e blasted crops, of an
almost sure disaster to the wheat-fields, and of the activities of the
I.W.W. Even the war, for the time being, gave place to the nearer
calamities impending.

Montana had taken drastic measures against the invading I.W.W. The
Governor of Idaho had sent word to the camps of the organization that
they had five days to leave that state. Spokane was awakening to the
menace of hordes of strange, idle men who came in on the westbound
freight-trains. The railroads had been unable to handle the situation.
They were being hard put to it to run trains at all. The train crews
that refused to join the I.W.W. had been threatened, beaten, shot at,
and otherwise intimidated.

The Chamber of Commerce sent an imperative appeal to representative
wheat-raisers, ranchers, lumbermen, farmers, and bade them come to
Spokane to discuss the situation. They met at the Hotel Davenport, where
luncheon was served in one of the magnificently appointed dining-halls
of that most splendid hotel in the West.

The lion of this group of Spokane capitalists was Riesinberg, a man of
German forebears, but all American in his sympathies, with a son already
in the army. Riesinberg was president of a city bank and of the Chamber
of Commerce. His first words to the large assembly of clean-cut,
square-jawed, intent-eyed Westerners were: "Gentlemen, we are here to
discuss the most threatening and unfortunate situation the Northwest was
ever called upon to meet." His address was not long, but it was
stirring. The Chamber of Commerce could provide unlimited means, could
influence and control the state government; but it was from the visitors
invited to this meeting, the men of the outlying districts which were
threatened, that objective proofs must come and the best methods of
procedure.

The first facts to come out were that many crops were ruined already,
but, owing to the increased acreage that year, a fair yield was
expected; that wheat in the Bend would be a failure, though some farmers
here and there would harvest well; that the lumber districts were not
operating, on account of the I.W.W.

Then it was that the organization of men who called themselves the
Industrial Workers of the World drew the absorbed attention of the
meeting. Depredations already committed stunned the members of the
Chamber of Commerce.

President Riesinberg called upon Beardsley, a prominent and intelligent
rancher of the southern wheat-belt. Beardsley sai