The Everett Massacre

By Walker C. Smith

A History of the Class Struggle
in the Lumber Industry

I. W. W. Publishing Bureau
Chicago, Ill.

This book is dedicated to those loyal soldiers of the great class war who were murdered on the steamer Verona at Everett, Washington, in the struggle for free speech and free assembly and the right to organize:

FELIX BARAN,

HUGO GERLOT,

GUSTAV JOHNSON,

JOHN LOONEY,

ABRAHAM RABINOWITZ,

and those unknown martyrs whose bodies were swept out to unmarked ocean graves on Sunday, November Fifth, 1916.

PRINTED BY THE
MEMBERS OF THE
GENERAL RECRUITING
UNION I. W. W.

PREFACE

In ten minutes of seething, roaring hell at the Everett dock on the afternoon of Sunday, November 5, 1916, there was more of the age-old superstition regarding the identity of interests between capital and labor torn from the minds of the working people of the Pacific Northwest than could have been cleared away by a thousand lecturers in a year. It is with regret that we view the untimely passing of the seven or more Fellow Workers who were foully murdered on that fateful day, but if the working class of the world can view beyond their mangled forms the hideous brutality that was the cause of their deaths, they will not have died in vain.

This book is published with the hope that the tragedy at Everett may serve to set before the working class so clear a view of capitalism in all its ruthless greed that another such affair will be impossible.

C. E. PAYNE.

With grateful acknowledgments to C. E. Payne for valuable
assistance in preparing the subject matter, to Harry
Feinberg in consultation, to Marie B. Smith
in revising manuscript, and to J. J.
Kneisle for photographs.

EVERETT, NOVEMBER FIFTH

By Charles Ashleigh

[“* * * and then the Fellow Worker died, singing ‘Hold
the Fort’ * * *”—From the report of a witness.]

Song on his lips, he came;

Song on his lips, he went;—

This be the token we bear of him,—

Soldier of Discontent!

Out of the dark they came; out of the night

Of poverty and injury and woe,—

With flaming hope, their vision thrilled to light,—

Song on their lips, and every heart aglow;

They came, that none should trample Labor’s right

To speak, and voice her centuries of pain.

Bare hands against the master’s armored might!—

A dream to match the tools of sordid gain!

And then the decks went red; and the grey sea

Was written crimsonly with ebbing life.

The barricade spewed shots and mockery

And curses, and the drunken lust of strife.

Yet, the mad chorus from that devil’s host,—

Yea, all the tumult of that butcher throng,—

Compound of bullets, booze and coward boast,—

Could not out-shriek one dying worker’s song!