Let us see for a moment how the conspiracy of the lumber barons operated to achieve the unlawful ends for which it was designed. Let us see how they were driven by their own failure at intrigue to adopt methods so brutal that they would have disgraced the head-hunter; how they tried to gain with murder-lust what they had failed to gain lawfully and with public approval.
The campaign of lies and slander inaugurated by their private newspapers failed to convince the workers of the undesirability of labor organization. In spite of the armies of editors and news-whelps assembled to its aid, it served only to lash to a murderous frenzy the low instincts of the anti-labor elements in the community. The campaign of legal repression, admittedly instituted by the Employers' Association, failed also in spite of the fact that all the machinery of the state from dog-catcher down to Governor was at its beck and call on all occasions and for all purposes.
Having made a mess of things with these methods the lumber barons threw all scruples to the winds--if they ever had any--threw aside all pretension of living within the law. They started out, mad-dog like, to rent, wreck and destroy the last vestige of labor organization from the woods of the Northwest, and furthermore, to hunt down union men and martyrize them with the club, the gun, the rope and the courthouse.
It was to cover up their own crimes that the heartless beasts of Big Business beat the tom-toms of the press in order to lash the "patriotism" of their dupes and hirelings into hysteria. It was to hide their own infamy that the loathsome war dance was started that developed perceptibly from uncomprehending belligerency into the lawless tumult of mobs, raids and lynching! And it will be an everlasting blot upon the fair name of America that they were permitted to do so.
The Centralia tragedy was the culmination of a long series of unpunished atrocities against labor. What is expected of men who have been treated as these men were treated and who were denied redress or protection under the law? Every worker in the Northwest knows about the wrongs lumberworkers have endured--they are matters of common knowledge. It was common knowledge in Centralia and adjoining towns that the I.W.W. hall was to be raided on Armistice Day. Yet eight loggers have been sentenced from twenty-five to forty years in prison for the crime of defending themselves from the mob that set out to murder them! But let us see how the conspiracy was operating in Centralia to make the Armistice Day tragedy inevitable.
The Maelstrom--And Four Men
Centralia was fast becoming the vortex of the conspiracy that was rushing to its inevitable conclusion. Event followed event in rapid succession, straws indicating the main current of the flood tide of labor-hatred. The Commercial Club was seething with intrigue like the court of old France under Catherine de Medici; only this time it was Industrial Unionism instead of Huguenots who were being Marked for a new night of St. Bartholomew. The heresy to be uprooted was belief in industrial instead of religious freedom; but the stake and the gibbet were awaiting the New Idea just as they had the old.
The actions of the lumber interests were now but thinly veiled and their evil purpose all too manifest. The connection between the Employers' Association of the state and its local representatives in Centralia had become unmistakably evident. And behind these loomed the gigantic silhouette of the Employers' Association of the nation--the colossal "invisible government"--more powerful at times than the Government itself. More and more stood out the naked brutal fact that the purpose of all this plotting was to drive the union loggers from the city and to destroy their hall. The names of the men actively interested in this movement came to light in spite of strenuous efforts to keep them obscured. Four of these stand out prominently in the light of the tragedy that followed: George F. Russell, F.B. Hubbard, William Scales and last, but not least, Warren O. Grimm.
Warren O. Grimm
Warren O. Grimm, killed at the beginning of the rush on the I.W.W. hall. At another raid on an I.W.W. hall in 1918 Grimm was said by witnesses to have been leading the mob, "holding two American flags and dancing like a whirling dervish." His life-long friend, Frank Van Gilder, testified: "I stood less than two feet from Grimm when he was shot. He doubled up, put his hands to his stomach and said to me: 'My God, I'm shot." "What did you do then?" "I turned and left him."