You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Friday August 25, 1916
Everett, Washington – County Officials Defend Gunthugs
From The Northwest Worker of August 24, 1916:
KELLY AND MCRAE DEFEND STRIKE-
BREAKERS AND GUNMEN IN EVERETT
—–
City and County Police Force Used to Help Beat
Up Striking Shingleweavers and Give
Gunmen Plenty of Freedom
—–Once again King Kelly [County Commissioner] has demonstrated the fact to the citizens of Everett that he is the High Mogul in this neck of the woods. The “King” is spending more than a thousand dollars a month of Everett taxpayers’ money in order to keep “specials” to protect the interests of the mill owners. This fact was demonstrated when some 75 strike breakers attacked the picket line of 19 union shingle weavers at the Cargo mill last Saturday morning [August 19th] and the police stood by and laughed and seemed tickled to death to see the pickets get a licking.
We were always under the impression that the police force were to be used for the keeping of law and order but we are fully convinced now, that the police force, in Everett anyhow, is for the protection of capitalist property, human or concrete. The human property (scabs) on that memorable morning needed no protection as they were 4 to 1, but in the evening when some 150 unionists and sympathizers were on hand to give the scabs a drubbing the police butted in with their guns and protected the scabs and gunmen…
Organized labor of Everett have got solidly behind the strikers and it is going to be a fight that the union haters will long remember. All the so-called friends of labor have stood by the bosses during the last scrap. Sheriff McRae, an ex-union shingleweaver, has turned out to be a renegade and the $25 that he donated to the strike fund at the beginning of the trouble has been returned to him…
The police of this city and the county sheriff have taken the side of the bosses against labor and it is going to a fight to finish….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
The Northwest Worker
(Official organ of the Socialist Party
of Snohomish and Stevens Counties.
Owned and controlled by the Socialist
Party of Snohomish County.)
(Everett, Washington)
-Aug 24, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/64154119
SOURCE for Kelly as County Commissioner:
Everett Labor Journal of Aug 25, 1916
-see Letter by RH Mills
https://www.newspapers.com/image/83615555/
IMAGES
The Northwest Worker, Everett WA, Aug 24, 1916
+ Detail
https://www.newspapers.com/image/64154119
See also:
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917
-by Philip Sheldon Foner
International Publishers, 1965
https://books.google.com/books?id=e-KlAAAAMAAJ
Note: Foner, citing reports from The Everett Tribune and
the Seattle Union Record, describes the incident:
Throughout most of August, the police and the sheriff allowed the [newly opened by Levi Remick] I. W. W. hall to function unmolested. But on August 19, a battle broke out between the Shingle Weavers’ pickets, now down to only 18, and the gunmen imported to protect the strikebreakers. The scabs, protected by the police and gunmen, spirited the pickets away to a railroad trestle and beat them severely. When picket sympathizers joined the battle, gunfire broke out and one of the pickets was shot in the leg. The employers immediately cried “I. W. W. violence,” but the Wobblies disclaimed any connection with the incident and were upheld by the A. F. of L. unionists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dump the Bosses Off Your Back – Utah Phillips
Lyrics by John Brill