadly
dangerous way to make a living.

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You were aspirating,

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accurate sawdust that eventually would
destroy your respiratory system and

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condemn you to an early death from some
sort of upper chest infections that

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cedar asthma would eventually get you.

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So those trades were
different than working in the

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woods, but equally grim.

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The demand for labor opened doors
for workers from all over the world,

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but it wasn't an even playing
field. In the seesaw economy,

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minorities were usually the last hired
in good times and the first fired and

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bad. It was a dual labor system,

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higher paying skilled jobs for whites,

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unskilled and dangerous
jobs for people of color.

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African-Americans first arrived
in the northwest in great numbers,

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working for the railroads as porters,
baggage handlers and waiters.

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They generally found service jobs in
the cities or on the docks where they

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gained recognition as hard workers.

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Employers often recruited
African-Americans to
break strikes. In 1888,

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desperate owners hired hundreds of
veteran miners from Virginia and Kentucky

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as substitute or scab labor
in central Washington.

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Lumber companies too needed experienced
lumbermen and turned to laggers in the

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American South to work the
forests in eastern Oregon.

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Lafayette lucky Trice and his father
moved from Alabama to Maxville, Oregon.

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They were among hundreds of men working
side by side with white loggers in the

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forests of county.

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An environment fraught with risk in a
racially charged time in an all white

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town.

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African-American men were
hired by the Southern Pine

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Lumber Company in that
industry of timber and logging

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more than any other industry in the south.

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They were experienced and they moved
millions aboard feet in the south

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and they wanted to start
this operation the same way.

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And so they really toyed with the
idea of not just having a lumber

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town with just men,

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but one with families and
schools and a baseball team.

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So when these folks moved here in some
of the interviews, they were asked,

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why would you move to a place you
don't know about that's so cold and so

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different?

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And part of it was the laws and
the Jim Crow in the south was

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so much more severe.

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There were over 3000 of
us hung from trees and not

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necessarily for any good reason.

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Oregon, where racial exclusion laws
from the mid 19th century were still on.

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The books presented challenges
for African-American laggers,

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segregated housing, lower wages,

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and an active Ku Klux Klan
were all facts of life.

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But in a rough and
tumble logging business,

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operating in the harsh winter
weather of eastern Oregon,

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townspeople relied on everyone to
do their part regardless of color.

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Brings that question of will then
how'd they get away with number one,

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bringing black people into Oregon when
it was illegal for them to live and work

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here? And how is it they stayed
and the clan didn't bother them?

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But if you'll look again,

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it's about industry that
if the clan interference

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will affect the money
coming into the townships,

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they're not going to allow that to happen.

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I conjecture they were
not allowed to mess with

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operations. Really,

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it was about this timber industry in
the middle of nowhere that with 25 below

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zero, five and a half feet
of snow, it was rugged.

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And I equate that to being in

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a wartime situation where you're
pulling men from all different walks of

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life and you're putting 'em in a situation
where their environment is hostile.

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They're essentially on the same side,

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but maybe back home
sitting in their comfort.

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They can make up rules, but when
you're in the middle of nowhere,

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you have to watch out for each
other or you don't survive it.

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Native peoples also struggled to secure
a place in the northwest economy.

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Federal policy pressured them to adopt
the ways of white society and to abandon

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their culture. That meant
they were expected to join
the industrial revolution,

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which in the early industrial area
meant farming or learning a trade.

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The Bureau of Indian Affairs operated
boarding schools where young natives were

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taught a trade.

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As for learning, becoming
industrious people.

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They were industrious already in
other ways, they were were fishermen.

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They hunted, they gathered. So
learning to farm was a new idea.

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I would have to say they embraced it, but
at the same time, they were forced to.

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They didn't have a choice.

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The government punished parents who
didn't send their children to the

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boarding school, they're
punished fines or put in jail.

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So the kids had to learn these new trades.

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And farming for people was different.

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They did however, succeed
in the lumber mill.

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Logging and fishing was a big
industry for men. On the reservation,

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there was a lumber mill
at the boarding school.

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And I think just because
tillett people have always been

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carvers,

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it was something that was innate to them
going out to the forest and blogging.

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A lot of the tillett people
weren't regular employees.

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They were kind of not even contract.
They would show up to work,

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they would do the job that was needed
and they would get paid by the Indian

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school.

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So it was like clearing a
road or building a dock,

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building a building or paving.

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So that was a lot of the labor
on the reservation at the time

00:16:40.640 --> 00:16:42.200
revolved around the Indian school.

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Finding meaningful work
presented obstacles for
another minority group in the

00:16:47.570 --> 00:16:51.950
northwest, the Chinese, Japanese,
and other Asian immigrants,

00:16:53.030 --> 00:16:57.890
they too faced discrimination and
hostility. They too dealt with expulsion.

00:16:57.890 --> 00:17:00.620
Whenever they crossed picket
lines or worked for lower wages,

00:17:01.520 --> 00:17:05.270
the federal government
eventually neutralized a
perceived threat with passage of

00:17:05.270 --> 00:17:07.460
the Chinese exclusion Act of 1882,

00:17:08.120 --> 00:17:10.640
literally slamming the
door on all Chinese,

00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:12.290
attempting to enter the United States.

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Chinese started arriving in the Pacific
Northwest in the late 18 hundreds.

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There were conditions in China that
drove them here, poverty, war, famine.

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So they were looking for a way out.

00:17:26.515 --> 00:17:30.800
And at the time the Pacific
Northwest was a developing area.

00:17:31.160 --> 00:17:35.930
Soon America started becoming
known as gold Mountain.

00:17:35.935 --> 00:17:40.220
Chinese called it Gimson because that
was the place that they were hoping to

00:17:40.220 --> 00:17:44.780
make their fortune and then return home
to China to support their families.

00:17:44.780 --> 00:17:47.030
And so that's how it got started.

00:17:47.150 --> 00:17:51.450
So we tend to forget the struggle and
hardship that was exacted on these

00:17:51.450 --> 00:17:52.283
workers.

00:17:52.590 --> 00:17:57.180
They also often worked for less
money than the white workers

00:17:57.480 --> 00:18:01.590
under more dangerous conditions than
what the white workers would take.

00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:06.420
During the time that the Chinese
were here working on these very

00:18:06.450 --> 00:18:08.160
backbreaking jobs,

00:18:08.430 --> 00:18:13.200
they faced a level of discrimination
that was by any standards,

00:18:13.680 --> 00:18:18.090
amazingly harsh. There
were discriminatory laws.

00:18:18.540 --> 00:18:22.860
They were subjected to violent
racial attacks. They were lynched,

00:18:23.370 --> 00:18:26.640
they were driven out of
settlements or beaten. Many,

00:18:26.640 --> 00:18:28.830
many incidents that were just terrible.

00:18:29.580 --> 00:18:33.570
Expulsion created problems for employers
because they needed Chinese labor,

00:18:34.170 --> 00:18:37.290
especially in the region's thriving
fishing and canning industry.

00:18:37.800 --> 00:18:41.700
When northwest salmon fed middle-class
families in the us, Australia,

00:18:41.790 --> 00:18:42.690
and much of Europe.

00:18:42.870 --> 00:18:47.700
That was a huge industry both here
in the Pacific Northwest as well

00:18:47.700 --> 00:18:48.870
as up in Alaska.

00:18:49.140 --> 00:18:53.490
And so they needed thousands of
workers to work processing the food,

00:18:53.970 --> 00:18:58.320
catching the fish, cutting the fish,
canning it, cooking it, and so forth.

00:18:58.710 --> 00:19:02.040
And so the industry
turned to Asian laborers.

00:19:02.310 --> 00:19:06.630
Chinese formed a huge part
of the labor force later,

00:19:06.660 --> 00:19:09.690
Japanese Americans,
Filipino Americans as well.

00:19:10.200 --> 00:19:15.030
There was a patented machine
developed called the Iron Chink

00:19:15.060 --> 00:19:19.680
Butchering machine specifically
developed because the industry

00:19:19.890 --> 00:19:24.810
wanted to both mechanize and
speed up the process as well

00:19:24.810 --> 00:19:29.010
as to get rid of the Chinese laborers
who are not a desired group in that

00:19:29.010 --> 00:19:31.320
climate of racial discrimination.

00:19:31.325 --> 00:19:36.270
So they created this iron chink
butchering machine that's the patented

00:19:36.270 --> 00:19:39.780
name as a way to get rid of the Chinese.

00:19:40.290 --> 00:19:44.970
The irony is that you still needed
laborers to operate the machine.

00:19:45.420 --> 00:19:48.300
The term is obviously a racist term,

00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:53.250
but it also kind of gives
you a clue of what the

00:19:53.820 --> 00:19:56.340
role of the Chinese was
in the actual industry.

00:20:08.730 --> 00:20:12.030
Men weren't alone in battling
workplace inequities.

00:20:12.780 --> 00:20:17.700
Women too struggled for fairness
and recognition at stake

00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:18.780
was their independence.

00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:23.100
The right to make their own
decisions and their very survival.

00:20:24.630 --> 00:20:29.310
Work in this period would be
characterized by long hours and pretty

00:20:29.315 --> 00:20:30.630
uncomfortable conditions.

00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:36.270
We saw in a cannery strike that
happened in Portland in 1913,

00:20:36.750 --> 00:20:41.460
that the women went on strike not just
for better wages and shorter hours,

00:20:41.790 --> 00:20:46.440
but they wanted things like a lunchroom,
a dressing room, clean aprons,

00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:47.530
clean towels.

00:20:47.830 --> 00:20:52.720
So sanitary issues were pretty big for
women at this time as well as hours and

00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:53.553
wages.

00:20:53.770 --> 00:20:58.060
By 1920 half of Americans
were living in urban areas.

00:20:58.660 --> 00:21:00.460
And this is a well-known fact.

00:21:00.910 --> 00:21:05.860
But what tends to get lost in that urban
history is the importance of women to

00:21:05.860 --> 00:21:07.630
the city and the city. For women,

00:21:08.530 --> 00:21:13.450
quite often they receive
wisdom is that cities were

00:21:13.450 --> 00:21:18.070
scary places for women and they needed
to be very careful when they were out in

00:21:18.070 --> 00:21:18.903
the streets.

00:21:19.330 --> 00:21:24.130
Something that's probably not so
familiar to contemporary is the

00:21:24.220 --> 00:21:28.090
importance of reputation
and being respectable.

00:21:28.630 --> 00:21:31.720
And some of this was
related to class issues.

00:21:31.725 --> 00:21:36.490
Some of this was related to being
responsible in a sense for your

00:21:36.490 --> 00:21:37.323
family.

00:21:37.390 --> 00:21:42.010
Women working in service industries
faced a lot of difficulties in the

00:21:42.010 --> 00:21:46.660
workplace. Things like sexual
harassment would not be uncommon,

00:21:46.720 --> 00:21:48.460
working very long hours,

00:21:49.210 --> 00:21:52.540
not having any kind of
stable hours or incomes.

00:21:52.540 --> 00:21:55.330
A lot of jobs were seasonal or temporary,

00:21:55.900 --> 00:21:58.690
and those would all place
difficulties on women.

00:21:59.320 --> 00:22:03.160
And women worked in a variety of places
that we wouldn't think of as traditional

00:22:03.160 --> 00:22:05.140
workplaces such as women.

00:22:05.140 --> 00:22:09.880
Working in prostitution during this
period was an avenue for women to

00:22:10.360 --> 00:22:13.030
support themselves if necessary.

00:22:14.920 --> 00:22:19.030
An equally large and probably really
closer to half of women were working in

00:22:19.030 --> 00:22:23.980
pink color jobs. So these are
jobs such as working in sales,

00:22:23.980 --> 00:22:27.910
so working in the department
stores, working in service,

00:22:27.970 --> 00:22:31.030
a category that included people
that were doing domestic work.

00:22:31.120 --> 00:22:33.760
And this was a huge category at this time.

00:22:34.540 --> 00:22:39.160
It was still really the largest cluster
of what women were working in in the

00:22:39.160 --> 00:22:40.720
early part of the 20th century.

00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:45.220
So this was particularly true
for African-American women.

00:22:45.910 --> 00:22:48.340
Half of African American women worked.

00:22:48.370 --> 00:22:52.390
It probably really was more than that
because the official statistics are not

00:22:52.395 --> 00:22:54.610
necessarily correct on
these sorts of things.

00:22:55.840 --> 00:22:59.710
And 80% of African-American women
would've been working as domestic workers.

00:23:00.820 --> 00:23:03.880
Few women worked harder for
working women than Alice Lorde,

00:23:04.390 --> 00:23:07.390
who founded the Seattle
Waitresses Union in 1900.

00:23:08.290 --> 00:23:10.660
Waitresses worked 10 to 15 hours a day,

00:23:11.020 --> 00:23:15.970
seven days a week for three
to $6 a week to draw attention

00:23:15.970 --> 00:23:17.230
to the woes of waitressing.

00:23:17.890 --> 00:23:22.720
Lord marched from Seattle to Olympia
in 1900 to testify before the state

00:23:22.725 --> 00:23:27.520
legislature. The next year the state
enacted a 10 hour day for women.

00:23:36.760 --> 00:23:40.180
So what this means is better
working condition for waitresses.

00:23:40.330 --> 00:23:42.850
But I do want to add that
it was for white waitresses.

00:23:43.540 --> 00:23:46.160
Alice Lord was wonderful in
a variety of different ways.

00:23:46.160 --> 00:23:50.510
She was a great organizer,
but she was an exclusionist.

00:23:50.930 --> 00:23:53.210
So the union was all white,

00:23:53.420 --> 00:23:55.970
that this meant that black women,

00:23:55.975 --> 00:24:00.650
that Asian women were not part of
this union and therefore didn't

00:24:00.950 --> 00:24:03.830
receive the benefits that came
along with union membership.

00:24:04.040 --> 00:24:08.480
The wages in general were pretty
low during this period. Women,

00:24:08.870 --> 00:24:10.790
for example, in 1913 in Portland,

00:24:11.360 --> 00:24:15.980
the city did a study that estimated that
a woman needed nine to $10 a week to

00:24:15.980 --> 00:24:19.190
support herself. That's not counting
any family that she has to support,

00:24:19.880 --> 00:24:23.480
but women were regularly
making a dollar or less a day.

00:24:24.230 --> 00:24:27.170
And so when they were
looking for a raise in wages,

00:24:27.170 --> 00:24:30.560
they were looking for a dollar 50 a day
to try to make it up to that minimum

00:24:31.190 --> 00:24:33.740
that would help support
women and their families.

00:24:34.550 --> 00:24:39.230
It was difficult for married women
because they were kind of looked down upon

00:24:39.410 --> 00:24:43.040
in the workforce as in they didn't have
as much freedom from responsibility,

00:24:43.430 --> 00:24:46.280
but they also didn't have
things like access to good,

00:24:46.340 --> 00:24:51.140
reliable childcare while they were at
work. And so you see in some workplaces,

00:24:51.145 --> 00:24:55.220
women would kind of set up systems to
help support each other if there was

00:24:55.225 --> 00:24:56.810
family emergencies that arose.

00:24:57.140 --> 00:24:59.810
But women were really working
without any of those protections,

00:24:59.900 --> 00:25:04.490
having to be able to work very
soon after giving birth and having

00:25:04.490 --> 00:25:08.360
to take care of their families
in whatever way they could.

00:25:08.360 --> 00:25:11.870
So working women who had children
and families were definitely at a

00:25:11.870 --> 00:25:12.703
disadvantage.

00:25:15.710 --> 00:25:20.510
Solidarity forever for the union makes

00:25:20.510 --> 00:25:22.040
us strong.

00:25:23.120 --> 00:25:26.240
Industrialization created
untold wealth in America,

00:25:26.870 --> 00:25:31.640
but it also created a staggering
gap in income equality at one

00:25:31.645 --> 00:25:35.810
end were America's richest
manufacturers, merchants,

00:25:36.050 --> 00:25:37.790
landowners, and financiers.

00:25:38.870 --> 00:25:42.830
At the other was the working class
and a life teaming with uncertainty.

00:25:43.400 --> 00:25:45.860
As men. And some women joined unions,

00:25:45.860 --> 00:25:50.690
they did so partly because they could
stand taller, it gave them some control,

00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:52.461
negotiating control over their jobs.

00:25:53.360 --> 00:25:58.250
Some sense of we're not just
powerless in this economy where most

00:25:58.250 --> 00:26:03.050
people did feel powerless and the
unions offered not just a chance to

00:26:03.055 --> 00:26:05.720
raise one's wages and
improve working conditions,

00:26:05.720 --> 00:26:08.180
but also increase one's dignity.

00:26:08.570 --> 00:26:13.400
The unions organized on us
on a promise you joined with

00:26:13.430 --> 00:26:17.300
us and we together can change things.

00:26:18.140 --> 00:26:22.760
So there are two union movements
that arise certainly by the teens,

00:26:22.760 --> 00:26:26.270
19 teens. There's the radical
industrial workers of the world,

00:26:26.600 --> 00:26:28.610
and then the not so radical,

00:26:28.610 --> 00:26:32.660
but also pretty some often socialistic

00:26:33.290 --> 00:26:35.780
unions of the American
Federation of Labor,

00:26:36.320 --> 00:26:39.680
the A F F L organized around
craft lines. If you're a plumber,

00:26:39.685 --> 00:26:42.920
you're part of one union. If you're a
carpenter, you're part of another union.

00:26:42.920 --> 00:26:47.490
They did so because they
had found out and believed

00:26:47.880 --> 00:26:51.330
that solidarity followed work,

00:26:51.780 --> 00:26:56.250
that people of a similar
trade naturally would combine

00:26:56.250 --> 00:27:01.140
together and consequently could be
a stronger union, could win strikes,

00:27:01.170 --> 00:27:02.250
keep the discipline.

00:27:02.340 --> 00:27:06.930
And that promise was to not only
organize all the skilled workers there,

00:27:07.290 --> 00:27:09.240
but also the unskilled workers.

00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:14.370
And the I W W was also much more
inclusive on race and gender principles

00:27:14.370 --> 00:27:15.420
than the A F F L.

00:27:15.990 --> 00:27:20.880
So many workers were drawn
to the I W W for its radical

00:27:20.880 --> 00:27:25.740
ideology. Many were
also drawn to the I W W

00:27:26.910 --> 00:27:31.860
because they had this very inclusive
idea that all workers should

00:27:31.860 --> 00:27:35.940
belong to the union. And
at that time, trade unions.

00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:40.830
Craft unions usually only
represented native-born white

00:27:41.010 --> 00:27:45.660
men. Very few women, very
few African-Americans,

00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:50.130
and very few southern and eastern
Europeans belong to craft unions.

00:27:52.740 --> 00:27:54.300
I Wws said, that's wrong.

00:27:55.110 --> 00:27:59.010
We believe in organizing the entire
working class regardless of origin,

00:27:59.010 --> 00:28:01.260
regardless of race, regardless of gender.

00:28:01.560 --> 00:28:05.160
And so they tried to build these
much more inclusive unions,

00:28:06.060 --> 00:28:09.120
which were also operating on a
different political principle.

00:28:10.110 --> 00:28:13.440
The I W W practiced
revolutionary unionism.

00:28:14.610 --> 00:28:18.450
They believed that they were not
just fighting for better wages,

00:28:18.450 --> 00:28:20.820
not just fighting for
better working conditions,

00:28:21.240 --> 00:28:26.190
but to overthrow capitalism and
create a new economy based on syn

00:28:26.190 --> 00:28:27.720
equalism or socialism.

00:28:28.410 --> 00:28:32.250
Because the I WW gave women empowerment,

00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:36.990
it gave them kind of freedom within a
much broader ideology to work on women's

00:28:36.990 --> 00:28:40.740
issues in a way that wasn't
limited to a women's auxiliary.

00:28:40.740 --> 00:28:42.960
It wasn't focused just on suffrage.

00:28:42.960 --> 00:28:45.240
It wasn't focused just
on progressive reform.

00:28:45.600 --> 00:28:49.760
Women could take the philosophy of the
I ww and kind of use it to work towards

00:28:50.820 --> 00:28:52.380
what they found to be most important.

00:28:52.860 --> 00:28:57.330
So the I W W in the preamble to
their constitution declared that

00:28:58.320 --> 00:29:01.290
the working class and the employing
class have nothing in common.

00:29:01.650 --> 00:29:03.270
And between these two classes,

00:29:03.360 --> 00:29:07.800
a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world come together as a

00:29:07.800 --> 00:29:08.633
class,

00:29:08.670 --> 00:29:13.290
take control of the means and
the machinery of production and

00:29:13.320 --> 00:29:15.420
share all the good things in life.

00:29:17.430 --> 00:29:19.560
Employers saw themselves as benefactors,

00:29:19.980 --> 00:29:22.350
visionaries who built an
enterprise from scratch.

00:29:22.740 --> 00:29:26.880
And with that a town they believed
interfering in free enterprise,

00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:29.220
not only hurt workers,
but the town itself.

00:29:30.060 --> 00:29:34.020
Dozens of strikes in Washington state
alone disrupted business operations for

00:29:34.020 --> 00:29:36.960
two decades and tore at the
fabric of the community.

00:29:38.070 --> 00:29:42.070
Owners went to great lengths to maintain
control of their business and protect

00:29:42.070 --> 00:29:43.060
the flow of profits.

00:29:44.200 --> 00:29:48.850
Armed strike breakers who sometimes
had backgrounds as professional

00:29:48.855 --> 00:29:50.710
wrestlers, professional boxers,

00:29:53.670 --> 00:29:57.310
sometimes college football players
from the University of Washington,

00:29:57.670 --> 00:30:00.250
from the University of
California got recruited,

00:30:00.490 --> 00:30:03.040
brought in to violently break strikes.

00:30:10.270 --> 00:30:14.410
What started as a typical conflict
between capital and labor evolved into

00:30:14.415 --> 00:30:18.310
something more fundamental. The
free speech rights of workers,

00:30:19.270 --> 00:30:24.100
the free speech fight as it became known
spread across the region between 1909

00:30:24.130 --> 00:30:25.030
and 1919.

00:30:25.870 --> 00:30:29.140
City officials throughout the northwest
struggled to cope with legions of

00:30:29.140 --> 00:30:31.210
wobblies who invaded their towns,

00:30:31.540 --> 00:30:36.160
opened up meeting halls and railed in
public against the injustices heaped on

00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:37.120
the working class.

00:30:38.350 --> 00:30:43.150
So during free speech fights, a
wobbly would put down their soapbox,

00:30:43.360 --> 00:30:47.350
immediately climb up on the
soapbox and declare fellow workers.

00:30:47.590 --> 00:30:52.510
And sometimes they would get one or
two or maybe three sentences into their

00:30:52.510 --> 00:30:56.800
speech and they would be hauled down by
a police officer or quite frequently a

00:30:56.800 --> 00:31:01.060
vigilante. But the second they
were hauled down another wobbly,

00:31:01.065 --> 00:31:05.350
another free speech fighter would climb
on that same soapbox or maybe their own

00:31:05.800 --> 00:31:07.180
soapbox and do the same thing.

00:31:07.870 --> 00:31:12.730
You can imagine the frustration
of the police or of other anti

00:31:12.730 --> 00:31:17.360
i w WW forces that as soon as
they haul somebody down from the

00:31:17.500 --> 00:31:20.860
soapbox, there's another
person ready to go.

00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:22.630
By the end of November,

00:31:23.260 --> 00:31:28.090
Spokane police had made nearly
800 arrests and as the I W

00:31:28.090 --> 00:31:31.480
W intended completely
disrupted law enforcement,

00:31:31.810 --> 00:31:33.970
city administration and the courts,

00:31:34.870 --> 00:31:39.190
other cities learned from Spokane
in Aberdeen rather than jail.

00:31:39.190 --> 00:31:42.370
The troublemakers, they herded
them out of town at gunpoint.

00:31:43.090 --> 00:31:45.280
On a rainy November night in 1911,

00:31:45.730 --> 00:31:50.530
sheriff deputies ousted dozens of men
with warnings to leave and never returned.

00:32:00.460 --> 00:32:03.490
Police may have been able
to silence wobbly speeches,

00:32:04.330 --> 00:32:08.740
but the protestors had a more powerful
weapon at their disposal Music.

00:32:09.820 --> 00:32:14.530
Few things rang louder than a chorus of
men and women belting out wobbly ballads

00:32:14.530 --> 00:32:16.000
from their little red songbook.

00:32:17.290 --> 00:32:19.660
Many were written by
labor activist Joe Hill,

00:32:20.380 --> 00:32:23.410
who fought for worker rights
from Vancouver to Tijuana,

00:32:24.340 --> 00:32:26.290
known as the troubadour of Discontent.

00:32:26.890 --> 00:32:31.240
Hill was falsely accused of murder
and executed in Utah in 1915.

00:32:41.060 --> 00:32:43.130
Music is just a powerful tool, right?

00:32:43.130 --> 00:32:48.020
It's used for all kinds of things
from romance to propaganda.

00:32:48.350 --> 00:32:53.180
And so Joe Hill was somebody
who recognized this is
going to be a powerful part

00:32:53.185 --> 00:32:54.018
of what we do.

00:32:54.170 --> 00:32:58.880
The strategy used by labor is the age old
tactic of a lot of folk cultures where

00:32:59.060 --> 00:33:03.950
you take an existing melody and you
rewrite it to a new situation to create

00:33:03.950 --> 00:33:07.190
new meaning or to address a new
situation that's been created.

00:33:07.520 --> 00:33:11.000
So music is a key.

00:33:11.840 --> 00:33:16.520
One of the most stalwart men I ever
met and could call a friend was Frank

00:33:16.520 --> 00:33:18.590
Blether, who was left dangling

00:33:20.090 --> 00:33:21.800
at the end of a rope in Butte,

00:33:21.800 --> 00:33:25.550
Montana after they strike
their on Anaconda Hill.

00:33:26.390 --> 00:33:30.290
Labor activist Ralph Chaplin
writer, poet, and artist,

00:33:30.740 --> 00:33:34.880
also evoked the power of music
to rally workers. Born in Ames,

00:33:34.880 --> 00:33:36.350
Kansas in 1887.

00:33:36.920 --> 00:33:41.570
His radicalization took seed at age
seven when he saw a worker shot to death

00:33:41.570 --> 00:33:43.310
during the Pullman strike in Chicago.

00:33:44.240 --> 00:33:49.070
He joined the I ww and fought for coal
miners in the bloody paint creek mine war

00:33:49.220 --> 00:33:53.390
in West Virginia in
1912. During World War I,

00:33:53.750 --> 00:33:58.550
he was among a hundred activists
arrested for violating the 1917 Espionage

00:33:58.550 --> 00:33:59.383
Act.

00:33:59.510 --> 00:34:03.650
He would serve four years of a 20 year
sentence for his opposition to the war

00:34:03.680 --> 00:34:04.550
and the draft.

00:34:06.140 --> 00:34:09.950
A longtime editor of national
and local Union newspapers,

00:34:10.340 --> 00:34:14.540
Chaplin would settle in Tacoma,
Washington until his death in 1961.

00:34:15.230 --> 00:34:17.810
He's buried at the Cavalry
Cemetery in Tacoma,

00:34:18.320 --> 00:34:22.370
where activists gather each labor day
to sing his songs and rally workers

00:34:23.390 --> 00:34:27.680
Chaplain's most enduring legacy is his
music and the labor movement's iconic

00:34:27.680 --> 00:34:29.630
ballad solidarity forever.

00:34:30.440 --> 00:34:34.280
Its sung to the tune of the Civil War
Ballad Battle, him of the Republic.

00:34:35.030 --> 00:34:39.740
Like many wobbly toons, it was played
to compete with the Christian minstrels,

00:34:40.220 --> 00:34:41.510
the Salvation Army Band.

00:34:42.770 --> 00:34:47.720
The story starts in Spokane
in the northwest where the
Salvation Army was sent

00:34:47.720 --> 00:34:48.680
out into the streets

00:34:50.240 --> 00:34:52.790
to counteract the protestors.

00:34:53.150 --> 00:34:55.040
And so they were going to
drown them out with music.

00:34:55.460 --> 00:35:00.200
And the protestors responded by
creating their own lyrics to the same

00:35:00.205 --> 00:35:02.900
songs and then singing
down the Salvation Army.

00:35:03.260 --> 00:35:06.950
So it's actually a really funny and
creative example of appropriation.

00:35:07.340 --> 00:35:12.080
We're going to take your melody and we're
going to create something new to drown

00:35:12.080 --> 00:35:12.440
out.

00:35:12.440 --> 00:35:17.150
Your message in the sweet by and by an
old hymn was changed into the preacher in

00:35:17.150 --> 00:35:17.983
the slave.

00:35:18.110 --> 00:35:22.700
So they changed in the sweet by and
bye in that glorious land of the

00:35:22.700 --> 00:35:24.960
sky to you'll eat by and.

00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:29.210
Long hair Es come out every night,

00:35:30.500 --> 00:35:33.470
try to tell you what's
wrong and what's right.

00:35:34.550 --> 00:35:37.200
But when asked how about something to eat,

00:35:38.730 --> 00:35:43.560
they all answer with
voice. So sweet. You'll.

00:35:43.860 --> 00:35:44.693
Eat.

00:35:45.060 --> 00:35:49.800
By in that glorious land by the sky.

00:35:51.120 --> 00:35:54.210
Work and pray. Live on hay.

00:35:55.290 --> 00:35:59.790
You'll get pie in the
sky when you die. Oh,

00:35:59.790 --> 00:36:01.710
the starvation on me.

00:36:01.710 --> 00:36:06.520
They play and they sing
and they clap and they pray

00:36:07.710 --> 00:36:09.180
till they get all your.

00:36:09.810 --> 00:36:13.860
So the free speech movement
in Spokane created several

00:36:14.550 --> 00:36:19.350
colorful characters, not the least
of which was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,

00:36:20.370 --> 00:36:22.470
1920 years old,

00:36:22.980 --> 00:36:25.590
sent from Chicago by the I W W,

00:36:25.890 --> 00:36:30.300
helped to support the strikers in the
free speech movement. She'll get arrested,

00:36:31.050 --> 00:36:36.030
she'll accuse of police, of using
the jail as a house of prostitution.

00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:40.080
She'll chain herself to a
lamppost to avoid her arrest.

00:36:41.340 --> 00:36:44.040
Really helps to disrupt
the whole movement.

00:36:44.490 --> 00:36:48.270
It builds sympathy for the movement
of women, especially in Spokane,

00:36:48.270 --> 00:36:53.040
will begin to show some
sympathy for the strikers

00:36:53.040 --> 00:36:54.840
and for the workers.

00:36:55.530 --> 00:36:59.280
She'll go on to write
a book called Sabotage.

00:37:00.570 --> 00:37:03.690
Joe Hill, the labor activist,

00:37:04.560 --> 00:37:09.390
songwriter musician will write
a song about her called Rebel

00:37:09.390 --> 00:37:13.920
Girl, and she'll be known there
forever as the rebel girl.

00:37:14.250 --> 00:37:14.400
We've.

00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:16.860
Had girls before, but we need some.

00:37:17.370 --> 00:37:19.740
The industrial workers of the world

00:37:21.780 --> 00:37:22.980
fight for freedom.

00:37:42.120 --> 00:37:44.520
In Everett, Washington. In 1916,

00:37:45.060 --> 00:37:49.590
the free speech fight led to the bloodiest
conflict in northwest labor history.

00:37:50.460 --> 00:37:51.720
Over the previous decade,

00:37:52.140 --> 00:37:55.830
the city of smokestacks had grown into
one of the nation's leading lumber

00:37:55.830 --> 00:38:00.270
producers, dozens of mills
and iron factory shipyards,

00:38:00.510 --> 00:38:01.260
paper mills,

00:38:01.260 --> 00:38:06.180
and a vibrant downtown contributed
to the sawdust economy fostering a

00:38:06.180 --> 00:38:07.920
strong pro-union sentiment.

00:38:08.610 --> 00:38:13.140
The city staged elaborate Labor
Day parades where shingle weavers,

00:38:13.470 --> 00:38:17.310
electrical workers, machinists,
cable car operators,

00:38:17.580 --> 00:38:19.620
paper mill employees, painters,

00:38:19.860 --> 00:38:23.370
and dozens of other unions march
proudly down Hewitt Avenue,

00:38:25.140 --> 00:38:29.790
But typical for timber prosperity
didn't last as frequent contractions

00:38:29.940 --> 00:38:34.110
led to layoffs and wage
cuts. In May, 1916,

00:38:34.380 --> 00:38:39.040
shingle weavers walked off the job
inflaming already heated labor relations,

00:38:39.790 --> 00:38:43.090
the I ww with its messages
about slave wages.

00:38:43.090 --> 00:38:47.860
And one big union now turned its
sights to Everett. Like other cities,

00:38:48.250 --> 00:38:52.360
Everett passed a public speaking ban
leading to the now familiar routine of

00:38:52.360 --> 00:38:57.220
arrests, fines, and expulsions.
Sheriff Donald McRay,

00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:00.850
a former shingle weaver, showed
no sympathy for strikers.

00:39:01.120 --> 00:39:02.650
He considered Everett his town.

00:39:02.920 --> 00:39:06.670
It would not allow what he called
boxcar revolutionaries to disrupt it.

00:39:07.450 --> 00:39:11.830
For two months, downtown streets roiled
in a cauldron of protest and violence.

00:39:12.430 --> 00:39:16.360
Police and special deputies delivered
justice with rifle butts and ax handles.

00:39:17.260 --> 00:39:22.030
Anyone attempting to speak in public
or disrupt business was roughed up,

00:39:22.270 --> 00:39:23.860
arrested and sent packing.

00:39:25.180 --> 00:39:28.660
Well, actually, the I W W were
fairly well behaved to begin with.

00:39:28.780 --> 00:39:29.980
When they first started speaking,

00:39:30.250 --> 00:39:33.520
they actually were speaking 50 feet back
from the street corner and they were

00:39:33.520 --> 00:39:37.420
trying to decide exactly
what to do because you're
dealing with fellow workers,

00:39:37.450 --> 00:39:40.180
shingle weavers who essentially
have been locked out of their jobs,

00:39:40.300 --> 00:39:43.780
who are in dire economic straits,
who are at odds with them.

00:39:44.380 --> 00:39:45.610
Events turned ugly.

00:39:45.610 --> 00:39:50.290
On October 30th when dozens of
wobblies rode the ferry from Seattle

00:39:50.500 --> 00:39:51.400
to stage a rally,

00:39:52.630 --> 00:39:57.280
sheriff McCrae had gotten word of their
arrival and was determined to stop them

00:39:57.280 --> 00:40:00.940
in their tracks. He
deputized dozens of men,

00:40:01.510 --> 00:40:06.220
nothing more than armed vigilantes with
a badge and awaited at the city dock.

00:40:06.760 --> 00:40:11.200
There was a vigilante group out there
as well as the group that McCrae

00:40:12.020 --> 00:40:13.150
was in charge of.

00:40:13.210 --> 00:40:17.770
And what you had essentially was
a systematic beating of the I W

00:40:17.770 --> 00:40:22.480
W who were then driven out of the county
on the Interurban railway right of

00:40:22.510 --> 00:40:25.150
way. It was, I think at that point,

00:40:25.510 --> 00:40:30.310
shocking to people in Everett
that it had reached that kind

00:40:30.315 --> 00:40:34.810
of level of systematic brutality using

00:40:34.815 --> 00:40:39.580
clubs that had been manufactured in a
local mill, specifically for the purpose.

00:40:39.580 --> 00:40:43.150
Little batons that could be used to
beat, to beat people. And of course,

00:40:43.150 --> 00:40:46.930
that was the famous interchange that
turned up later in court under oath,

00:40:47.320 --> 00:40:51.640
that when one individual told McCray
that he had constitutional rights,

00:40:51.670 --> 00:40:55.390
McCray said, not now, not here.
You're in Snohomish County.

00:40:55.750 --> 00:40:57.340
And we determined what
your rights will be.

00:40:59.140 --> 00:41:04.090
The attack served only to embolden
the I ww determined to exercise their

00:41:04.090 --> 00:41:07.030
constitutional rights more than 300 men,

00:41:07.510 --> 00:41:12.220
mostly down in their luck laborers who
wanted to support the cause steamed

00:41:12.225 --> 00:41:16.540
towards Everett on two fairies,
the Verona and Calista.

00:41:17.050 --> 00:41:21.460
By that time, many of them are
actually injured. They've been beaten.

00:41:22.840 --> 00:41:25.810
They're convinced that when
they come back to Everett,

00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:30.010
they're not going to be empty
handed. In fact, at that point,

00:41:30.015 --> 00:41:34.145
a number of them determined that they'll
be carrying guns and they're not going

00:41:34.145 --> 00:41:36.890
to go peacefully to a
remote spot to be beaten,

00:41:36.890 --> 00:41:39.620
senseless by McCray and these goons.

00:41:41.420 --> 00:41:43.250
As the Verona steamed into Everett,

00:41:43.790 --> 00:41:48.290
some 200 deputies and vigilantes
lined the docks, hid in sheds,

00:41:48.530 --> 00:41:50.660
and waited in tugboats around the harbor,

00:41:51.500 --> 00:41:54.170
hundreds of onlookers gathered
on the surrounding hillside.

00:41:55.160 --> 00:41:59.960
The scene at the Everett city dock
was a crossfire of people who'd set

00:41:59.960 --> 00:42:02.060
themselves up on coal bunkers.

00:42:02.270 --> 00:42:05.960
It's hard to tell how much of this
McCree was even in control of anymore.

00:42:07.400 --> 00:42:12.290
They were making ready to put the gang
plank out for those on board to go

00:42:12.290 --> 00:42:16.640
onto the dock. And Don McGray
appeared in the dock. Now,

00:42:16.645 --> 00:42:19.730
don't ask me which hand
he held up in the air,

00:42:19.730 --> 00:42:23.570
but he held one hand up in the air.
I saw this and I heard his words.

00:42:23.690 --> 00:42:28.100
Who's your leaders?
Reply came from the boat.

00:42:28.370 --> 00:42:32.030
We're all leaders. He
says, you can't land here.

00:42:33.420 --> 00:42:38.270
You can't land here. See, he turned

00:42:40.790 --> 00:42:45.530
his hand still in the air
and faced his hand at his

00:42:45.530 --> 00:42:50.000
waist. And I do remember seeing
a gun in a holster there.

00:42:50.360 --> 00:42:52.250
I'm not certain, but there was that.

00:42:53.060 --> 00:42:57.080
And immediately as though
that were a signal,

00:42:58.100 --> 00:43:00.320
first a single shot was fired.

00:43:01.190 --> 00:43:03.950
And within a time it
takes to go take a breath,

00:43:05.030 --> 00:43:06.350
a volley came from the dock.

00:43:12.470 --> 00:43:14.180
Well, her bow line was tied,

00:43:14.390 --> 00:43:19.190
which meant that when the shooting
started and all the passengers on the four

00:43:19.190 --> 00:43:21.830
deck ran to the starboard bow,

00:43:21.950 --> 00:43:26.600
she probably would've capsized. It
just rolled right over. But in fact,

00:43:26.600 --> 00:43:27.740
the bow line was tied.

00:43:27.740 --> 00:43:31.820
So what happened was it
arrested the role of the ship,

00:43:31.850 --> 00:43:35.870
but a number of individuals went into
the water over the rail because of the

00:43:35.870 --> 00:43:37.820
steep angle that the ship pitched.

00:43:38.450 --> 00:43:43.070
When everybody ran away from where they
thought the gunfire was coming from,

00:43:43.340 --> 00:43:46.850
they eventually snapped the bow line
and pulled back out. But by that time,

00:43:46.855 --> 00:43:49.550
of course, they'd been in the
crossfire for a little while.

00:43:49.550 --> 00:43:54.140
And actually the people in the dock
area in the Everett Harbor didn't stop

00:43:54.145 --> 00:43:56.570
shooting when the Verona pulled back out.

00:43:56.570 --> 00:44:01.340
One individual was seriously injured
by rifle fire when the boat had

00:44:01.340 --> 00:44:06.320
already pulled out into the arbor and
people were taking pot shots at it from

00:44:06.320 --> 00:44:10.880
quite a distance away. We're guessing
probably officially seven dead,

00:44:10.880 --> 00:44:13.130
but probably considerably more.

00:44:13.370 --> 00:44:17.210
There were bodies that wound up in
the water that never were officially

00:44:17.210 --> 00:44:18.043
recovered.

00:44:18.860 --> 00:44:20.780
As the Verona headed back to Seattle,

00:44:21.050 --> 00:44:24.560
they passed the northern bound Calista
and warned them to turn around.

00:44:25.460 --> 00:44:29.760
The people of Everett in the immediate
aftermath of the shooting were

00:44:29.930 --> 00:44:33.420
essentially at that point, you get the
impression almost hiding in their homes.

00:44:33.900 --> 00:44:38.790
But you had a vigilante squad that was
marching the streets and breaking up any

00:44:38.790 --> 00:44:39.990
gatherings of people.

00:44:40.380 --> 00:44:44.850
It was almost a kind of
an ad hoc marshal law

00:44:44.855 --> 00:44:45.688
situation.

00:44:45.960 --> 00:44:50.550
When the Verona docked in Seattle,
waiting, policed, arrested 74 men,

00:44:51.210 --> 00:44:52.650
prosecutors decided to try.

00:44:52.740 --> 00:44:57.180
The I W W Leader Thomas
Tracy first held in Seattle.

00:44:57.600 --> 00:45:02.580
The trial lasted two months after
13 hours of deliberation and

00:45:02.580 --> 00:45:03.630
numerous ballots.

00:45:04.050 --> 00:45:08.430
A jury acquitted Tracy
requiring prosecutors to
drop the charges against the

00:45:08.430 --> 00:45:09.480
73 others.

00:45:10.440 --> 00:45:14.760
Most of Everett believed the wobblies got
away with murdering police while the I

00:45:14.760 --> 00:45:19.740
WW said the tragedy confirmed the
thuggery evil intent and smugness

00:45:20.010 --> 00:45:22.320
of industrialists who
could murder with impunity.

00:45:23.160 --> 00:45:26.880
No one shooting from the docks on
that bloody Sunday was ever indicted.

00:45:27.660 --> 00:45:31.710
The time bomb that had been
building throughout those months

00:45:32.860 --> 00:45:37.560
in 1916 finally just
reached a point where the

00:45:37.560 --> 00:45:42.090
leadership on both sides had
sort of placed all of their

00:45:43.500 --> 00:45:48.360
constituents in a situation without
a graceful place to back down.

00:45:59.730 --> 00:46:04.230
America's entry into World
War I in April, 1917 took the

00:46:04.230 --> 00:46:05.340
spotlight off Everett.

00:46:06.210 --> 00:46:10.860
The region boomed as defense industries
sought raw materials to conduct the war

00:46:10.920 --> 00:46:11.820
and feed the troops.

00:46:12.540 --> 00:46:17.520
Ship building exploded as 41 shipyards
in Washington and Oregon produced nearly

00:46:17.520 --> 00:46:19.200
300 ships throughout the war.

00:46:19.800 --> 00:46:23.640
Military recruiters had a hayday as
more than a hundred thousand men from

00:46:23.640 --> 00:46:26.430
Washington and Oregon
enlisted in the armed forces.

00:46:27.240 --> 00:46:30.810
People of color and women found
jobs vacated by men at war.

00:46:31.830 --> 00:46:33.420
The northwest economy was rolling

00:46:35.700 --> 00:46:40.620
good economic times and patriotic fever
led to an even stronger suppression

00:46:40.620 --> 00:46:41.453
of free speech.

00:46:42.120 --> 00:46:46.740
The wage earner's cause was no match for
a war in which America intended to make

00:46:46.890 --> 00:46:48.420
the world safe for democracy.

00:46:49.560 --> 00:46:53.010
Opponents were labeled
disloyal and aiding the enemy.

00:46:54.240 --> 00:46:57.990
Multiple alien and sedition acts
and acted under the Woodrow Wilson

00:46:57.990 --> 00:47:02.400
administration gave the federal government
sweeping powers to fine and jail.

00:47:02.430 --> 00:47:07.410
Anyone obstructing the war effort?
Progressive causes, especially labor,

00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:12.480
were seen as hindering the war by putting
their needs ahead of the brave boys

00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:15.330
fighting in Europe. Strikers
were being unpatriotic.

00:47:24.180 --> 00:47:29.010
But the federal government in 1918
effectively promised the shipyard

00:47:29.020 --> 00:47:32.380
unions that once the war was over,

00:47:32.680 --> 00:47:35.770
they would renegotiate and
allow wages to increase.

00:47:36.220 --> 00:47:40.720
But at the very end of the war, the
shipyard board changes its mind.

00:47:40.810 --> 00:47:43.510
They're basically getting ready
to shut down the shipyards.

00:47:43.510 --> 00:47:47.140
But they're not saying that what
they do say is no wage increase.

00:47:47.140 --> 00:47:50.950
And that sets off the prelude
to the Seattle general strike.

00:47:51.850 --> 00:47:56.560
The wars end ushered in a deep
nationwide recession as wartime spending

00:47:56.565 --> 00:47:57.400
ground to a halt.

00:47:58.090 --> 00:48:02.290
The sudden decline in demand caused
wartime industries to lay off workers.

00:48:02.920 --> 00:48:07.690
15,000 lumber workers in Washington
and 7,000 in Oregon lost their

00:48:07.690 --> 00:48:09.700
jobs. Longshoremen,

00:48:10.180 --> 00:48:14.740
who had been promised a raise when the
war ended cried foul when owners reneged.

00:48:15.370 --> 00:48:19.480
It's in the context of this post-war
economic turmoil that we can make sense of

00:48:19.480 --> 00:48:20.830
the Seattle general strike,

00:48:21.700 --> 00:48:26.620
the first general strike in US
history to begin when 35,000

00:48:26.620 --> 00:48:30.850
shipyard workers walked off the docks
on January 21st over unfair wages,

00:48:32.410 --> 00:48:37.300
their numbers swelled to 65,000 when
multiple local unions joined the cause

00:48:37.510 --> 00:48:41.710
and staged sympathy strikes. For six days,

00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:46.300
Seattle came to a standstill with
all but the basic services shut down.

00:48:48.100 --> 00:48:50.230
So they appealed to the other unions,

00:48:50.230 --> 00:48:54.790
the 110 other unions represented by
the Seattle Central Labor Council.

00:48:55.780 --> 00:49:00.580
They asked the other unions to
support the shipyard workers in a

00:49:00.580 --> 00:49:02.170
solidarity strike,

00:49:02.920 --> 00:49:07.900
A general strike designed
to stop the city of Seattle.

00:49:08.710 --> 00:49:13.210
They want to shut down all of
the work that makes the city

00:49:13.420 --> 00:49:18.220
move in order to put pressure on
the federal authorities and the

00:49:18.220 --> 00:49:19.053
shipyard owners.

00:49:19.360 --> 00:49:23.860
A hundred and ten, a hundred twenty
five unions joined the strike,

00:49:24.010 --> 00:49:25.510
65,000 men.

00:49:26.230 --> 00:49:30.610
And they organized everything
from milk stations for

00:49:30.940 --> 00:49:35.260
mothers, babies, to
every conceivable thing.

00:49:35.650 --> 00:49:38.680
People were afraid of losing
essential services. I mean,

00:49:38.680 --> 00:49:40.180
that's a legitimate fear.

00:49:40.810 --> 00:49:44.560
Who's going to turn on the
electricity for the hospitals?

00:49:45.550 --> 00:49:49.330
What kind of essential services are we
going to have and who's going to collect

00:49:49.330 --> 00:49:50.163
the garbage?

00:49:50.740 --> 00:49:55.630
These were questions that came up
before the strike and during the strike.

00:49:56.140 --> 00:50:00.160
And again, people feared the worst.

00:50:00.790 --> 00:50:04.810
After all of that. On
February 6th at 10 o'clock,

00:50:04.900 --> 00:50:07.030
the strike is enforced.

00:50:07.120 --> 00:50:11.890
Streetcar workers, waiters,
barbers, waitresses, store clerks,

00:50:12.160 --> 00:50:12.993
news boards,

00:50:13.180 --> 00:50:17.770
warehousem*n railroad workers and scores
of others put down their tools and

00:50:17.770 --> 00:50:18.790
walked off the job.

00:50:19.180 --> 00:50:23.320
And the labor movement was very
careful and cautious in planning this.

00:50:23.320 --> 00:50:27.770
They knew that strikes often
fell apart because of violence,

00:50:27.890 --> 00:50:30.770
because of clashes with
authorities or others.

00:50:31.160 --> 00:50:34.430
So they ask union members
to basically stay home,

00:50:35.090 --> 00:50:39.020
not to be on the street.
No big demonstrations,

00:50:39.020 --> 00:50:40.160
raucous noises.

00:50:40.670 --> 00:50:44.600
And they deputized about
200 returning war veterans.

00:50:44.605 --> 00:50:48.350
They called this the labor Veterans Guard,

00:50:48.950 --> 00:50:53.750
who then patrolled the streets
and asked people to stay calm and

00:50:53.750 --> 00:50:54.583
stay quiet.

00:50:54.710 --> 00:50:59.240
They didn't want to cause any
possibilities of clashes with the police.

00:51:05.180 --> 00:51:09.800
The mayor of Seattle in 1919

00:51:09.890 --> 00:51:11.900
was Ole Hanssen.

00:51:13.100 --> 00:51:16.340
He was sometimes known as Holy Oly,

00:51:17.360 --> 00:51:18.350
a bit of a clown,

00:51:19.520 --> 00:51:23.300
not highly respected by
the Seattle business elite,

00:51:24.020 --> 00:51:28.190
A typical politician on
the make on the take,

00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:33.830
willing to use this event to further his

00:51:33.830 --> 00:51:34.910
own political career.

00:51:35.630 --> 00:51:38.900
Olie Hanssen tried to
play a legitimate role,

00:51:38.900 --> 00:51:43.460
initially took part in the
negotiations between the labor and

00:51:43.465 --> 00:51:44.298
management.

00:51:44.570 --> 00:51:48.650
But when labor refused to back down when
they held to their goals and insisted

00:51:48.650 --> 00:51:51.440
on this strike, he walked out.

00:51:51.530 --> 00:51:56.300
Ole Hanssen walked out and immediately
called the governor and warned him that

00:51:56.305 --> 00:51:58.940
there was very likely going
to be a general strike,

00:51:59.240 --> 00:52:01.490
and he wanted them to call
in the National Guard.

00:52:01.580 --> 00:52:05.630
The mayor asked for federal troops.

00:52:05.720 --> 00:52:07.970
And on the first day of the strike,

00:52:09.020 --> 00:52:13.310
troops from Fort Lewis
entered the city and took up

00:52:13.670 --> 00:52:17.540
positions at the National Guard.
Armories and other stations.

00:52:18.350 --> 00:52:22.640
The labor movement had miscalculated and
had spent a lot of time thinking about

00:52:22.645 --> 00:52:24.800
how it could run the city.

00:52:24.980 --> 00:52:28.850
But in the course of all that
planning and negotiation,

00:52:29.690 --> 00:52:33.590
the labor movement didn't fully
account for the hostility,

00:52:33.860 --> 00:52:38.120
particularly from on the part of
the mayor and the major newspapers.

00:52:38.510 --> 00:52:40.850
So by the time the strike had started,

00:52:40.855 --> 00:52:43.430
even though it turned
out to be quite peaceful,

00:52:43.910 --> 00:52:48.170
the opposition to it, the fear
of it was really palpable.

00:52:48.650 --> 00:52:50.210
And the mayor in particular,

00:52:50.210 --> 00:52:55.010
who had been labor friendly earlier in his

00:52:55.220 --> 00:52:59.390
career, came out militantly
against the strike,

00:52:59.570 --> 00:53:04.040
demanded that the labor movement
call it off and threaten martial

00:53:04.040 --> 00:53:08.270
law if they didn't do so. The
labor movement didn't call it off.

00:53:08.330 --> 00:53:11.210
Hanssen didn't have authority
to declare martial law,

00:53:11.570 --> 00:53:16.340
but his vehement in
opposition was something that

00:53:16.400 --> 00:53:20.570
the labor leaders hadn't counted
on and it became a big problem.

00:53:23.630 --> 00:53:28.470
One guy that I talked to was in the center
of the strike. His name was Haverty.

00:53:28.530 --> 00:53:31.680
Wonderful. Richard
Haverty, an old old man,

00:53:32.610 --> 00:53:36.750
told me that what got him
was the unearthly quiet,

00:53:36.900 --> 00:53:40.770
how quiet it was throughout the
city. There was nobody talking.

00:53:40.980 --> 00:53:43.590
There was nobody at the public
library. There was nothing.

00:53:43.950 --> 00:53:47.580
It was just total calm.

00:53:48.240 --> 00:53:52.440
In the course of what turns out to be a
six day strike, there was no violence.

00:53:52.770 --> 00:53:53.640
And interestingly,

00:53:53.645 --> 00:53:58.620
there were almost no arrests of any
kind and no arrests that seemed to be

00:53:58.625 --> 00:54:02.460
related to the strike. So
the concern about violence,

00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:04.560
which had been on everybody's mind,

00:54:04.830 --> 00:54:09.540
turned out to have been resolved
very favorably because the

00:54:09.630 --> 00:54:13.260
Seattle General strike
was followed worldwide.

00:54:14.250 --> 00:54:18.181
Newspapers around the world were
riveted during those six days,

00:54:18.630 --> 00:54:23.220
wondering whether Seattle was on the
verge of revolution or what was going to

00:54:23.220 --> 00:54:27.420
happen. And within, not the first day,

00:54:27.420 --> 00:54:31.590
but by day two, there was some
waffling on some of the unions.

00:54:31.680 --> 00:54:33.360
The strike started on a Thursday.

00:54:33.420 --> 00:54:38.400
On the weekend some unions
said that they were going to

00:54:38.400 --> 00:54:41.850
authorize their members to
go back to work on Monday.

00:54:41.850 --> 00:54:45.900
There was a lot of people
going back to work on Tuesday.

00:54:46.230 --> 00:54:47.610
They called off the strike.

00:54:48.060 --> 00:54:50.190
Nothing changed. After the strike,

00:54:50.760 --> 00:54:54.720
the workers went back
to the places where they

00:54:55.560 --> 00:54:58.200
worked and asked for their jobs back.

00:54:58.680 --> 00:55:01.470
It broke a lot of those 110 unions.

00:55:01.980 --> 00:55:05.490
The employers refused to sign
another contract with saying,

00:55:05.490 --> 00:55:07.860
you broke your contract, now you pay for.

00:55:07.860 --> 00:55:10.800
It. And in the aftermath
of the general strike,

00:55:11.160 --> 00:55:14.880
there's not a sense of defeat in
the part of the A F F L unions,

00:55:14.880 --> 00:55:18.180
the Central Labor Council.
Instead, there's a sense of, look,

00:55:18.510 --> 00:55:20.280
we just pulled off this amazing thing,

00:55:20.280 --> 00:55:25.260
a completely nonviolent statement
of solidarity on behalf of some

00:55:25.265 --> 00:55:27.300
workers, all the other workers.

00:55:27.750 --> 00:55:32.460
So most of the leaders of
the Seattle Labor movement

00:55:33.540 --> 00:55:37.830
counted this as quite exciting and a
stepping stone to what they thought would

00:55:37.830 --> 00:55:40.620
be a still stronger
labor movement to come.

00:55:43.020 --> 00:55:47.700
General strikes are one
step away from revolution.

00:55:48.210 --> 00:55:52.860
And that was scary. The press
was no friend of the strikers.

00:55:53.700 --> 00:55:58.050
Labor had one friend in
Seattle in the press,

00:55:58.470 --> 00:56:00.270
and that's the Seattle Union record.

00:56:00.360 --> 00:56:04.830
Anna Louise strong of the union
record would also pay a price for her

00:56:04.835 --> 00:56:09.060
activism. She'll be
arrested after the strike.

00:56:09.270 --> 00:56:14.070
Specifically for the column she
wrote the union record comment,

00:56:14.520 --> 00:56:18.540
which was this kind of dog
whistle for revolution.

00:56:18.630 --> 00:56:23.530
Where's this thing going to go? And
that was scary. So she'll get arrested,

00:56:24.070 --> 00:56:28.510
they will drop the
charges and Anna will go

00:56:28.840 --> 00:56:33.340
to Russia where she'll write
several books supporting communism

00:56:34.150 --> 00:56:39.130
and eventually get in trouble there and
move to China where she will become a

00:56:39.135 --> 00:56:43.540
friend of and live
until her death in 1960.

00:56:45.130 --> 00:56:48.820
The I ww did not manage.
They didn't control.

00:56:48.820 --> 00:56:53.710
They weren't in any way the dominant
force behind the Seattle general strike,

00:56:54.430 --> 00:56:56.230
but they took a lot of the heat for it.

00:56:56.530 --> 00:57:00.550
The I W W appears to have played
only a peripheral role in the strike,

00:57:01.600 --> 00:57:02.920
looking for someone to blame.

00:57:03.250 --> 00:57:07.690
Authorities rated the Union Seattle
headquarters arresting 39 wobblies.

00:57:09.010 --> 00:57:13.330
One of the good things about the
strike was the lack of violence.

00:57:13.840 --> 00:57:15.400
It was a peaceful strike.

00:57:15.910 --> 00:57:20.710
The organizers worked very hard and sent
the word down the ranks that there were

00:57:20.710 --> 00:57:23.350
to be no violence. There
were no demonstrations.

00:57:23.350 --> 00:57:26.650
There was very little picketing.
It was a peaceful affair.

00:57:26.920 --> 00:57:29.650
And I think the credit goes to
the labor movement for that.

00:57:44.080 --> 00:57:47.740
Events in Centralia, Washington would
soon take the spotlight off Seattle,

00:57:48.250 --> 00:57:51.070
located along the Northern
Pacific Railroad tracks.

00:57:51.370 --> 00:57:54.850
The city operated as a hub for the
farming and logging industries.

00:57:55.540 --> 00:57:59.830
The presence of an I W W office
downtown was a gnawing reminder of their

00:57:59.830 --> 00:58:04.240
opposition to the war and
their participation in the
general strike earlier that

00:58:04.240 --> 00:58:05.073
year.

00:58:05.320 --> 00:58:07.690
So as the responsible townspeople,

00:58:08.140 --> 00:58:13.120
most of whom belonged to the Elks that

00:58:13.120 --> 00:58:17.230
decided it was time to run the
wobblies out of town. So 1918,

00:58:17.230 --> 00:58:21.370
April of 1918, they come out
of a parade, attack the hall,

00:58:21.970 --> 00:58:24.820
take everything that's in the
hall, throw it out in the street,

00:58:25.450 --> 00:58:30.220
burn it with the exception of a
desk that was auctioned off and

00:58:30.280 --> 00:58:34.120
typewriter. There was later on
an attempt to burn that building.

00:58:34.660 --> 00:58:36.370
Seldom backing down from a fight.

00:58:36.940 --> 00:58:41.710
The I WW returned to Centia in
September, 1919 and opened a

00:58:41.710 --> 00:58:45.850
union hall on the ground floor of the
Roderick Hotel on Tower Avenue downtown.

00:58:46.750 --> 00:58:50.050
Soon, rumors of a planned
attack reached the wobblies.

00:58:50.590 --> 00:58:54.850
They suspected it would come on the first
anniversary of the end of World War I.

00:58:55.420 --> 00:58:59.560
Armistice Day, November 11th,
when the city parade was planned,

00:59:00.310 --> 00:59:03.280
they were determined not to
be railroaded. A second time.

00:59:04.120 --> 00:59:08.950
Wobblies even went to the
point of soliciting legal

00:59:09.010 --> 00:59:09.820
advice.

00:59:09.820 --> 00:59:14.350
They went to the point of appealing to
the citizens with written statements

00:59:14.410 --> 00:59:17.380
asking for citizen help.
They got none of that.

00:59:17.680 --> 00:59:21.070
But they did ask the one attorney,

00:59:21.200 --> 00:59:25.520
the community that was sympathetic
to the wobbly position, Elmer Smith.

00:59:26.270 --> 00:59:29.780
They asked him what their legal status
was, could they defend the hall?

00:59:29.840 --> 00:59:31.220
And unfortunately,

00:59:31.490 --> 00:59:35.060
he advised them that not only
could they defend the hall,

00:59:35.240 --> 00:59:38.510
but left them with the impression that
they could do it from outside the hall.

00:59:39.470 --> 00:59:42.500
Assuming that they were
within their legal rights.

00:59:43.100 --> 00:59:47.630
The wobblies armed themselves, they
lined men up at the front window,

00:59:47.630 --> 00:59:48.500
armed men.

00:59:49.010 --> 00:59:53.720
They had other men across the
street in an upper floor of a hotel,

00:59:54.050 --> 00:59:57.170
as well as behind the
building on the seminary hill.

00:59:59.090 --> 01:00:03.560
The parade got underway at two o'clock
moving north along Tower Avenue.

01:00:04.220 --> 01:00:06.950
Hundreds of spectators lined
both sides of the street.

01:00:07.670 --> 01:00:11.930
But this classic American scene in
a small American town was suddenly

01:00:11.930 --> 01:00:16.820
interrupted when several Legionnaires
and army veterans broke ranks and veered

01:00:16.820 --> 01:00:17.750
towards the Roderick,

01:00:18.260 --> 01:00:22.610
not suspecting the presence of armed
men waiting both inside and outside the

01:00:22.610 --> 01:00:23.443
hotel.

01:00:24.080 --> 01:00:28.880
So one of the things about
Australia was a very patriotic town

01:00:29.270 --> 01:00:30.830
in a very patriotic time.

01:00:31.520 --> 01:00:36.050
And there's a parade and people
are celebrating and all of a sudden

01:00:37.550 --> 01:00:38.600
coming up the rear,

01:00:38.600 --> 01:00:42.800
the Legionnaire and some veterans
pulling up the rear veer off

01:00:43.550 --> 01:00:48.080
break ranks from the
parade and head to the I WW

01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:48.913
offices.

01:00:49.970 --> 01:00:53.840
Now, that was probably the
worst mistake that was made in,

01:00:53.840 --> 01:00:55.580
if you look at it from the two sides,

01:00:55.850 --> 01:01:00.530
both sides being correct and both
sides being wrong in what happened.

01:01:00.860 --> 01:01:04.730
The shooting started when the attackers
smashed in the door and broke windows.

01:01:05.240 --> 01:01:06.950
Wobblies positioned at the windows,

01:01:06.980 --> 01:01:11.720
including the radical labor activist
Wesley Everest shot into the

01:01:11.720 --> 01:01:12.553
mob,

01:01:13.010 --> 01:01:17.540
hearing the gunfire from inside the men
across the street and on Seminary Hill

01:01:17.660 --> 01:01:22.550
joined in the gunfire killing three
Legionnaires and wounding several others.

01:01:23.780 --> 01:01:27.800
So what happened within the hall
itself? When the shooting started,

01:01:28.370 --> 01:01:32.990
it became apparent rather quickly
that there were guys in the

01:01:32.990 --> 01:01:37.040
hall that were both armed and unarmed
that didn't want anything to do with it.

01:01:37.340 --> 01:01:41.810
I mean, when it really went down, they
wanted out of there. Now, Wesley Everest,

01:01:42.020 --> 01:01:46.220
he was a militant from a long
way back for good reason.

01:01:46.310 --> 01:01:49.520
He had been treated badly
in a number of incidences.

01:01:49.850 --> 01:01:53.300
He was willing to take a stand
and die for what he believed,

01:01:53.510 --> 01:01:58.430
and that's why he was probably
willing to kill. As a part of that,

01:01:58.490 --> 01:01:59.420
taking a stand.

01:01:59.420 --> 01:02:03.980
And as EERs comes out the back and
around the corner into the alleyway,

01:02:04.370 --> 01:02:06.860
he runs into two Legionnaires
that are coming the other way.

01:02:07.220 --> 01:02:09.740
He shoots both of 'em. They both go down.

01:02:10.130 --> 01:02:14.900
He then turns and he's making his
escape and he's escaping north out of

01:02:15.680 --> 01:02:20.010
headed for the Skookumchuck River
and hoping to cross the river. Well,

01:02:20.015 --> 01:02:23.460
he gets into the river realizing
he's wearing heavy boots,

01:02:23.940 --> 01:02:27.090
but he makes the decision that he's not
going to swim this river in November

01:02:27.480 --> 01:02:28.440
with a pair of boots on.

01:02:29.040 --> 01:02:33.930
With the posse quickly approaching
Everest with a long held mistrust of

01:02:33.930 --> 01:02:37.530
law enforcement, decided he
had no choice but to surrender.

01:02:38.910 --> 01:02:43.530
And Wesley Evers says, if there's law
enforcement amongst you, actually,

01:02:43.530 --> 01:02:46.800
he says, if there's a bull
amongst you, I will surrender.

01:02:47.580 --> 01:02:51.450
Hubbard continues to point the
gun at him and walk towards him.

01:02:51.450 --> 01:02:55.110
So Wesley Evers shoots Dale Hubbard.

01:02:55.860 --> 01:02:59.400
Dale Hubbard goes down,
Wesley Evers shoots him again,

01:03:00.930 --> 01:03:03.630
then he shoots him again. That point,

01:03:03.900 --> 01:03:06.990
if you really look at it
from a legal standpoint,

01:03:07.170 --> 01:03:10.920
Wesley Evers probably could have made
the argument that he was acting in

01:03:10.920 --> 01:03:15.450
self-defense because he was
being pursued by rabid mob.

01:03:15.700 --> 01:03:17.190
But the second time he shot,

01:03:17.430 --> 01:03:19.470
the first time he shot a man
that was down that was murdered.

01:03:20.250 --> 01:03:22.320
The second time he shot him,
that was murdered twice.

01:03:22.830 --> 01:03:24.360
Deputies subdued Everest,

01:03:24.630 --> 01:03:29.460
beat him severely and dragged him
to the Centra jail. As knight fell,

01:03:29.700 --> 01:03:31.380
centra began to rage.

01:03:32.040 --> 01:03:36.510
Call went out for 50 deputies to round
up the remaining wobblies and more than

01:03:36.510 --> 01:03:40.260
200 showed up worried events
were getting out of hand.

01:03:40.890 --> 01:03:44.490
Relia Mayor TC Rogers requested
help from the National Guard.

01:03:45.600 --> 01:03:50.370
It arrived too late to help Everest
Vigilantes cut off power to the jail and

01:03:50.370 --> 01:03:55.260
then stormed in demanding that the lone
deputy on duty hand over his prisoner,

01:03:56.100 --> 01:03:57.270
they hustled him outside,

01:03:57.720 --> 01:04:02.010
forced him into the backseat of a waiting
car and drove him to a bridge over the

01:04:02.015 --> 01:04:02.848
Chehalis River.

01:04:03.690 --> 01:04:07.590
The essence of the story is that when
they got to the Melon Street Bridge,

01:04:07.620 --> 01:04:11.400
they threw a rope up over with one of the
girders and put it around his neck and

01:04:11.400 --> 01:04:14.640
shoved him over the side. And the
story is that that didn't kill him,

01:04:14.645 --> 01:04:16.770
didn't break his neck.
So they pulled him up,

01:04:16.770 --> 01:04:19.800
put a longer rope on it
and kicked him over again.

01:04:19.800 --> 01:04:21.720
And that snapped his neck and killed him.

01:04:22.260 --> 01:04:26.700
The crowd roared as the enraged men
repeatedly shot into the swinging

01:04:26.700 --> 01:04:31.350
corpse. Participants in the lynching
were never questioned or prosecuted.

01:04:32.250 --> 01:04:33.420
The Mellon Street Bridge,

01:04:33.840 --> 01:04:37.560
forever known as Hangman's
Bridge was replaced in 1959.

01:04:44.330 --> 01:04:49.170
There were six men dead. Three of 'em
died immediately. They were Legionnaires.

01:04:49.500 --> 01:04:53.220
The fourth one, Dale Hubbard, of
course Wesley Evers is number five.

01:04:53.225 --> 01:04:55.980
He dies later that night.
And then two days later,

01:04:56.160 --> 01:05:00.520
the deputy sheriff that is
shot in a search outside of

01:05:00.570 --> 01:05:01.403
Centia.

01:05:01.680 --> 01:05:05.880
And it was a friendly fire between
two elements of the search party.

01:05:07.620 --> 01:05:12.570
The trial was relocated
to Grace Harbor County

01:05:13.140 --> 01:05:18.040
from Centia because there was
no chance of them getting a fair

01:05:18.040 --> 01:05:22.990
trial in Centralia. Blood was
running high, people were upset.

01:05:23.170 --> 01:05:25.750
And it turns into a media circus,

01:05:26.170 --> 01:05:30.700
kind of the 19th century
version of the OJ Simpson trial.

01:05:31.810 --> 01:05:35.650
And it had a colorful
defense attorneys as well.

01:05:35.950 --> 01:05:40.570
A man by the name of George
Vandeveer defended the central

01:05:41.500 --> 01:05:44.380
defendants and he throughout his career,

01:05:44.740 --> 01:05:49.630
will defend over a hundred wobblies
in various trials including

01:05:49.630 --> 01:05:51.550
the Everett Massacre trial.

01:05:52.300 --> 01:05:56.860
The trial of the Wobblies presided
over by Judge John Wilson became a

01:05:56.860 --> 01:05:58.450
full-blown media circus.

01:05:59.230 --> 01:06:02.560
Most locals saw the shootings as
nothing short of a ruthless slaughter of

01:06:02.565 --> 01:06:03.398
innocent men.

01:06:04.180 --> 01:06:07.660
The fact they intended to destroy
private property was beside the point.

01:06:08.530 --> 01:06:09.760
Nothing justified murder.

01:06:10.270 --> 01:06:15.160
And in their mind the I w W
was a prime evil and evil will

01:06:15.160 --> 01:06:16.930
thrive when left unchecked.

01:06:17.860 --> 01:06:21.430
Among those who testified was
Legionnaire and World War I,

01:06:21.435 --> 01:06:25.090
veteran Eugene Fitzer, who was
shot in the leg during the gunfire,

01:06:25.990 --> 01:06:29.560
prosecutors indicted 11
men, including Elmer Smith,

01:06:29.565 --> 01:06:32.620
the attorney who had advised the
wobblies of their rights to defend their

01:06:32.620 --> 01:06:35.290
property under the state's
Stand Your Ground Laws.

01:06:36.670 --> 01:06:40.900
Following 47 days of conflicting
testimony and sensational news coverage,

01:06:41.350 --> 01:06:43.360
the jury took two days to reach a verdict.

01:06:43.990 --> 01:06:47.860
They acquitted Smith and another
defendant and found a third man guilty but

01:06:47.860 --> 01:06:52.630
insane. Eight defendants were found
guilty of first or second degree murder.

01:06:53.380 --> 01:06:57.100
The jury found one defendant guilty
of murder in the third degree and

01:06:57.105 --> 01:06:58.540
recommended a light sentence.

01:06:59.470 --> 01:07:04.090
Judge Wilson informed the jury that there
was no such charge and was in no mood

01:07:04.090 --> 01:07:08.650
for leniency, handing out
sentences from 25 to 40 years.

01:07:10.360 --> 01:07:14.830
Justice was swift. Interestingly,
Elmer Smith, the attorney,

01:07:15.520 --> 01:07:18.910
he will be charged with
conspiracy to commit murder.

01:07:19.330 --> 01:07:23.230
He'll be one of those that is
acquitted, but nevertheless,

01:07:23.440 --> 01:07:26.500
he'll spend the next
year defending himself.

01:07:27.070 --> 01:07:32.020
He'll also then dedicate the next
many years of his life helping the

01:07:32.020 --> 01:07:36.280
wobblies that are convicted that are
in prison get shortened sentences.

01:07:49.690 --> 01:07:54.310
One of the things I suppose that the
labor movement struggles with right now is

01:07:54.315 --> 01:07:59.050
I don't know that it really
has a sense of itself and its

01:07:59.050 --> 01:08:02.920
potential that we have
narrowed our understanding of

01:08:03.760 --> 01:08:08.740
what our historic task is to just
good jobs and wages and benefits that

01:08:08.740 --> 01:08:13.390
we've kind of reverted back into the
old sort of bread and butter unionism

01:08:13.930 --> 01:08:15.860
of a century ago.

01:08:16.820 --> 01:08:19.730
While the labor wars of the Northwest
were a low point for the movement,

01:08:20.300 --> 01:08:24.890
it would reach new heights. In succeeding
decades, major victories and wages,

01:08:25.250 --> 01:08:26.083
hours,

01:08:26.120 --> 01:08:30.710
workplace safety and retirement benefited
tens of millions of working men and

01:08:30.715 --> 01:08:31.670
women of America.

01:08:32.390 --> 01:08:36.890
The 1955 merger of the American
Federation of Labor and the

01:08:36.890 --> 01:08:41.630
Congress of Industrial Organizations
created something like the I W W vision

01:08:41.810 --> 01:08:44.270
of one Big Union. That year,

01:08:44.810 --> 01:08:48.080
37% of American workers
belonged to a union.

01:08:49.130 --> 01:08:53.330
But it's been a long slide
downhill ever since. And by 2016,

01:08:53.750 --> 01:08:58.460
union membership sank to less
than 11% in recent decades.

01:08:58.850 --> 01:09:03.560
Growing anti-union sentiment and a score
of state laws and Supreme Court rulings

01:09:03.740 --> 01:09:05.810
have awakened workers to a harsh reality.

01:09:06.560 --> 01:09:10.790
Gains made in the past may not
prevail in the future. Today,

01:09:11.090 --> 01:09:15.710
a younger generation of
workers are fueling a new
form of militancy as they look

01:09:15.710 --> 01:09:17.450
to their violent past for answers.

01:09:17.450 --> 01:09:21.620
In shaping a peaceful future
to keep labor history alive,

01:09:22.010 --> 01:09:26.180
leaders in Washington gather each Labor
Day at the grave site of Ralph Chaplin

01:09:26.360 --> 01:09:31.040
and his wife Edith and Tacoma to honor
his contributions and sing his music.

01:09:33.140 --> 01:09:35.960
Oh, you can't scare me.
I'm sticking with you.

01:09:37.220 --> 01:09:38.240
I'm sticking with.

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The union.

01:09:38.810 --> 01:09:42.260
I think the I WW had it figured out a
long time ago when they said an injury to

01:09:42.260 --> 01:09:43.190
one is an injury to all,

01:09:44.390 --> 01:09:49.100
and then acted on it that it's not just
like a catchy slogan as working people.

01:09:49.190 --> 01:09:53.510
And our history of struggle is that
we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

01:09:54.050 --> 01:09:55.310
An injury to one is injured at all.

01:09:55.340 --> 01:09:58.580
We are all leaders working class and the
employing class have nothing in common.

01:09:59.960 --> 01:10:04.101
Those aren't just good slogans, but that
they help frame our understanding for

01:10:05.930 --> 01:10:08.720
who we are, what the
reality of the situation is,

01:10:08.750 --> 01:10:13.280
and concretely what we need
to do, how to go forward.

01:10:13.460 --> 01:10:17.330
And what we have to learn to do
is to democratize their Capital

01:10:18.830 --> 01:10:21.710
One billionaire a thousand millionaires.

01:10:24.410 --> 01:10:28.490
We are students of history, many of us,

01:10:30.260 --> 01:10:34.610
and we look back on Selma's
life and give thanks.

01:10:36.170 --> 01:10:40.320
Ralph was one of those
persons and so was Edith. And

01:10:41.960 --> 01:10:46.760
their life was very important
to us. He went to jail.

01:10:50.000 --> 01:10:51.230
He was a wobbly,

01:10:53.090 --> 01:10:57.200
he was a worker in our
unions here in the state,

01:10:58.250 --> 01:10:59.840
in city of Tacoma.

01:11:02.000 --> 01:11:03.770
So it's good to remember him

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and give thanks for
what he has done for us.

01:11:12.560 --> 01:11:16.650
Read a history of the state of Washington
and I dare you to show me a strike.

01:11:17.430 --> 01:11:19.830
Go to Nia. Go to Everett. Go to Aberdeen,

01:11:20.370 --> 01:11:24.090
across the hump to Yakima. Ask them,

01:11:24.090 --> 01:11:26.880
anybody there that's gone
through school or high school?

01:11:26.880 --> 01:11:29.220
Did you ever have any
strikes in the state? No.

01:11:30.480 --> 01:11:34.290
Labor didn't make history. Labor
didn't improve these conditions.

01:11:34.530 --> 01:11:39.270
Men didn't give up their lives for
this cause. Only the stuffed shirts,

01:11:39.270 --> 01:11:40.830
the big shots. If you please,

01:11:41.340 --> 01:11:45.750
when you see the story of the I W A

01:11:47.070 --> 01:11:48.990
in one volume complete,

01:11:49.860 --> 01:11:54.690
you're going to read one of the most
amazing stories that was ever put down in

01:11:54.690 --> 01:11:56.880
little black marks on white paper.

01:11:57.780 --> 01:12:02.220
Because labor must remain
organized. Either that or go under.

01:12:03.060 --> 01:12:04.920
And now goodbye. Thank you
a lot. And God bless you.

01:12:28.580 --> 01:12:31.920
So be with us now. Bless us.

01:12:32.700 --> 01:12:36.960
Bless our work, and be
with us now and forever.

01:12:38.520 --> 01:12:39.353
Amen.

01:12:39.810 --> 01:12:44.340
And we'll sing the sin at
the end of this right now.

01:12:44.730 --> 01:12:47.040
Solitary forever.

01:12:49.550 --> 01:12:53.320
When the union's inspiration
through the workers,

01:12:53.670 --> 01:12:57.520
luck shall run. There can be power greater

01:13:01.450 --> 01:13:04.040
earth people.

01:13:04.900 --> 01:13:06.960
The one the union

01:13:23.990 --> 01:13:24.823
forever

01:13:30.810 --> 01:13:35.550
there is that we hold in
common with the greedy parasite

01:13:35.640 --> 01:13:40.000
that would lash us in the Surfman
would crush us with his night.

01:13:40.460 --> 01:13:42.120
Is there anything left?

01:13:43.060 --> 01:13:47.600
To organize the fight
for the union makes us

01:13:47.605 --> 01:13:48.438
strong.

01:13:50.850 --> 01:13:52.920
Solidarity forever.

01:13:55.530 --> 01:13:56.363
Solidarity.

01:14:00.050 --> 01:14:01.840
Solidarity. Forever.

01:14:03.750 --> 01:14:06.180
The union makes us strong.

01:14:07.800 --> 01:14:12.760
Is it We who plow the prairies built
the same is where they trade out

01:14:12.765 --> 01:14:16.520
of the minds and built the workshops
and the smiles of red over away.

01:14:16.980 --> 01:14:21.720
Now we stand Outcast Star Mr. Wonders. But

01:14:28.670 --> 01:14:33.520
Forever. Forever, forever.

01:14:35.900 --> 01:14:38.080
Saw the forever

01:14:39.700 --> 01:14:42.640
for the young US strong.