"There were one hundred and forty deputies looking toward the place where the first shot was supposed to have been fired. They have produced on the witness stand only about one in ten. We challenged them to bring them all on, we dared them to do it, and Mr. Cooley said 'I accept that dare!'—look it up Mr. Cooley on page 1802 of the transcript—but he did not dare accept that dare. Mr. Cooley knows what those nine-tenths would testify to. Twelve out of their sixteen witnesses who testified about the first shots said that their brother deputies were mistaken as to even the place on the boat where the first three shots came from.
"I venture, ladies and gentlemen, that with a bit of the kind of work the State has employed in this case, a little bit of the same zeal that was employed on Auspos, a little bit of the same zeal that was employed with Reese, a little bit of the help of McLaren of Los Angeles, I can take these one hundred and forty-five men and pick out four men who will honestly and truthfully testify that they saw anything, and I say that with no reflection on their honesty either, because the power of suggestion is enormous. It is not surprising that four people have come here to say they saw Tracy. It is not surprising that three out of the four should have been proven, conclusively, convincingly and absolutely, not to know what they were talking about.
FELIX BARAN
Dark lines on body caused by internal hemorrhage; Portland
doctor said life might have been saved by operation.
"The court has told you that in this case it is not a question of who shot first, not a question of which side shot first, it is a question of who was the aggressor, who made the first aggressive movement, who did the first hostile thing. The man who did a thing to excite fear was the aggressor, and that man was McRae when he pulled his gun. McRae clearly did that before there was any shooting.
"In determining who the aggressor was, you are entitled—not only entitled but must take into account the past behavior of all parties. And what does that show you? Was it the I. W. W.'s who had never offered violence, who had never done an act of violence, who had decried and deplored violence, as members of their audiences told you, and advised caution against it? Or was it McRae and his deputies?
"It is only formally correct to refer to these as deputies. They had commissions, but in nothing else in the world did they bear the remotest resemblance to officers of the law, not in their conduct, not in their training, not in their purposes, not in anything. They were the hirelings of either the mill owners of Everett or the Commercial Club. Did you ever in your life before hear of officials taking their instructions from representatives of an industrial movement? Did you ever before hear of deputy sheriffs being instructed in the propaganda of the open shop, being instructed in the methods employed at Minot unlawfully to prevent street speaking? That is where the first mistake in this case was made. First in the selection of that kind of men; second in the deliberate attempts which were made to color their actions, to pervert them, to make them the tools of the employers.
"That is the reason Henig and Carr were beaten, that is the reason Feinberg and Roberts were beaten, that is the reason men and women were knocked down in the crowds, that is the reason that this boy, Schwartz, was taken out by McRae and chased zigzag down the road in mortal terror of being run down by the sheriff's automobile, that is the reason 'Sergeant' Keenan was hit over the head with a gun, that is the reason James Rowan was taken out and beaten black and blue. How do you suppose Rowan got those marks on his back? Did he put them there for fun, or were they put there by somebody else's rotten, dirty brutality? If you didn't know a thing about him except what you know about Beverly and these other incidents, and it was deep darkness where this happened, I venture you would all say off-hand, 'It must have happened at Everett, anyway. There is no place else that I know of where they do such things.'