Around Centralia are wooded hills; men have been beaten beneath them and lynched from their limbs.  The beautiful Chehalis River flows near by; Wesley Everest was left dangling from one of its bridges.  But Centralia is provokingly pretty for all that.  It is small wonder that the lumber trust and its henchmen wish to keep it all for themselves.

Well tended roads lead in every direction, bordered with clearings of worked out camps and studded with occasional tree stumps of great age and truly prodigious size.  At intervals are busy saw mills with thousands of feet of odorous lumber piled up in orderly rows.  In all directions stretches the pillared immensity of the forests.  The vistas through the trees seen enchanted rather than real—­unbelievable green and of form and depth that remind one of painted settings for a Maeterlinck fable rather than matter-of-fact timber land.

The High Priests of Labor Hatred

Practically all of this land is controlled by the trusts; much of it by the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, of which F.B.  Hubbard is the head.  The strike of 1917 almost ruined this worthy gentleman.  He has always been a strong advocate of the open shop, but during the last few years he has permitted his rabid labor-hatred to reach the point of fanaticism.  This Hubbard figures prominently in Centralia’s business, social and mob circles.  He is one of the moving spirits in the Centralia conspiracy.  The Eastern Railway and Lumber Company, besides large tracts of land, owns saw-mills, coal mines and a railway.  The Centralia newspapers are its mouthpieces while the Chamber of Commerce and the Elks’ Club are its general headquarters.  The Farmers’ & Merchants’ Bank is its local citadel of power.  In charge of this bank is a sinister character, one Uhlman, a German of the old school and a typical Prussian junker.  At one time he was an officer in the German army but at present is a “100% American”—­an easy metamorphosis for a Prussian in these days.  His native born “brother-at-arms” is George Dysart whose son led the posses in the man-hunt that followed the shooting.  In Centralia this bank and its Hun dictator dominates the financial, political and social activities of the community.  Business men, lawyers, editors, doctors and local authorities all kow-tow to the institution and its Prussian president.  And woe be to any who dare do otherwise!  The power of the “interests” is a vengeful power and will have no other power before it.  Even the mighty arm of the law becomes palsied in its presence.

[Illustration:  Lumberworkers Union Hall, Raided in 1918

The first of the two halls to be wrecked by Centralia’s terrorists.  This picture was not permitted to be introduced as evidence of the conspiracy to raid the new hall.  Judge Wilson didn’t want the jury to know anything about this event.]