be constantly planning to do.  Statements from the lips of General Wood and young Roosevelt to the effect that citizens should not argue with Bolshevists but meet them “head on” were very conspicuously displayed on all occasions.  Any addle-headed mediocrity, in or out of uniform, who had anything particularly atrocious to say against the labor movement in general or the “radicals” in particular, was afforded every opportunity to do so.  The papers were vying with one another in devising effectual, if somewhat informal, means of dealing with the “red menace.”

Supported by, and partly the result of this barrage of lies, misrepresentation and incitation, came the period of attempted repression by “law”.  This was probably the easiest thing of all because the grip of Big Business upon the law-making and law-enforcing machinery of the nation is incredible.  At all events a state’s “criminal syndicalism law” had been conveniently passed and was being applied vigorously against union men, A.F. of L. and I.W.W. alike, but chiefly against the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union, No. 500, of the Industrial Workers of the World, the basic lumber industry being the largest in the Northwest and the growing power of the organized lumberjack being therefore more to be feared.

[Illustration:  His Uncle Planned It

Dale Hubbard, killed in self-defense by Wesley Everest, Armistice Day, 1919.  F. Hubbard, a lumber baron and uncle of the dead man, is held to have been the instigator of the plot in which his nephew was shot.  Hubbard was martyrized by the lumber trust’s determination “to let the men in uniform do it.”]

No doubt the lumber interests had great hope that the execution of these made-to-order laws would clear up the atmosphere so far as the lumber situation was concerned.  But they were doomed to a cruel and surprising disappointment.

A number of arrests were made in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and even Nevada.  Fifty or sixty men all told were arrested and their trials rushed as test cases.  During this period from April 25th to October 28th, 1919, the lumber trust saw with chagrin and dismay each of the state cases in turn either won outright by the defendants or else dismissed in the realization that it would be impossible to win them.  By October 28th George F. Vanderveer, chief attorney for the defense, declared there were not a single member of the I.W.W. in custody in Washington, Idaho or Montana under this charge.  In Seattle, Washington, an injunction was obtained restraining the mayor from closing down the new Union hall in that city under the new law.  Thus it appeared that the nefarious plan of the employers and their subservient lawmaking adjuncts, to outlaw the lumber workers Union and to penalize the activities of its members, was to be doomed to an ignominious failure.

Renewed Efforts—­Legal and Otherwise