ood and Eugene Debs are behind steel bars
today for the same cause. The boys at Centralia were conspired against
because they too stood "for the solidarity of labor." It is simply lying
and camouflage to attempt to trace such persecutions to any other source.
These are things America will be ashamed of when she comes to her senses.
Such gruesome events are paralleled in no country save the Germany of
Kaiser Wilhelm or the Russia of the Czar.

This picture of labor persecution in free America--terrible but true--will
serve as a background for the dramatic history of the events leading up to
the climactic tragedy at Centralia on Armistice Day, 1919.

While in Washington...

All over the state of Washington the mobbing, jailing and tar and
feathering of workers continued the order of the day until long after the
cessation of hostilities in Europe. The organization had always urged and
disciplined its members to avoid violence as an unworthy weapon. Usually
the loggers have left their halls to the mercy of the mobs when they knew
a raid was contemplated. Centralia is the one exception. Here the outrages
heaped upon them could be no longer endured.

In Yakima and Sedro Woolley, among other places in 1918, union men were
stripped of their clothing, beaten with rope ends and hot tar applied to
the bleeding flesh. They were then driven half naked into the woods. A man
was hanged at night in South Montesano about this time and another had
been tarred and feathered. As a rule the men were taken unaware before
being treated in this manner. In one instance a stationary delegate of the
Industrial Workers of the World received word that he was to be
"decorated" and rode out of town on a rail. He slit a pillow open and
placed it in the window with a note attached stating that he knew of the
plan; would be ready for them, and would gladly supply his own feathers.
He did not leave town either on a rail or otherwise.

In Seattle, Tacoma and many other towns, union halls and print shops were
raided and their contents destroyed or burned. In the former city in 1919,
men, women and children were knocked insensible by policemen and
detectives riding up and down the sidewalks in automobiles, striking to
right and left with "billy" and night stick as they went. These were
accompanied by auto trucks filled with hidden riflemen and an armored tank
bristling with machine guns. A peaceable meeting of union men was being
dispersed.