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injured; all of them were ordered to leave Everett or face still more
drastic punishment. Employers openly boasted that this brutality was
the proper way to deal with outside union agitators.

On November 5, the IWW returned to Everett, 300 strong, on
two passenger ships. The sheriff, flanked by armed vigilantes, re-
fused them permission to land. After a brief parley, during which
the IWW leaders insisted on the right to land, vigilantes on the wharf
and deputies on a tug in midstream opened fire on the ship's pas-
sengers. When the smoke cleared ten minutes later, five IWW mem-
_ bers, a deputy sheriff and an army officer lay dead. As the ship
_ returned to Seattle, 32 IWW members on board were found seriously
wounded and without medical care. Some of the casualties had dis-
appeared overboard when the ship listed with the passengers’ panicky
rush for cover.

2
j
F

Members Held for Murder

‘ Seventy-two IWW members were held on murder charges but no
action was taken against the vigilantes. One IWW member, brought
fo trial, was acquitted; the others were then released. It was not
proven that the IWW members had fired on the vigilantes. There was
reason fo suppose that the slain officers had been trapped in the
cross-fire between the two attacking parties. IWW martyrdom, in
this and other instances, was a potent factor in rousing woodworkers

| toa renewed militancy.

a The increasing centralization of lumber production in Oregon,
Washington, California and British Columbia made this area the
major battleground for union organization. Thousands of workers had
migrated. to the coast from logged-out areas of the Lake States. Though

| tumber production was then expanding in Southern pine, attempis
fo organize the workers in the South had been halted by gunfire.
Pacific Coast workers were to establish the base and the pattern for
woodworkers’ organization under conditions resembling an economic

Isolation Hampered Unions

Until modern highways reached the widely-scattered logging
camps, their isolation hampered union organization among the log-
gers. Logging railways were at first the principal means of transporia-
tion and communication. The employers, in control of the hiring
agencies, or “slave markets,” could easily screen out and blacklist
the known and active unionists.

Lumber was at first processed in a sprawling complex of large
and small mills usually located on waterways. Not all the mills were
close to population centers. The co-ordination of any union activity
required strenuous effort on the part of the volunteer organizers.

The constantly shifting developments in lumber production, which
kept men on the move, created a large class of transient workers
who were difficult to organize. Snow and fire conditions in the woods
made employment highly seasonal. Still worse, employment was
subject to wild “boom or bust” fluctuations as lumber production was
then geared to erratic construction activity. Operations opened and

closed with inconvenient frequency.

Endless Quest for Better Wages

Workers moved from job to job in an endless quest for better

wages and conditions. The “short-stakers,” men who worked only
long enough to stake themselves to the next move, out-numbered
the “home guards,” or those who remained on one job for at least
three months. Some operators deliberately kept crews coming and
going to conceal their juggling of wage rates. The city skidroads,
where men congregated between jobs, were hotbeds of union propa-
i. Under the circumstances, organization grew in a haphazard

The ph isolation under early employment conditions also
brought political and social isolation for lumber workers. They had
opportunity to strike their roots down into community living.
ithout organization to direct attention to their needs, they were

little

Ww
- treated as a class apart. Voteless workers were given little attention by
the authorities in the provision of legal protection for work standards.

Business interests cultivated the false impression that migrant workers
were shiftless. This was keenly resented by men whose hardihood

under frontier-like conditions displayed qualities of self-reliance and

 Story-Book Characters

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

“IT WAS A HELL OF A FIGHT"

brothers—building this nation into the Paradise that if can be and
must be.” , :
The conditions which gave rise to this plea were described in

these words: ;
“The logger is roused from his fitful slumbers long before daylight

to grab a hasty breakfast, then tramp the long stretch into the woods
where he labors all day at the tasks of falling, bucking, yarding and
loading— many times in heavy rain and snow—until the last faint
gleam of light leaves the sky. He then begins his weary trek back
to the bunkhouse, too frequently built over a pigpen, and foul with
the steamy, sweaty vapors from rain-soaked mackinaws, sox and

boots drying around an air-tight heater.
When he got to bed, it was to be bedevilled by fleas, bedbugs

and other vermin, which follow the human being who is not able to
keep his body and his clothes clean. ,
"The story of the sawmill worker is much the same, especially in
the ‘jungle’ towns. Where the mill is located near a large town, the
conditions are somewhat better but most of the mills are well away
from the large centers. The company sfore, the company houses and
barracks take their toll, both of the workers’ comfort and paychecks
... The crowning indignity of all is that both the logger and sawmill
worker, forced to live in the quarters provided by the mills and logging
companies are compelled to carry their own bedding from job to job
on their backs, earning for themselves the names of ‘bindle stiff’ or

‘blanket bum.’

A State of Civil War

“Sooradic attempts at organization, carried on through the years,
have resulted in such violence as to almost approach a state of civil
war.”

The ernployers’ savage persecution of unionists provoked almost
continuous turbulence in the lumber industry throughout the thirty-
year period. The second tragedy, mentioned above, occurred 20 years
after the Everett murders. Usually, when violence flared, law-enforce-
ment was then on the side of the employers who could exercise superior
political influence. This was true when all principles of justice were
thrown to the winds in 1936 to cover the employer's crime during a
strike conducted by the Seaside Local of the Sawmill and Timber
Workers’ Union, now IWA Local 3-4.

During this strike in its Seaside operation, the Crown-Zellerbach
Co. had imported strike breakers who were granted a scab charter
behind the STWU picket line by a rival union. When the company
armed the strike breakers to intimidate the pickets, the Local Union’s
protest was ignored by the authorities.

Pickets Attacked by Scabs

Two pickets on duty March 6, 1936, were attacked by forty armed
scabs. The picket camp was destroyed and all picket banners burnt.
The threat was made that the picket line would be wiped out but,
despite this, the picket line was immediately reinforced.

At 6:00 a.m. the following morning, lights were turned on and
upon a signal from company officials, the strikers were ambushed by
rifle and shotgun fire. Two union members, William Blackwood and
James Ray, dropped dead. William Weidel, business agent of the
Portland local union, was shot in the back.

Strange legal consequences followed. Thirty-seven of the strikers
were arrested on rioting charges and brought to trial. No action was
taken against the scabs who had, without provocation, fired on the
unarmed workers. Lacking adequate financial resources for the de-
fense, the local union managed to make a behind-the-scenes deal with
the State authorities. The accused, advised to plead guilty, were sen-
tenced and then paroled. For many years, the trade unions in Oregon
voluntarily undertook to provide for the dependents of the murdered
men.

Labour Unrest Investigated

The mounting labor unrest in the lumber industry was investigated
in 1918 by a Mediation Commission appointed by the President of the
United States. The chief causes of strife were found to be the employ-
ers’ callous neglect of intolerable conditions and their inexcusable
enmity toward the unionization of their employees. Except for tem-
porary improvement of conditions during World War |, the Commis-
sion’s warnings were ignored by the operators. The blood-stained
record of 1936 proved that the official censure of the employers was
as valid then as in 1918.

The Commission stated in part, “We are dealing with an industry
still determined by pioneer conditions of life. Hardy contact with nature
makes certain rigor of conditions inevitable but the rigors of nature
have been reinforced by the neglects of men. Social conditions have
been allowed to grow up full of danger to the country. It is in these

social conditions that we find the explanation for the unrest

unhealthy
long gathering force, but now sharply brought to our attention . . .
The unlivable conditions of many of the camps has long demanded