There is only one reason why—­they were defending their own legal property against unlawful invasion and attack; they were defending the dwelling place of Britt Smith, their secretary.

And they had full right to defend their lives and that property and that home against violence or destruction; they had a right to use force, if necessary, to effect that defense.  The law gives them that right; and it accrues to them also from all of the wells of elementary justice.

The law says that when a man or group of men have reason to fear attack from superior numbers, they may provide whatever protection they may deem necessary to repel such an attack.  And it says also that if a man who is in bad company when such an attack is made happens to be killed by the defenders, those defenders are not to be considered guilty of that man’s death.

So they had the troops come, to blow bugles and drill in the streets where the jury could see; their power, however wielded, was great enough to cause Governor Hart to send the soldiers here without consulting the trial judge or the sheriff, whose function it was to preserve law and order here—­and you know, I am sure, that law and order were adequately preserved here before the troops came.

“Fearful of the Truth”

They tried the moth-eaten device of arresting our witnesses for alleged perjury, hoping to discredit those witnesses thus in your eyes because they knew they couldn’t discredit them in any regular nor legitimate way.

Fearful of the truth, the guilty ones at Centralia deliberately framed up evidence to save themselves from blame—­to throw the responsibility for the Armistice Day horror onto other men.  But they bungled the frame-up badly.  No bolder nor cruder fabrication has ever been attempted than the ridiculous effort to fasten the killing of Warren Grimm upon Eugene Barnett.

[Illustration:  Court Room in which the Farcical “Trial” Took Place

This garish room in the court house at Montesano was the scene of the attempted “judicial murder” that followed the lynching.  The judge always entered his chambers through the door under the word “Transgression”:  the jury always left through the door over which “Instruction” appears.  In this room the lumber trust attorneys attempted to build a gallows of perjured testimony on which to break the necks of innocent men.]

These conspirators were clumsy enough in their planning to drive the I.W.W. out of town; their intent was to stampede the marching soldiers into raiding the I.W.W. hall.  But how much more clumsy was the frame-up afterward—­the elaborate fixing of many witnesses to make it appear that Grimm was shot at Tower avenue and Second street when he actually was shot in front of the hall; and to make it appear that Ben Casagranda and Earl Watts were shot around the corner on Second street, when they were actually shot on Tower avenue, close to the front of the hall.