f semi-radical
workingmen at Mukilteo.

The mayor told of having been present at the arrest of several men taken
from a freight train at Lowell, just at the Everett city limits. Some of
these men were I. W. W.'s, and on the ground afterward there was said to
have been found some broken glass about which there was a smell of
phosphorus. The judge ruled out this evidence because there were other
than I. W. W. men present, no phosphorus was found on the men, and if
only one package were found it would not indicate a conspiracy but might
have been brought by an agent of the employers. This was the nearest
the prosecution came at any time in the trial in their attempt to
connect the I. W. W. with incendiary fires.

A tense moment in this sensational trial came during the testimony of
Mayor Merrill, when young Louis Skaroff was suddenly produced in court
and the question flashed at the cringing witness:

"Do you recognize this boy standing here? Do you recognize him, Louis
Skaroff?"

"I think I have seen him," mumbled the mayor.

"Let me ask you if on the 6th day of November at about ten o'clock at
night in a room in the City Hall at Everett where there was a bed room
having an iron bedstead in it, in the presence of the jailer, didn't you
have an interview with this man?"

Merrill denied having mutilated Skaroff's fingers beneath the casters of
the bed, but even the capitalist press reported that his livid face and
thick voice belied his words of denial.

And Prosecutor Lloyd Black remarked heatedly, "I don't see the
materiality of all this."

Merrill left the stand, having presented the sorriest figure among the
number of poor witnesses produced by the prosecution.

Carl Clapp, superintendent of the Municipal Waterworks at Everett, and
commander of one of the squads of deputies, followed with testimony to
the effect that sixty rifles from the Naval Militia were stored in the
Commercial Club on November 5th. At this juncture the hearing of further
evidence was postponed for a half day to allow Attorney Vanderveer to
testify on behalf of Mayor H. C. Gill in a case then pending in the
Federal Court.

On several other occasions Vanderveer was called to testify in this case
and there were times when it was thought that he also would be indicted
and brought to trial, yet with this extra work and the threat of
imprisonment hanging over him, Vanderveer never flagged in his keen
attention to the work of the defense. It