The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1917-03-30
My Dear Miss Strong:

1t is my desire to throw a ray of
light on the terrible tragedy of Nov.
Is. / see by the Survey" you have
been misinformed in every particu-
lar. have never seen this maya
zine, that this clipping came from,
and 1 wonder what kind of pub
LEGATION it can be to accept an article
like that without seeking the right or
wrong of it, through the proper auth
critics, Mayor Merrill, Sheriff McRae
and the Commercial Club.
You also would have saved your
self the mistake of your life if you
had gone to the proper source. You
would find that our Everett citizens
are patriotic and law abiding peo-
pie, peaceful unless driven to des-
peration to protect the honor and
good name of our town, yes and our
property which was in constant dang
err The mill men just trembled
every night when they went to bed
for fear they would find their prop
erty destroyed when they got up the
morning.
1t is just dreadful to have a Chris
tian and God-fearing community
thrown into panic by lots of de-
graded foreign agitators. Nearly all
our Commercial Club are identified
with one church or another, and we
know our own people better than any
outsider and we know they were per-
fectly justified in Kidding our town of
a lot of vicious agitators and trouble
makers. We should not have waited
for them to start that regular reign
of terror, like they did on our city
dock. AS it is, we, a peace-loving
Christian community are to be taxed
to the limit to pay the cost of all the
trouble they have caused US. If our
militia had gotten down to the dock
in time we would have been saved
this expense. There would have been
no |. W. WIS left to prosecute. AS
it happened we could not get them
together until P. M. 1t helped US
to rest in security during the night
however.
Everett has never been the same
since. The town was Immediately di-
vided into two hostile camps. This
situation seemed to develop a lot of
!: hysterical people and they took sides
without stopping to inquire the right
or wrong of it.
In school one boy was whipping an
other if he found his sympathies on
the wrong side. Of course some of
the small children were called I. W.
WIS and nearly thrashed to death.
1t was very serious for the child, but
good lesson to the parents who
influence their children to champion
the cause of such a God-forsaken Or
ganization. If the truth were known
| do not believe one of those l. w.
WIS could answer a single question
in the Sunday School Church cate
chism, showing they had no early
| Christian training.
One very charitable Christian lady
remarked after hearing the volley of
bullets the day of the slaughter of
! our citizens, that that was too much
for her when it came to killing, but
if they could have been captured and
run into the tabernacle where Hart
and McGann were carrying on evan
gelistic meetings, they might have
been saved. She was the great ex-
= ception who did not believe in the
extreme penalty of the law. OF
course she did not know how they
condemned everything in religion and
politics that goes to make the back
bone of the country. Had they been
corralled in the tabernacle, they sure
: ly would have started something
there and it wouldn't have been GO
ing up the sawdust row either.
The idea of those brutal lawless
7 thugs having a soul to save. They
probably lost them so far back they
= can't remember. They spread their
). poisonous literature among those too
Z stupid to think, they won't work, and
3 they don't care for anything, or to
: possess anything but an old dirty
Z blanket and use box-car to sleep in,
Z and get most of their board in Jail
I and then kick about that. If they
want anything better why don't they
get out and earn it.
} My object in sending this letter is