The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.  They were the men who made possible all things that came after and all things that are still to come.  They were the trail blazers.  It is easier to follow them than to have gone before them—­or with them.  They established the outposts of unionism in the wilderness of Industrial autocracy.  Their voices were the first to proclaim the burning message of Labor’s power, of Labor’s mission and of Labor’s ultimate emancipation.  Their breasts were the first to receive the blows of the enemy; their unprotected bodies were shielding the countless thousands to follow.  They were the forerunners of the solidarity of Toil.  They fought in a good and great cause; for without solidarity, Labor would have attained nothing yesterday, gained nothing today nor dare to hope for anything tomorrow.

[Illustration:  Seminary Hall

The Union hall looks out on this hill, with Tower avenue and an alley between.  It is claimed that loggers, among others Loren Roberts, Bert Bland and the missing Ole Hanson, fired at the attacking mob from this position.]

The Block House and the Union Hall

In the Northwest today the rebel lumberjack is a pioneer.  Just as our fathers had to face the enmity of the Indians, so are these men called upon to face the fury of the predatory interests that have usurped the richest timber resources of the richest nation in the world.  Just outside Centralia stands a weatherbeaten landmark.  It is an old, brown dilapidated block house of early days.  In many ways it reminds one of the battered and wrecked union halls to be found in the heart of the city.

The evolution of industry has replaced the block house with the union hall as the embattled center of assault and defense.  The weapons are no longer the rifle and the tomahawk but the boycott and the strike.  The frontier is no longer territorial but industrial.  The new struggle is as portentous as the old.  The stakes are larger and the warfare even more bitter.

The painted and be-feathered scalp-hunter of the Sioux or Iroquois were not more heartless in maiming, mutilating and killing their victims than the “respectable” profit-hunters of today—­the type of men who conceived the raid on the Union Hall in Centralia on Armistice Day—­and who fiendishly tortured and hanged Wesley Everest for the crime of defending himself from their inhuman rage.  It seems incredible that such deeds could be possible in the twentieth century.  It is incredible to those who have not followed in the bloody trail of the lumber trust and who are not familiar with its ruthlessness, its greed and its lust for power.