Chapter VII: The Defense (2)

E. Carl Pearson, Snohomish County Treasurer, rather unwillingly corroborated the testimony of ex-deputies Luke and Plymale in regard to the actions of McRae at Beverly Park.

The witness chair seemed almost to swallow the next nine witnesses who were boys averaging about twelve years in age. These lads had picked up shells on and beneath the dock to keep as mementos of the "Battle." Handfuls of shells of various sizes and description, from revolver, rifle and shotgun, intermingled with rifle clips and unfired copper-jacketed rifle cartridges, were piled upon the clerk's desk as exhibits by these youthful witnesses. After the various shells had been classified by L. B. Knowlton, an expert in charge of ammunition sales for the Whiton Hardware Company of Seattle for six years, the boys were recalled to the stand to testify to the splintered condition of the warehouses, their evidence proving that a large number of shots had been fired from the interior of the warehouses directly thru the walls. The boys who testified were Jack Warren, Palmer Strand, Rollie Jackson, William Layton, Eugene Meives, Guy Warner, Tom Wolf, Harvey Peterson, and Roy Jensen. Veitch, by this time thoroly disgusted with the turn taken by the case, excused these witnesses without even a pretense of cross-examination.

Completely clinching this link in the evidence against the citizen deputies was the testimony of Miss Lillian Goldthorpe and her mother, Hannah Goldthorpe. Miss Goldthorpe, waitress in the Commercial Club dining room, picked up some rifle shells that had fallen from the rifles stacked in the office, and also from the pocket of one of the hunting coats lying on the floor. She took these home to her mother who afterward turned them over to Attorney Moore. She also identified certain murderous looking blackjacks as being the same as those stored in the Club. It is hardly necessary to state that the open-shop advocates who continually prate about the "right of a person to work when and where they please" were not slow about taking away Lillian's right to work at the Commercial Club after she had given this truthful testimony!

James Hadley, I. W. W. member on the Verona, told how he had dived overboard to escape the murderous fire and had been the only man in the water to regain a place on the boat.

"I saw two go overboard and I didn't see them any more," said Hadley. "Then I saw another man four feet from me and he seemed to be swimming all right, and all of a sudden he went down and I never saw him any more. I was looking right at him and he just closed his eyes and sank."

Mario Marino, an 18 year old member of the I. W. W., then told of the serious wounds he had received on the boat. He was followed by Brockman B. Armstrong, another member of the union, who was close to the rail on the port side of the boat. He saw a puff of smoke slightly to the rear of McRae directly after the sound of the first shot. A rifle bullet cut a piece out of his forehead and a second went thru his cap and creased his scalp, felling him to his knees. Owen Genty was shot thru the kidney on the one side of him, and Gust Turnquist was hit in the knee on the other. As he lay in the heap of wounded men a buckshot buried itself in the side of his head near the temple. As the Verona was pulling out he tried to crawl to shelter and was just missed by a rifle bullet from the dock situated to the south.

Archie Collins, who had previously testified about Beverly Park, was then called to the stand to tell of the trip to Everett and the trouble that resulted. Prosecutor Black displayed his usual asininity by asking in regard to preparations made by Verona passengers:

"What were they taking or not taking?"

"There might be two or three million things they were not taking," cut in Judge Ronald chidingly.

Black's examination of the various witnesses was aptly described by Publicity Agent Charles Ashleigh in the Industrial Worker, as follows:

"His examinations usually act as a soporific; heads are observed nodding dully thruout the courtroom and one is led to wonder whether, if he were allowed to continue, there would not be a sort of fairy-tale scene in which the surprised visitor to the court would see audience, jury, lawyers, judge, prisoner and functionaries buried in deep slumber accompanied only by a species of hypnotic twittering which could be traced eventually to a dignified youth who was lulled to sleep by his own narcotic burblings but continued, mechanically, to utter the same question over and over again."

During this dreamy questioning Black asked about the men who were cleaning up the boat on its return trip, with a view to having the witness state that there were empty shells all over the deck. His question was:

"Did you pick anything up from the floor?"

Instantly the courtroom was galvanized into life by Collin's startling answer:

"I picked up an eye, a man's eye."

The witness had lifted from the blood-stained deck a long splinter of wood on which was impaled a human eye!

The story of Fred Savery was typical of the unrecognized empire builders who make up the migratory class. Fred was born in Russia, his folks moving to Austria and then migrating to Canada when the lad was but two years old. At the age of nine he started at farm work and at twelve he was big enough to handle logs and work in the woods. Savery took the stand in his uniform of slavery, red mackinaw shirt, stagged-off pants, caulked shoes, and a battered slouch hat in his hand. The honest simplicity of his halting French-Canadian speech carried more weight than the too smooth flowing tales told by the well drilled citizen deputies on whom the prosecution depended for conviction.

Cooley dwelt at great length on the constant travel of this witness, a feature incidental to the life of every migratory worker. Even the judge tired of these tactics and told the prosecution that there was no way to stop them from asking the interminable questions but it was merely a waste of time. But all of Cooley's dilatory tactics could not erase from the minds of the listeners the simple, earnest, sincere story Fred Savery told of the death of his fellow worker, Hugo Gerlot.

Charles Ashleigh was then placed upon the witness stand to testify to having been selected as one of the speakers to go to Everett on November 5th. He stated that he had gone over on the Interurban and had returned that afternoon at four o'clock. After the prosecution had interrogated him about certain articles published subsequent to the tragedy Ashleigh was excused.

To impeach the testimony of William Kenneth, wharfinger at the City Dock, the defense then introduced Peter Aikken of Everett. Following this witness Owen Genty, one of the I. W. W. men wounded on the Verona, gave an account of the affair and stated that the first shot came from a point just to the rear of the sheriff.

Raymond Lee, a youth of 19 years, told of having gone to Everett on the day of the Beverly Park affair in order to mail free speech pamphlets directly to a number of Everett citizens. He went to the dock at the time of the deportation, getting past the deputies on a plea of wanting to see his uncle, his youth and neat appearance not being at all in accord with the current idea of what an I. W. W. member looked like. Lee was cross-questioned at great length by Veitch. This witness told the story of the death of Abraham Rabinowitz on the Verona in these few, simple words:

"Rabinowitz was lying on top of me with his head on my leg. I felt my leg getting wet and I reached back to see what it was, and when I pulled my hand away it was covered with blood. He was shot in the back of the brain."

James McRoden, I. W. W. member who was on the Verona, gave corroborative testimony about the first shot having been from the dock.

James Francis Billings, one of the free speech prisoners, testified that he was armed with a Colts 41 revolver on the Verona, and shortly after the shooting started he went to the engineer of the boat and ordered him to get the Verona away from the dock. He threw the gun overboard on the return trip to Seattle. Black tried to make light of the serious injuries this witness had received at Beverly Park by asking him if all that he received was not a little brush on the shin. The witness answered:

"No sir. I had a black eye. I was beaten over both eyes as far as that is concerned. My arms were held out by one big man on either side and I was beaten on both sides. As Sheriff McRae went past me he said 'Give it to him good,' and when I saw what was coming I dropped in order to save my face, and the man on the left hand side kicked me from the middle of my back clear down to my heels, and he kept kicking me until the fellow on the right told him to kick me no more as I was all in. My back and my hip have bothered me ever since."

Black tried to interrupt the witness and also endeavored to have his answer stricken from the testimony but the judge answered his objection by saying:

"I told you to withdraw the question and you didn't do it."

Vanderveer asked Billings the question:

"Why did you carry a gun on the fifth of November?"

"I took it for my own personal benefit," replied Billings. "I didn't intend to let anybody beat me up like I was beaten on October 30th in the condition I was in. I was in bad condition at the time."

Harvey E. Wood, an employe of the Jamison Mill Company, took the stand and told of a visit made by Jefferson Beard to the bunkhouse of the mill company on the night of November 4th and stated that at the time there were six automatic shot guns and three pump guns in the place. These were for the use of James B. Reed, Neal Jamison, Joe Hosh, Roy Hosh, Walter S. Downs, and a man named McCortell. This witness had acted as a strikebreaker up until the time he was subpoenaed.

Two of the defendants, Benjamin F. Legg and Jack Leonard, fully verified the story told by Billings.

Leland Butcher, an I. W. W. member who was on the Verona, told of how he had been shot in the leg. When asked why he had joined the I. W. W. he answered:

"I joined the I. W. W. to better my own condition and to make the conditions my father was laboring under for the last 25 years, with barely enough to keep himself and family, a thing of the past."

Another of the defendants, Ed Roth, who had been seriously wounded on the Verona, gave an unshaken story of the outrage. Roth testified that he had been shot in the abdomen at the very beginning of the trouble and because of his wounded condition and the fact that there were wounded men piled on top of him he had been unable to move until some time after the Verona had left the dock. This testimony showed the absurdity of McRae's pretended identification of the witness. Roth was a member of the International Longshoremen's Association and had joined the I. W. W. on the day before the tragedy.

John Stroka, a lad of 18, victim of the deputies at Beverly Park and a passenger on the Verona, gave testimony regarding the men wounded on the boat.

The next witness was Ernest P. Marsh, president of the State Federation of Labor, who was called for the purpose of impeaching the testimony of Mayor Merrill and also to prove that Mrs. Frennette was a visitor at the Everett Labor Temple on the morning of November 5th, this last being added confirmation of the fact that Clyde Gibbons had committed perjury on the stand.

To the ordinary mind--and certainly the minds of the prosecution lawyers were not above the ordinary--the social idealist is an inexplicable mystery. Small wonder then that they could not understand the causes that impelled the next witness, Abraham Bonnet Wimborne, one of the defendants, to answer the call for fighters to defend free speech.

Wimborne, the son of a Jewish Rabbi, told from the witness stand how he had first joined the Socialist Party, afterward coming in contact with the I. W. W., and upon hearing of the cruel beating given to James Rowan, had decided to leave Portland for Everett to fight for free speech. Arriving in Seattle on November 4th, he took passage on the steamer Verona the next day.

Prosecutor Black asked the witness what were the preparations made by the men on the boat.

"Don't misunderstand my words, Mr. Black," responded Wimborne, "when I say prepared, I mean they were armed with the spirit of determination. Determined to uphold the right of free speech with their feeble strength; that is, I never really believed it would be possible for the outrages and brutalities to come under the stars and stripes, and I didn't think it was necessary for anything else."

"Then when these men left they were determined?" inquired Black.

"Yes, determined that they would uphold the spirit of the Constitution; if not, go to jail. There were men in Everett who would refuse the right of workingmen to come and tell the workers that they had a way whereby the little children could get sufficient clothing, sufficient food, and the right of education, and other things which they can only gain--how? By organizing into industrial unions, sir, that is what I meant. We do not believe in bloodshed. Thuggery is not our method. What can a handful of workers do against the mighty forces of Maxim guns and the artillery of the capitalist class?"

"Did you consider yourself a fighting member?" questioned Black.

"If you mean am I a moral fighter? yes; but physically--why, look at me! Do I look like a fighter?" said the slightly built witness.

"Did you or did you not expect to go to jail when you left Portland?" asked the prosecutor.

"My dear Mr. Black, I didn't know and I didn't care!" responded Wimborne with a shrug of his shoulders.

Wimborne joined the I. W. W. while in the Everett County Jail.

Michael J. Reilley, another of the defendants, testified as to the firing of the first shot from the dock and also gave the story of the death of Abraham Rabinowitz. Vanderveer asked him the question:

"Do you know why you are a defendant?"

"Yes, sir," replied Reilley, "because I didn't talk to them in the city jail in Seattle. I was never picked out."

Attorney H. D. Cooley was recalled to the stand and was made to admit that he was a member of the Commercial Club and a citizen deputy on the dock November 5th. He was asked by Vanderveer:

"Did you see any guns on the dock?"

"Yes sir."

"Did you see any guns fired on the dock?"

"Yes sir."

"Did you see any guns fired on the boat?"

"No sir."

"Did you see a gun on the boat?"

"I did not."

"You were in full view of the boat?"

"I was."

Yet the ethics of the legal profession are such that this attorney could justify his actions in laboring for months in an endeavor to secure, by any and all means, the conviction of the men on the boat!

Defendant Charles Black testified that McRae dropped his hand to his gun and pulled it just as one of the deputies fired from a point just behind the sheriff. Black ran down the deck and into the cabin, passing in front of the windows from which the deputies had sworn that heavy firing was going on.

Leonard Broman, working partner with Abraham Rabinowitz, then took the stand and told his story. When asked what were the benefits he received from having joined the I. W. W., the witness replied:

"They raised the wages and shortened the hours. Before I joined the I. W. W. the wages I received in Ellis, Kansas, was $3.00 for twelve hours and last fall the I. W. W. got $3.50 for nine hours on the same work."

Ex-deputy Charles Lawry told of various brutalities at the jail and also impeached McRae's testimony in many other particulars.

Dr. Grant Calhoun, who had attended the more seriously injured men who were taken from the Verona on its return to Seattle, told of the number and nature of the wounds that had been inflicted. On eight of the men examined he had found twenty-one serious wounds, counting the entrance and exit of the same bullet as only one wound. Veitch conducted no cross-examination of the witness.

Joe Manning, J. H. Beyers, and Harvey Hubler, all three of them defendants, gave their testimony. Manning told of having been seated in the cabin with Tracy when the firing commenced, after which he sought cover behind the smokestack and was joined by Tracy a moment later. Beyers identified Deputy Bridge as having stood just behind McRae with his revolver drawn as tho firing when the first shot was heard. This witness also corroborated the story of Billings in regard to demanding that the engineer take the boat away from the dock. Hubler verified the statements about conditions on the Verona and also told of being taken from his jail cell by force on an order signed by detective McLaren in an attempt to have him discharge the defense attorneys and accept an alleged lawyer from Los Angeles.

Harry Parker and C. C. England told of injuries sustained on the Verona, and John Riely stated there was absolutely no shooting from the cabin windows, that being impossible because the men on the boat had crowded the entire rail at that side.

Jerry L. Finch, former deputy prosecuting attorney of King County, gave impeaching testimony against Wm. Kenneth and Charles Tucker. Cooley asked this witness about his interviews with the different state's witnesses:

"If you talked with all of them, you would probably have something on all of them?"

The judge would not let Finch answer the question, but there is no doubt that Cooley had the correct idea about the character of the witnesses on his side of the case.

In detailing certain arrests Sheriff McRae had claimed that men taken from the shingleweavers' picket line were members of the I. W. W. B. Said was one of the men so mentioned. Said took the witness stand and testified that he was a member of the longshoremen's union and was not and had not been a member of the I. W. W.

J. G. Brown, president of the International Shingleweavers' Union, testified that the various men arrested on the picket line in Everett were either members of the shingle weavers' union or else were longshoremen from Seattle, none of the men named by McRae being members of the I. W. W. The testimony of Brown was also of such a nature as to be impeaching of the statements of Mayor Merrill on the witness stand.

Charles Gray, Robert Adams, and Joe Ghilezano, I. W. W. men on the Verona, then testified, Adams telling of having been shot thru the elbow, and Ghilezano giving the details of the way in which his kneecap had been shot off and other injuries received.

The murderous intentions of the deputies were further shown by the testimony of Nels Bruseth, who ran down to the shore to launch a boat and rescue the men in the water. He was stopped in this errand of mercy by the deputies.

Civil Engineer F. Whitwith, Jr., of the firm of Rutherford and Whitwith, surveyed the dock and the steamer Verona and made a report in court of his findings. His evidence clearly showed that there was rifle, shotgun and revolver fire of a wild character from the interior of the warehouses and from many points on the dock. He stated that there were one hundred and seventy-three rifle or revolver bullet marks, exclusive of the B-B and buckshot markings which were too numerous to count, on the Verona, these having come from the dock, the shore, and the Improvement Dock to the south. There were sixteen marks on the boat that appeared as tho they might have been from revolver fire proceeding from the boat itself. There were also small triangular shaped gouges in the planking of the dock, the apex of the triangles indicating that bullets had struck there and proceeded onward from the Klatawa slip to the open space on the dock where deputies had been stationed. The physical facts thus introduced were incontrovertible.

Defendant J. D. Houlihan gave positive testimony to the effect that he had not spoken privately with "Red" Doran in the I. W. W. hall on the morning of November 5th, that he had received no gun from Doran or anyone else, that he did not have the conversation which Auspos imputed to him, that he had no talk with Auspos on the return trip. All efforts to confuse this witness failed of their purpose.

In verification of the testimony about deputies firing on the Verona from the Improvement Company Dock the defense brought Percy Walker upon the stand. Walker had been cruising around the bay in a little gasoline launch and saw men armed with long guns, probably rifles or shotguns, leaning over a breastwork of steel pipes and firing in the direction of the Verona.

Lawrence Manning, Harston Peters, and Ed. J. Shapeero, defendants, told their simple straightforward stories of the "battle." Peters stated that as he lay under cover and heard the shots coming from the dock he "wished to Christ that he did have a gun." Shapeero told of the wounds he had received and of the way the uninjured men cared for the wounded persons on the boat.

Mrs. Joyce Peters testified that she had gone to Everett on the morning of November 5th in company with Mrs. Lorna Mahler. The reason she did not go on the Verona was because the trip by water had made Mrs. Mahler ill on previous occasions. She saw Mrs. Frennette in Everett only when they were on the same interurban car leaving for Seattle after the tragedy.

Albert Doninger, W. B. Montgomery and Japheth Banfield, I. W. W. men who were on the Verona, all placed the first shot as having come from the dock immediately after the sheriff had cried out "You can't land here."

N. Inscho, Chief of Police of Wenatchee, testified that during the time the I. W. W. carried on their successful fight for free speech in his city there were no incendiary fires, no property destroyed, no assaults or acts of violence committed, and no resistance to arrest.

H. W. Mullinger, lodging house proprietor, John M. Hogan, road construction contractor, Edward Case, railroad grading contractor, William Kincaid, alfalfa farmer, and John Egan, teamster, all of North Yakima and vicinity, were called as character witnesses for Tracy, the defendant having worked with or for them for a number of years.

The defense followed these witnesses with Oscar Carlson, the passenger on the Verona who had been fairly riddled with bullets. Carlson testified that he was not and never had been a member of the I. W. W., that he had gone to Everett with his working partner, Nordstrom, as a sort of an excursion trip, that he had purchased a one way ticket which was taken up by the captain after the boat had left Seattle, that he intended returning by way of the Interurban, and that the men on the boat were orderly and well behaved. He told of having gone to the very front of the boat as it pulled into Everett from which point he heard the first shot, which was fired from the dock. He fell immediately and while prostrate was struck with bullet after bullet. He then told of having entered suit against the Vashon Navigation Company for $50,000.00 on account of injuries received. Robert C. Saunders, of the law firm of Saunders and Nelson, then testified that he was handling the case for Carlson and had made out the affidavit of complaint himself and was responsible for the portion that alleged that a lawless mob were on the boat, Carlson having made no such statement to him at any time.

Charles Ashleigh was recalled to the stand to testify to having telephoned to the Seattle newspapers on November 4th, requesting them to send reporters to Everett the next day. He was followed on the stand by John T. Doran, familiarly known as "Red" on account of the color of his hair. Doran stated that he was the author of the handbill distributed in Everett prior to the attempted meeting of November 5th. He positively denied having given a gun to Houlihan or anyone else on November 5th. Upon cross-examination he said that he was in charge of the work of checking the number of men who went on the Verona to Everett, and had paid the transportation of the men in a lump sum.

As the next to the last witness on its side of the long-drawn out case the defense placed on the stand the defendant, Thomas H. Tracy. The witness told of having been one of a working class family, too large to be properly cared for and having to leave home and make his own way in the world before he was eleven years old. From that time on he had followed farming, teaming and construction work in all parts of the west, his bronzed appearance above the prison pallor giving evidence of his outdoor life.

Tracy told of having been secretary of the I. W. W. in Everett for a short time, that being the only official position he had ever held in the organization. He explained his position on the boat at the time it docked, stating that the first shot apparently came from the dock and struck close to where he was sitting. Immediately the boat listed and threw him away from the window, after which he sought a place of safety behind the smokestack. He denied having been in any way a party to a conspiracy to commit an act of violence, or to kill anyone.

"You are charged here, Mr. Tracy," said Vanderveer, "with having aided and abetted an unknown man in killing Jefferson Beard. Are you guilty or not guilty?"

"I am not guilty," replied Tracy without a trace of emotion.

The cross-questioning of the defendant in this momentous case was conducted by citizen-deputy Cooley. His questions to the man whom he and his fellow conspirators on the dock had not succeeded in murdering were of the most trivial nature, clearly proving that arch-sleuth McLaren had been unable to discover or to manufacture anything that would make Tracy's record other than that of a plain, unassuming, migratory worker.

"Where did you vote last?" asked Cooley.

"I never voted," responded Tracy.

"Never voted in your life?" queried Cooley.

"No!" replied the defendant who for the time represented the entire migratory class. "I was never in one place long enough!"

Then, acting on the class theory that it is an honor to be a "globe-trotter" but a disgrace to be a "blanket-stiff," the prosecutor brought out Tracy's travels in minute detail. This examination of the railroad construction worker brought home to the listeners the truth of the little verse:

"He built the road;
With others of his class he built the road;
Now o'er its weary length he packs his load,
Chasing a Job, spurred on by Hunger's goad,
He walks and walks and walks and walks,
And wonders why in Hell he built the road!"

Then there hobbled into the court room on crutches a stripling with an empty trouser leg, his face drawn with suffering, and who was able to get into the witness chair only by obviously painful efforts with the assistance of Vanderveer and Judge Ronald. This was Harry Golden, whose entire left leg had been amputated after having been shattered by a high-power rifle bullet fired by a "law and order" deputy.

Golden stated that he had been born in Poland twenty-two years before, and had come to the United States at the age of sixteen. He was asked:

"Why did you come to this country?"

"I came to the United States," said the witness, "because it is supposed to be a free country."

"We object to that as immaterial!" cried prosecutor Veitch.

The witness described the firing of the first shot and told of his attempts to find a place of safety. He said he was wounded in the hand as he attempted to climb into a life boat. He remained on the starboard side of the starboard life boat until the Verona had backed out into the bay. Then just as he was starting to raise up a rifle bullet struck his leg, taking a course thru the limb and emerging at the knee.

"That is on your left--?"

"On my left, yes, which I ain't got; I lost it!" said the witness.

"Did I understand you to say you stood up to see something before you were shot?" asked Veitch.

"Why, sure!" replied Golden contemptuously. "I had my two legs then."

Veitch wished to learn the exact location of the witness at the time he was shot and to that end referred to the model with the remark:

"Look here. Here is the boat as it was at the dock."

"I don't like to look at it!" said Golden heatedly. "I lost my leg on that boat!"

The witness was in evident pain during the examination, having just had a hospital treatment applied to his raw stump, and was rather irritable as a consequence. He answered several questions rather sharply and proceeded to explain his answers. At one of these interruptions Judge Ronald exclaimed to the witness angrily:

"When he asks you a question answer yes or no! If you want to live in this country try and live like an American!"

"I take an exception to Your Honor's remarks!" said Moore emphatically.

The judge grudgingly allowed an exception to his uncalled for statement.

In concluding his examination Veitch asked the witness:

"What is your name in Polish?"

"I am not Polish; I am a Jew," replied Golden. "Well, what is your family name in Poland?" asked the prosecutor.

"Goldenhaul, or something like that. Now I call myself Golden. When we come to this country--."

"Never mind," interposed Veitch hurriedly.

"When we come to this country for good luck we always change the name, you know," finished Golden, and added bitterly, "I sure did have good luck!"

This ended the case in chief for the defense, the marshalling of such a mass of testimony from a host of disinterested witnesses, men, women and children, putting it on an entirely different footing from the prejudiced testimony brought forward by the prosecution.

In rebuttal of testimony produced by the defense the prosecution introduced a series of witnesses. As in their case in chief every one of the parties who testified were in some way concerned in the case as deputies, jailers, police officers, dance hall habitues, detectives, and the like. The witnesses were W. P. Bell, Dr. F. R. Hedges, E. E. Murphy, Charles Hall, Rudolph Weidaur, W. J. Britt, Percy Ames, Harry Blackburn, Reuben Westover, Harry Groger, W. M. Maloney, Albert Burke, W. R. Conner, A. E. Andrews, David D. Young, Howard Hathaway, George Leonard Mickel, Paul Hill, E. C. Mony, B. H. Bryan, all of whom were deputies, D. C. Pearson, W. H. Bridge, and "Honest" John Hogan, all three jailers and deputies, Robert C. Hickey, city jailer, David Daniels and Adolph Miller, police officers, Charles Manning and J. T. Rogers, personal friends of McRae, Oscar Moline, dance hall musician, Albert McKay, of the Ocean Food Products Company located on the Everett Improvement Dock, T. J. McKinnon, employe of McKay, R. B. Williams, contractor, John Flynn, agent Everett Improvement Dock, W. W. Blain and F. S. Ruble, secretary and bookkeeper respectively of the Commercial Club and also deputies, A. E. Ballew, Great Northern depot agent, H. G. Keith, Great Northern detective, Charles Auspos, who was shown to be in receipt of favors as state's witness, and George Reese, Pinkerton informer and "stool pigeon."

One deputy, H. S. Groger, stated on cross-examination that he continuously fired at a man on the boat who appeared to be trying to untie the spring line. Outside of this evidence of a desire for wholesale slaughter nothing developed of sufficient importance to warrant the production of sur-rebuttal witnesses, except in the testimony of Auspos and Reese.

Auspos testified that defendant Billings in the presence of John Rawlings had stated in the Everett County jail that he had a gun that made a noise like a cannon. This was intended to controvert the testimony of Billings.

Reese related a conversation that Tracy was alleged to have carried on in his presence on the Verona as it was bound for Everett. He stated that a launch was seen approaching and someone remarked that it was probably coming to head them off, to which Tracy replied "Let them come; they will find we are ready for them, and we will give them something they are not looking for." This was intended as impeachment of Tracy.

Cross-examination of this informer brought out the fact that he was a Pinkerton agent at the time he was holding the office of delegate to the Central Labor Council of the American Federation of Labor. Reese stated that he was employed on the waterfront during the longshoremen's strike with instructions to "look for everybody who was pulling the rough stuff, such as threatening to burn or attempting to burn warehouses, and shooting up non-union workers, and beating them up and so forth." He had been in the employ of the Pinkerton Agency for six weeks this last time before he was ordered to go down and join the I. W. W. He stated in answer to a question by Vanderveer:

"I was instructed to go down there and find out who these fellows were that was handling this phosphorus and pulling off this sabotage and the only way I could find out was to get a card and get in and get acquainted with them."

Attorney Moore in the absence of the jury offered to prove that Reese had practically manufactured this job for himself by promoting the very things he was supposed to discover. Moore stated some of the things he would prove if permitted by the court:

"That on or about August 1st Reese went to one J. M. Wilson, an official of the longshoremen's union, and endeavored to get $10.00 with which to buy dynamite to blow up a certain city dock; that on September 20th the witness gave Percy May, a member of the longshoremen's union, a bottle of phosphorus with instructions to start a fire at Pier 5; that in the month of July the witness opposed a settlement of the longshoremen's strike and when members of the union argued that they could remain out no longer as they had no money, Reese clapped his pockets and said, 'you fellows wouldn't be starving if you had the nerve that I have got. Why don't you go out and get it, take it off the scabs the way I do;' that in September Feinberg had to make Reese leave the speaker's stand in Everett because he was talking on matters harmful to industrial union propaganda; that on November 4th the witness went to the place where Feinberg was employed and left a suit of clothes to be pressed, saying to Feinberg, after he had ascertained that Feinberg was thinking of going to Everett on the following day, "mark the bill 'paid' so I will have a receipt if you don't come back;" that on August 16th, the day before the big dock fire in Seattle, Reese went to the down-town office of the same dye works in which Walker C. Smith was manager and in charge of the purchase of chemicals and tried to get Smith to purchase for him some carbon disulphide to be used in connection with phosphorus; that in the month of November in the Labor Temple, in the presence of Sam Sadler, Reese had said to Albert Brilliant that if the longshoremen had any guts they would go out with guns and clean up the scabs on the waterfront; and that Reese tried to get other men to co-operate with him in a scheme to capture a Government boat lying in the Sound during the progress of the longshoremen's strike."

The court refused to allow the defense to go into these matters so the only showing of the true character of Reese was confined to examination as to the perjury he had committed in his initial sworn statement to the defense.

The sur-rebuttal of the defense occupied but a few minutes. It was admitted that Mr. Garver, the court reporter, would swear that Reese had made an initial statement to the defense counsel and that the same had been taken down stenographically and sworn to. Charles Tennant, captain of the detective force of the Seattle police department, testified to having telephoned to the sheriff's office in Everett on November 5th to give the information that a boatload of I. W. W. men had left for Everett. He did not describe the body of men in any way and had not said that they were armed. This was for the purpose of showing that somewhere between the time that Jefferson Beard received the message and the time it was transmitted to the deputies some one had inserted the statement that the men on the boat were heavily armed. John Rawlings, defendant, testified that no such conversation as that related by Auspos had occurred in the presence of defendant Billings. Thomas H. Tracy denied making the threats ascribed to him by Reese, and this closed the hearing of evidence in the case.

Outside the courtroom on the day the last of the evidence was introduced there was in progress one of the largest demonstrations of Labor ever held in the Pacific Northwest. The date was May first, and International Labor Day was celebrated by the united radicals of the entire city and surrounding district. Meeting at the I. W. W. hall at 10:30 in the morning, thousands of men and women fell into a marching line of fours, a committee pinning a red rose or carnation on each marcher. Fifteen solid blocks of these marchers, headed by Wagner's Band, then wended their way thru the streets to Mount Pleasant Cemetery and grouped themselves around the graves of Baran, Gerlot and Looney--Labor's martyred dead.

There, upon the hillside, in accordance with his final wishes, the ashes of Joe Hill were scattered to the breeze, and with them were cast upon the air and on the graves beneath, the ashes of Jessie Lloyd and Patrick Brennan, two loyal fighters in the class struggle who had died during the year just passed.

A fitting song service, with a few simple words by speakers in English, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian and Italian, in commemoration of those who had passed away, completed the tribute to the dead.

Nor were the living forgotten! The great crowd drifted from the graveside, but hundreds of them reassembled almost automatically and marched to the King County jail. Standing there, just outside of the very heart of the great city, the crowd, led by the I. W. W. choir, sang song after song from the revolutionary hymnal--the little red song book, each song being answered by one from the free speech prisoners confined in the jail. The service lasted until late in the day and, to complete the one labor day that is as broad as the world itself, a meeting was held in one of the largest halls of the city. At this meeting the final collection for the Everett Prisoners' Defense was taken and at the request of the imprisoned men one half of the proceeds was sent to aid in the liberation of Tom Mooney and his fellow victims of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association in San Francisco.

There remained but the reading of the instructions of the court and the addresses by the counsel for either side to complete this epoch making case and place it in the hands of the jury for their final verdict.