After Lempi’s death, Aino focused relentlessly on organizing. In mid-June, she boarded the train for Portland, still feeling the loss but also having a sense of urgency. She’d learned from the last failed strike that striking when prices were down was a bad idea. But now, because of the war in Europe, prices were climbing and owners were pulling in money. More important, there was full employment—no hungry, out-of-work loggers and mill workers needing to feed their families and therefore willing to scab. The IWW’s time was now.
Thirty miles north of Seattle, in Everett, shingle workers were striking at that moment, demanding a return to the 1914 wage scale they had conceded when prices were low. Forming a cartel called the Commercial Club and allying with local politicians and police, the mill owners were refusing to budge.
Aino arrived at the Portland IWW hall to be greeted by compatriots, friends she’d made in Nordland and Centralia. When she joined the small group of women folding pamphlets and getting a lunch buffet ready, one said sarcastically, “Well, if it isn’t our own Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from downriver.”
The women were cool. She was sure they all knew about her and Hillström, but because of his martyrdom they kept a lid on their stuffy morals. Aino joined a group of men talking and smoking outside on Burnside Street.
At the meeting, the IWWs decided to get involved with the strike in Everett, particularly since it seemed that the AF of L was getting all the publicity—and if the strike was a success, would also get the credit.
They decided to send Jim Rowland, one of their best, to Everett. Aino returned to Camp Three to focus on organizing the lower Columbia counties.
Throughout the summer and early fall, Rowland and other IWW organizers held meetings and rallies, but after several months there was still no progress. In late October, Rowland asked for volunteers to add some weight.
They were met by Sheriff McRae and several hundred armed, deputized citizens, who took the arriving Wobblies into the woods and nearly beat them to death. That enraged Wobblies from all over the West and on November 5, 250 Wobblies boarded a ferry in Seattle and sailed for Everett, just twenty miles north on Puget Sound. When they arrived, somebody fired a weapon.
The news of the Everett massacre hit Aino the next day like a sledgehammer to the abdomen. Five Wobblies, including two she knew, were killed, and one deputy. Twenty-seven Wobblies and twenty-four deputies were wounded. Seventy-four Wobblies were arrested for murder.
She grabbed the hatchet used to split kindling. Striding to one of the large stumps next to their shack, using both hands, she hammered it with the hatchet’s blunt end until exhaustion finally brought her back to her senses. She then screamed and buried the blade, leaving the hatchet for Jouka to work free.
She lost no time using her and the men’s outrage to start organizing the next strike for late spring.
While Aino was traveling daily, organizing from Nordland to Neawanna, loggers were traveling from as far away as Louisiana and North Carolina to find employment in the booming Northwest timber industry. They all needed to be fed. Rauha’s beef business boomed.
She’d started with five heifers in 1907, just after marrying Ilmari. She’d planted clover and alfalfa among the stumps left from logging. She fenced meadows with brush and when money was available from Sampo Manufacturing, she put up barbed wire, often by herself. The herd had grown to sixty head and even Rauha couldn’t keep up. She hired help. None stayed long. Rauha was a tough taskmaster. She asked no more of her helper than herself. The difference was that Rauha cut corners, often to the helper’s detriment. After a few weeks, the helper would demand better pay, be refused, and move on.
After Sunday dinner on a particularly cold and wet February day, Rauha’s issue came up in the sauna with the brothers. “She’s just too hard on the hired help,” Ilmari said.
Matti muttered a barely discernible, “Yoh.” With that one word, he managed to convey “I agree,” “I’m not surprised,” and “I told you so.”
Ilmari and Matti were lightly switching their own backs with branches, Ilmari on the bottom bench, Matti on the top one, from old habit. When Matti was little he had to prove he could take the heat better than his older brother.
“She doesn’t like Americans,” Ilmari said, “because they’re spoiled and don’t work like Finns. She doesn’t like Italians or Greeks or Bulgarians because they’re dirty. She certainly would never consider hiring an Indian or a Chinaman.”
“So, find her a good Finnish boy,” Matti said.
“Easier said than done,” Ilmari said. “If they can stand on two feet and breathe, they’ll be logging for better pay.”
Silence followed. Ilmari ladled water onto the glowing rocks in the fire pit. The sudden steam, hot and piercing right to the soul, made it momentarily impossible to talk.
Finally, Matti said, “I know someone. And he’s a Finn, but he was born here.”
“Who?” Ilmari asked.
“Heikki Ranta. We used to call him Kullerikki at Reder’s Camp, because trouble seemed to follow him everywhere. He was a whistle punk when I worked for Reder. He must be around nineteen or twenty now. People still call him Kullervo.”
“So why isn’t he working for you?”
“His mother used to box his ears,” Matti said. “Some nights he would return to Reder’s Camp and curl up on his bed with his hands on his ears, trying not to cry.”
The two brothers thought on this. Life was hard. Some people had it harder than others.
“He can’t hear in one ear,” Matti went on. “He’d be dead in a month if he went logging. Or someone else would be.”
“How would he be for helping Rauha?” Ilmari asked.
“He’s scrawny, but he’s scrappy and tough. Even when he was a kid, he’d fight grown men. He nearly killed a man at a dance when he was fifteen, some insult about his sisters growing up to be whores like their mother.”
“That’s sufficient cause,” Ilmari said. “The man he nearly killed?”
Matti smiled and shook his head. “A logger. Outweighed him by fifty pounds.”
“Humans outweigh cougars by fifty pounds. I’d bet on the cougar.”
“Yoh,” Matti said.
They pondered this for some time.
“Sounds like a hothead,” Ilmari said.
“Well, you’d have a temper if your father and mother both beat you,” Matti said.
Ilmari picked up a small branch and was lightly switching it on his back. The sweat glistened on his face glowing red from the coals. “A child has only two choices,” Ilmari mused aloud. “He can knuckle under, convince himself that being hit is love, or get angry and fight back. The first will make you crazy and the second will get you in jail.”
A week later, Rauha hired Kullervo for three bits a day plus room and board. Room was the sauna. It was the board that wasn’t nailed down. Kullervo expected logger-size meals; Rauha resented every potato.