H. P. Whartenby, owner of a five-ten-fifteen cent store in Everett, said that the I. W. W. meetings were orderly, and further testified that he had been ordered out of the Commercial Club on the evening of November 5th but not until he had seen that the club was a regular arsenal, with guns stacked all over the place.
To establish the fact that the sidewalks were kept clear, that there was no advocacy of violence, that no resistance was offered to arrest, and that the I. W. W. meetings were well conducted in every particular, the defense put on in fairly rapid succession a number of Everett citizens: Mrs. Ina M. Salter, Mrs. Elizabeth Maloney, Mrs. Letelsia Fye, Bruce J. Hatch, Mrs. Dollie Gustaffson, Miss Avis Mathison, Mrs. Peter Aiken, Mrs. Annie Pomeroy, Mrs. Rebecca Wade, F. G. Crosby, and Mrs. Hannah Crosby. The fact that these citizens, and a number of other women who were mentioned in the testimony, attended the I. W. W. meetings quite regularly, impressed the jury favorably. Some of these women witnesses had been roughly handled by the deputies. Mrs. Pomeroy stated that the deputies, armed with clubs and distinguished by white handkerchiefs around their necks, invaded one meeting and struck right and left. "And they punched me at that!" said the indignant witness.
"Punched you where?" inquired Vanderveer in order to locate the injury.
"They punched me on the sidewalk!" answered the witness, and the solemn bailiff had to rap for order in the court room.
Cooley caught a Tartar in his cross-examination of Mrs. Crosby. He inquired:
"Did you hear the I. W. W.'s say that when they got a majority of the workers into this big union they would take possession of the industries and run them themselves?"
"Why certainly!"
"You did hear them say they would take possession?"
"Why certainly!" flashed back the witness. "That's the way the North did with the slaves, isn't it? They took possession without ever asking them. My people came from the South and they had slaves taken away from them and never got anything for it, and quite right, too!"
"Then you do believe it would be all right, yourself?" said Cooley.