has since characterized its tactics in all
labor disputes.
The jails of Aberdeen and adjoining towns were filled with strikers.
Picket lines were broken up and the pickets arrested. When the wives of
the strikers with babies in their arms, took the places of their
imprisoned husbands, the fire hose was turned on them with great force, in
many instances knocking them to the ground. Loggers and sawmill men alike
were unmercifully beaten. Many were slugged by mobs with pick handles,
taken to the outskirts of the city and told that their return would be the
occasion of a lynching. At one time an armed mob of business men dragged
nearly four hundred strikers from their homes or boarding houses, herded
them into waiting boxcars, sealed up the doors and were about to deport
them en masse. The sheriff, getting wind of this unheard-of proceeding,
stopped it at the last moment. Many men were badly scarred by beatings
they received. One logger was crippled for life by the brutal treatment
accorded him.
But the strikers won their demands and conditions were materially
improved. The Industrial Workers of the World continued to grow in numbers
and prestige. This event may be considered the beginning of the labor
movement on Grays Harbor that the lumber trust sought finally to crush
with mob violence on a certain memorable day in Centralia seven years
later.
Following the Aberdeen strike one or two minor clashes occurred. The
lumber workers were usually successful. During this period they were
quietly but effectually spreading One Big Union propaganda throughout the
camps and mills in the district. Also they were organizing their fellow
workers in increasing numbers into their union. The lumber trust, smarting
under its last defeat, was alarmed and alert.
[Illustration: Bert Faulkner
American. Logger. 21 years of age. Member of the Industrial Workers of the
World since 1917. Was in the hall when raid occurred. Faulkner personally
knew Grimm, McElfresh and a number of others who marched in the parade. He
is an ex-soldier himself. The prosecution used a great deal of pressure to
make this boy turn state's evidence. He refused stating that he would tell
nothing but the truth. At the last moment he was discharged from the case
after being held in jail four months.]
A Massacre and a New Law
But no really important event occurred until 1916. At this time the union
loggers, organized in the Industrial Workers of the
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