The Centralia Conspiracy.

by Ralph Chaplin.

A Tongue of Flame

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of flame; every prison a more ill.u.s.trious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all her work is ruin. It is the whipper who is whipped and the tyrant who is undone.--Emerson.

Murder or Self-Defense?

This booklet is not an apology for murder. It is an honest effort to unravel the tangled mesh of circ.u.mstances that led up to the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia, Washington. The writer is one of those who believe that the taking of human life is justifiable only in self-defense. Even then the act is a horrible reversion to the brute--to the low plane of savagery. Civilization, to be worthy of the name, must afford other methods of settling human differences than those of blood letting.

The nation was shocked on November 11, 1919, to read of the killing of four American Legion men by members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Centralia. The capitalist newspapers announced to the world that these unoffending paraders were killed in cold blood--that they were murdered from ambush without provocation of any kind. If the author were convinced that there was even a slight possibility of this being true, he would not raise his voice to defend the perpetrators of such a cowardly crime.

But there are two sides to every question and perhaps the newspapers presented only one of these. Dr. Frank Bickford, an ex-service man who partic.i.p.ated in the affair, testified at the coroner's inquest that the Legion men were attempting to raid the union hall when they were killed.

Sworn testimony of various eyewitnesses has revealed the fact that some of the "unoffending paraders" carried coils of rope and that others were armed with such weapons as would work the demolition of the hall and bodily injury to its occupants. These things throw an entirely different light on the subject. If this is true it means that the union loggers fired only in self-defense and not with the intention of committing wanton and malicious murder as has been stated. Now, as at least two of the union men who did the shooting were ex-soldiers, it appears that the tragedy must have resulted from something more than a mere quarrel between loggers and soldiers. There must be something back of it all that the public generally doesn't know about.

There is only one body of men in the Northwest who would hate a union hall enough to have it raided--the lumber "interests." And now we get at the kernel of the matter, which is the fact that the affair was the outgrowth of a struggle between the lumber trust and its employees--between Organized Capital and Organized Labor.

A Labor Case

And so, after all, the famous trial at Montesano was not a murder trial but a labor trial in the strict sense of the word. Under the law, it must be remembered, a man is not committing murder in defending his life and property from the felonious a.s.sault of a mob bent on killing and destruction. There is no doubt whatever but what the lumber trust had plotted to "make an example" of the loggers and destroy their hall on this occasion. And this was not the first time that such atrocities had been attempted and actually committed. Isn't it peculiar that, out of many similar raids, you only heard of the one where the men defended themselves? Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but the preservation of its holy profits is the first law of the lumber trust. The organized lumber workers were considered a menace to the super-prosperity of a few profiteers--hence the attempted raid and the subsequent killing.

What is more significant is the fact the raid had been carefully planned weeks in advance. There is a great deal of evidence to prove this point.

There is no question that the whole affair was the outcome of a struggle--a cla.s.s struggle, if you please--between the union loggers and the lumber interests; the former seeking to organize the workers in the woods and the latter fighting this movement with all the means at its disposal.

In this light the Centralia affair does not appear as an isolated incident but rather an incident in an eventful industrial conflict, little known and less understood, between the lumber barons and loggers of the Pacific Northwest. This viewpoint will place Centralia in its proper perspective and enable one to trace the tragedy back to the circ.u.mstances and conditions that gave it birth.

But was there a conspiracy on the part of the lumber interests to commit murder and violence in an effort to drive organized labor from its domain?

Weeks of patient investigating in and around the scene or the occurrence has convinced the present writer that such a conspiracy has existed. A considerable amount of startling evidence has been unearthed that has. .h.i.therto been suppressed. If you care to consider Labor's version of this unfortunate incident you are urged to read the following truthful account of this almost unbelievable piece of mediaeval intrigue and brutality.

The facts will speak for themselves. Credit them or not, but read!

The Forests of the Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is world famed for its timber. The first white explorers to set foot upon its fertile soil were awed by the magnitude and grandeur of its boundless stretches of virgin forests. Nature has never endowed any section of our fair world with such an immensity of kingly trees. Towering into the sky to unthinkable heights, they stand as living monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast wide region of the West coast, hills, slopes and valleys, covered with millions of fir, spruce and cedar trees, raising their verdant crests a hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into the air.

When Columbus first landed on the uncharted continent these trees were already ancient. There they stood, straight and majestic with green and foam-flecked streams purling here and there at their feet, crowning the rugged landscape with superlative beauty, overtopped only by the snow-capped mountains--waiting for the hand of man to put them to the mult.i.tudinous uses of modern civilization. Imagine, if you can, the first explorer, gazing awe-stricken down those "calm cathedral isles," wondering at the lavish bounty of our Mother Earth in supplying her children with such inexhaustible resources.

But little could the first explorer know that the criminal clutch of Greed was soon to seize these mighty forests, guard them from the human race with bayonets, hangman's ropes and legal statutes; and use them, robber-baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of the world who need them. Little did the first explorer dream that the day would come when individuals would claim private ownership of that which prolific nature had travailed through centuries to bestow upon mankind.

But that day has come and with it the struggle between master and man that was to result in Centralia--or possibly many Centralias.

Lumber--A Basic Industry

It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural resources of the Earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the private property of a few social parasites. It seems that reason would preclude the possibility of any other arrangement, and that it would be considered as absurd for individuals to lay claim to forests, mines, railroads and factories as it would be for individuals to lay claim to the ownership of the sunlight that warms us or to the air we breathe. But the poor human race, in its bungling efforts to learn how to live in our beautiful world, appears destined to find out by bitter experience that the private ownership of the means of life is both criminal and disastrous.

Lumber is one of the basic industries--one of the industries mankind never could have done without. The whole structure of what we call civilization is built upon wooden timbers, ax-hewn or machine finished as the case may be. Without the product of the forests humanity would never have learned the use of fire, the primitive bow and arrow or the bulging galleys of ancient commerce. Without the firm and fibrous flesh of the mighty monarchs of the forest men might never have had barges for fishing or weapons for the chase; they would not have had carts for their oxen or kilns for the fashioning of pottery; they would not have had dwellings, temples or cities; they would not have had furniture nor fittings nor roofs above their heads. Wood is one of the most primitive and indispensable of human necessities. Without its use we would still be groping in the gloom and misery of early savagery, suffering from the cold of outer s.p.a.ce and defenseless in the midst of a harsh and hostile environment.

From Pioneer to Parasite

So it happened that the first pioneers in the northern were forced to bare their arms and match their strength with the wooded wilderness. At first the subjugation of the forests was a social effort. The lives and future prosperity of the settlers must be made secure from the raids of the Indians and the inclemency of the elements. Manfully did these men labor until their work was done. But this period did not last long, for the tide of emigration was sweeping westward over the sun-baked prairies to the promised land in the golden West.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fir and Spruce Trees

The wood of the West coast abound with tall fir trees. Practically all high grade spruce comes from this district also. Spruce was a war necessity and the lumber trust profiteered unmercifully on the government.

U.S. prisons are full of loggers who struck for the 8 hour day in 1917.]

Towns sprang up like magic, new trees were felled, sawmills erected and huge logs in ever increasing numbers were driven down the foaming torrents each year at spring time. The country was new, the market for lumber constantly growing and expanding. But the monopolist was unknown and the lynch-mobs of the lumber trust still sleeping in the womb of the Future.

So pa.s.sed the not unhappy period when opportunity was open to everyone, when freedom was dear to the hearts of all. It was at this time that the spirit of real Americanism was born, when the clean, st.u.r.dy name "America"

spelled freedom, justice and independence. Patriotism in these days was not a mask for profiteers and murderers were not permitted to hide their b.l.o.o.d.y hands in the folds of their nation's flag.

But modern capitalism was creeping like a black curse upon the land.

Stealing, coercing, cajoling, defrauding, it spread from its plague-center in Wall St., leaving misery, cla.s.s antagonism and resentment in its trial.

The old free America of our fathers was undergoing a profound change.

Equality of opportunity was doomed. A new social alignment was being created. Monopoly was loosed upon the land. Fabulous fortunes were being made as wealth was becoming centered into fewer and fewer hands. Modern capitalism was entrenching itself for the final and inevitable struggle for world domination. In due time the social parasites of the East, foreseeing that the forests of Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin could not last forever, began to look to the woods of the Northwest with covetous eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cedar Trees of the Northwest

With these giants the logger daily matches his strength and skill. The profit-greedy lumber trust has wasted enough trees of smaller size to supply the world with wood for years to come.]