now doing.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted
the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized
industry. They were the men who made possible all things that came after
and all things that are still to come. They were the trail blazers. It is
easier to follow them than to have gone before them--or with them. They
established the outposts of unionism in the wilderness of Industrial
autocracy. Their voices were the first to proclaim the burning message of
Labor's power, of Labor's mission and of Labor's ultimate emancipation.
Their breasts were the first to receive the blows of the enemy; their
unprotected bodies were shielding the countless thousands to follow. They
were the forerunners of the solidarity of Toil. They fought in a good and
great cause; for without solidarity, Labor would have attained nothing
yesterday, gained nothing today nor dare to hope for anything tomorrow.

[Illustration: Seminary Hall

The Union hall looks out on this hill, with Tower avenue and an alley
between. It is claimed that loggers, among others Loren Roberts, Bert
Bland and the missing Ole Hanson, fired at the attacking mob from this
position.]

The Block House and the Union Hall

In the Northwest today the rebel lumberjack is a pioneer. Just as our
fathers had to face the enmity of the Indians, so are these men called
upon to face the fury of the predatory interests that have usurped the
richest timber resources of the richest nation in the world. Just outside
Centralia stands a weatherbeaten landmark. It is an old, brown dilapidated
block house of early days. In many ways it reminds one of the battered and
wrecked union halls to be found in the heart of the city.

The evolution of industry has replaced the block house with the union hall
as the embattled center of assault and defense. The weapons are no longer
the rifle and the tomahawk but the boycott and the strike. The frontier is
no longer territorial but industrial. The new struggle is as portentous as
the old. The stakes are larger and the warfare even more bitter.

The painted and be-feathered scalp-hunter of the Sioux or Iroquois were
not more heartless in maiming, mutilating and killing their victims than
the "respectable" profit-hunters of today--the type of men who conceived
the raid on the Union Hall in Centralia on Armistice Day--and who
fiendishly tortured and hanged Wesley Everest for the crime