Few American radical organizations have been so feared as the “Wobblies,” the Industrial Workers of the World. The Wobblies’ ideology was an amalgam of revolution and industrial unionism; they seldom discussed bread-and-butter issues—higher wages or shorter hours. They never had a large following, except in certain areas, particularly the Northwest, and for certain types of laborers, particularly migrant lumbermen. The local businessmen of the West and Northwest often organized against the Wobblies, most often by denying them permission to hold street meetings. In return, the Wobblies organized “Free Speech” fights. Large numbers of Wobblies would go to a town, hold meetings, and get arrested until they literally filled the jails to overflowing. Often this tactic brought about some sort of accommodation with local officials. There were many such battles in California in the early 1900’s, and the “Free Speech” campaign spread to the Northwest, to Spokane in 1909, and Aberdeen, Washington, in 1911.
The resistance the Wobblies encountered when they tried to help out a shingle weavers’ strike in Everett, Washington, in August 1916, was particularly fierce. Street speakers were arrested and put on boats to Seattle. The Wobblies rented a launch and tried to land in the town but were caught by armed deputies organized by the town officials and the business leaders of the Commercial Club, and deported. On October 30 they tried again. Armed deputies met their boat and beat the Wobblies with clubs and gun butts, then drove them to the outskirts of town and forced them to run a gauntlet of blackjacks. When local citizens organized a meeting to protest the violence, the Wobblies announced that they would attend. They organized another expedition, 280 strong, hired the steamer Verona, and headed for Everett. This time seven men were killed and many injured.
The following description was written by Walker C. Smith: “The Voyage of the Verona,” International Socialist Review, XVII (1916–17), 340–6. See also Robert L. Tyler: Rebels of the Woods: The I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest (1967), 62–84; Melvyn Dubofsky: We Shall Be All (1969); and Norman H. Clark: “Everett, 1911, and After,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, LVII (April 1966), 57–64.
Five workers and two vigilantes dead, thirty-one workers and nineteen vigilantes wounded, from four to seven workers missing and probably drowned, two hundred ninety-four men and three women of the working class in jail—this is the tribute to the class struggle in Everett, Wash., on Sunday, November 5. Other contributions made almost daily during the past six months have indicated the character of the Everett authorities, but the protagonists of the open shop and the antagonists of free speech did not stand forth in all their hideous nakedness until the tragic trip of the steamer Verona. Not until then was Darkest Russia robbed of its claim to “Bloody Sunday.”
Early Sunday morning on November 5 the steamer Verona started for Everett from Seattle with 260 members of the Industrial Workers of the World as a part of its passenger list. On the steamer Calista, which followed, were 38 more I.W.W. men, for whom no room could be found on the crowded Verona. Songs of the One Big Union rang out over the waters of Puget Sound, giving evidence that no thought of violence was present.
It was in answer to a call for volunteers to enter Everett to establish free speech and the right to organize that the band of crusaders were making the trip. They thought their large numbers would prevent any attempt to stop the street meeting that had been advertised for that afternoon at Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues in handbills previously distributed in Everett. Their mission was an open and peaceable one.…
When the singers, together with the other passengers, crowded to the rail so they might land the more quickly, Sheriff McRae called out to them:
“Who is your leader?”
Immediate and unmistakable was the answer from every I.W.W.:
“We are all leaders!”
Angrily drawing his gun from its holster and flourishing it in a threatening manner, McRae cried:
“You can’t land here.”
“Like hell we can’t!” came the reply from the men as they stepped toward the partly thrown off gang plank.
A volley of shots sent them staggering backward and many fell to the deck. The waving of McRae’s revolver evidently was the prearranged signal for the carnage to commence.
The few armed men on board, according to many of the eye-witnesses, then drew revolvers and returned the fire, causing consternation in the ranks of the cowardly murderers barricaded on the dock. Until the contents of their revolvers were exhausted, the workers stood firm. They had no ammunition in reserve. The unarmed men sought cover but were subjected to a veritable hail of steel jacketed soft-nosed bullets from the high power rifles of the vigilantes. The sudden rush to the off-shore side of the boat caused it to list to about thirty degrees. Bullets from the dock to the south and from the scab tugboats moored there apparently got in their destructive work, for a number of men were seen to fall overboard and the water was reddened with their blood. No bodies were recovered when the harbor was dragged the next day. On the tugboat Edison, the scab cook, a mulatto, fired shot after shot with careful and deadly aim at the men on the off-shore side of the boat, according to the Pacific Coast Longshoreman, the official I.L.A. paper. This man had not even a deputy badge to give a semblance of legality to his murders. That the gunmen on the two docks and on the scab boats were partly the victims of their own cross fire is quite likely.
After ten minutes of steady firing, during which hundreds of rounds of ammunition were expended, the further murder of unarmed men was prevented by the action of Engineer Ernest Skelgren, who backed the boat away from the dock with no pilot at the wheel. The vigilantes kept up their gunfire as long as the boat was within reach.
On a hilltop overlooking the scene thousands of Everett citizens witnessed the whole affair. The consensus of their opinion is that the vigilante mob started the affair and are wholly responsible.