treachery and double-dealing among associated employers; and with
extortion and coercion of the actual workers in the lumber industry by
any and every means from the "robbersary" company stores to the
commission of deliberate murder.

No sooner had the larger battles among the lumber barons ended in the
birth of the lumber trust than there arose a still greater contest for
control of the industry. Lumberjack engaged lumber baron in a struggle
for industrial supremacy; on the part of the former a semi-blind groping
toward the light of freedom and for the latter a conscious striving to
retain a seat of privilege. Nor can the full history of that struggle be
written here, for the end is not yet, but no one who has read the past
rightly can doubt the ultimate outcome. That history, when finally
written, will recite tales of heroism and deeds of daring and unassuming
acts of bravery on the part of obscure toilers beside which the vaunted
prowess of famous men will seem tawdry by comparison. Today the
perspective is lacking. Time alone will vindicate the rebellious workers
in their fight for freedom. From all this travail and pain is to be born
an Industrial Democracy.

The lumber industry dominated the whole life of the Northwest. The
lumber trust had absolute sway in entire sections of the country and
held the balance of power in many other places. It controlled Governors,
Legislatures and Courts; directed Mayors and City Councils; completely
owned Sheriffs and Deputies; and thru threats of foreclosure, blackmail,
the blacklist and the use of armed force it dominated the press and
pulpit and terrorized many other elements in each community. The sworn
testimony in the greatest case in labor history bears out these
statements. Out of their own mouths were the lumber barons and their
tools condemned. For, let it be known, the great trial in Seattle,
Wash., in the year 1917, was not a trial of Thomas H. Tracy and his
co-defendants. It was a trial of the lumber trust, a trial of so-called
"law and order," a trial of the existing method of production and
exchange and the social relations that spring from it,--and the verdict
was that Capitalism is guilty of Murder in the First Degree.

To get even a glimpse into the deeper meaning of the case that developed
from the conflict at Everett, Wash., it is necessary to know something
of the lives of the migratory workers, something of the vital necessity
of free speech to the working