This Day in Labor History: November 5, 1916. Police open fire on IWW members seeking to land a boat in Everett, Washington. Let's talk about the Everett Massacre and the proto-fascism timber owners, politicians, and cops would use to bust unions. 
Shingle weavers lived a tough life. You could always tell who was new to the job. The newbie had 10 fingers.
Shingle weavers created roofing shingles out of raw pieces of cedar. They did so with bare hands and whirring buzz saws without protection.
In addition, the saws produced wood dust that workers breathed in. “Cedar asthma” was a common malady.
Shingle weavers had been the first workers in the timber industry to organize into unions, going back to the late 19th century.
By 1916, the Industrial Workers of the World had moved beyond its ideological infighting (more or less anyway) and was more focused on organizing actual workers. This did wonders for the IWW. Workers began pouring into the union in the Northwest woods and mill towns.
The IWW really had no presence in Everett though. This was a mill and port town about 40 miles north of Seattle, a regionally important city. It was one where the IWW wanted to organize.
Many shingle workers saw themselves as skilled workers as felt closer to the American Federation of Labor than the disreputable radicals, although the AFL had shown very little interest in organizing them.
The shingle weavers had gone on strike in the summer of 1916 to receive a pay raise to make up for slashed wages from an industry downturn in 1914. The shingle weaver strike was almost over when the I.W.W. showed up.
In fact, only one mill remained on strike. On August 19, 1916, strikebreakers at that mill got into a fight with strikers, beating them up pretty bad. The IWW had only a small presence in the town but capitalized on the newly explosive situation.
Wobblies began agitating more, organizing the workers. The town quickly shut down the IWW office, thinking it would get rid of them, but more kept arriving. This was often how the IWW organized, advertising for its mobile workers and organizers to show up once things got hot.
Everett leaders unleashed their full fury on the Wobblies, even before November 5. 40 Wobblies were rounded up, brutally beaten, and taken to the edge of town where, despite some severe injuries, were forced to walk along the rail line back to Seattle.
The Everett cops and fascist hangers-on actually formed a gauntlet and forced the radicals to run it. This is how the "good people of Everett" dealt with workers in 1916.
Wobblies were used to being kicked out of town. In fact, much of their early publicity came from free speech actions throughout the West as local police forces and industry leaders routinely violated their 1st Amendment rights.
So when word of the beatings got out, the Wobblies were not going to back down. Instead, the hired a boat, the Verona, which they loaded with 300 of their members to bring the struggle to Everett.
By the time the boat arrived, law enforcement had massed at the dock. Snohomish County Sheriff Donald McRae had deputized 200 citizens to stop the “invaders.”
McRae yelled out, “Who are your leaders?” The response: “We are all leaders!” At this point, McRae and his deputies opened fire, nearly causing the boat to capsize as the Wobblies fled the assault.
he known dead Wobblies were Hugo Gerlot, Abraham Rabinowitz, Gus Johnson, John Looney, and Felix Baran. There were 7 Wobblies missing, probably shot into the water and later fished out and quickly buried to avoid the information becoming public. No one really wanted to count.
The cops, bolstered by yahoos with guns who were deputized, managed to shoot each other too, killing two. Naturally, the Wobblies were then arrested and charged with the deaths of the two deputies killed by friendly fire.
The authorities chose only one Wobbly, Thomas Tracy, to stand trial for the “murders,” but even in a day where unbiased juries in labor trials were a rare exception, the jury acquitted Tracy due to the complete lack of evidence.
The IWW did not go away after the Everett Massacre. Building upon it and other martyrs to the worker struggle, they made the Pacific Northwest timber industry the union’s prime focus in 1917. For radicals, dead workers were martyrs and organizing tools. The IWW was good at this.
In 1917, they brought the industry to a halt that summer protesting the atrocious living conditions and working environments loggers suffered daily.
Eventually, the federal government intervened after the U.S. entered World War I because the strike became a national security issue due to the necessity of Northwestern wood to build airplanes.
The IWW wouldn’t go away after that either. In fact, it took another act of violence against radical workers in order to suppress the Wobblies in the Northwest. We’ll get to that in a few days.
Back on Wednesday to discuss the Port Royal Experiment during the Civil War, where northern whites found out--hold on to your hats folks--that black workers would labor without a whip to force them to and instead you could pay them.
