hem open and then twisted them out of shape. Taking a small
piece of gaspipe they disarranged the little doors that controlled the
locking system above each cell, and then demolished the entire system of
locks. Every bolt, screw and split pin was taken out and made useless.
While some were thus engaged others were busy getting the food supplies
which were stacked up in a corner just outside the tanks. When Sheriff
McCullogh finally arrived at the jail, some three hours later, he found
the prisoners calmly seated amid the wreckage eating some three hundred
pounds of corned beef they had obtained and cooked with live steam in
one of the bath tubs. Shaking his head sadly the sheriff remarked, "You
fellows don't go to the same church that I do." The deputy force worked
for hours in cleaning up the jail, and it took a gang of ironworkers
nine working days, at a cost of over $800.00, to repair the damage done
in twenty minutes. Twenty of the "hard-boiled Wobblies" were removed to
Seattle shortly after this, but it was no trouble for the men to gain
their demands from that time on. They had but to whisper the magic word
"battleship" to remind the jailers that the I. W. W. policy, as
expressed in a line in Virgil, was about to be invoked:

"If I cannot bend the powers above,
I will rouse Hell."

Lloyd Black, prosecuting attorney only by a political accident, soon
dropped his ideals and filled the position of prosecutor as well as his
limited abilities allowed, and it was apparent that he felt the hands of
the lumber trust tugging on the strings attached to his job and that he
had succumbed to the insidious influence of his associates. He called
various prisoners from their cells and by pleading, cajoling and
threatening in turn, tried to induce them to make statements injurious
to their case.

Fraudulently using the name of John M. Foss, a former member of the
General Executive Board of the I. W. W. and then actively engaged in
working for the defense, Black called out Axel Downey, a boy of
seventeen and the youngest of the free speech prisoners, and used all
the resources of his department to get the lad to make a statement.
Downey refused to talk to any of the prosecution lawyers or detectives
and demanded that he be returned to his cell. From that time on he
refused to answer any calls from the office unless the jail committee
was present. Nevertheless the name of Axel Downey was endorsed, with
several oth