Strange Silence m Seattle

...The cowed and meek...

...Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong And dare not speak1...

...States of the Union STRANGE SILENCE IN SEATTLE BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Seattle They closed another mill last month in Everett, the little lumber town north of here where the Wobbhes once sang up a storm to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, For the union makes us strong' But that was more than half a century ago In those days the Wobbhes' red-and-black flag—the official emblem of the International Workers of the World—waved over many a Western milltown, proclaiming One Big Union and promising an eight-hour day Now, there were no Wobbhes around to kick up a fuss, no Big Jim Thompson, that muscular orator from Puget Sound who in less button-down times could be counted on to fire up a crowd "The very people who are abusing the IWW today," he had thundered in 1916, "if they lived m the days of our forefathers, would have been licking the boots of King George " It was the year of "bloody Sunday" in Everett Thousands of Wobbhes from as far away as Boston had hopped freights and boats to lend their support to the striking loggers being clubbed and arrested by police hirelings of the mills The Verona docked at Everett on Sunday, November 5, with everyone on board smging "Hold the Fort for we are coming/ union men be strong i" Acccordmg to Ralph Chaplin, the Wobbhes' poet laureate and songwriter, their song "was interrupted with a burst of gunfire from the Everett dock and shore There was a moment of panic on board the Verona as bodies slumped to the deck or fell overboard to drift out to sea " Five IWW men died that day, 31 were wounded On the attacking side two were killed and 16 wounded, all apparent victims of stray fire from their own ranks The sheriff in Everett arrested 294 Wobbhes on charges of murder, but no Wobbly was ever convicted They're all dead now, or vanished The IWW closed its Seattle office in 1957, having discovered that the only visitors were old men and occasional souvenir hunters willing to shell out a quarter for The Little Red Song Book, a slender collection of awkward, militant, heartbreaking rhymes Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth he?Dust unto dust?The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die, As all men must, Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell?Too strong to strive?Each in his steel-bound coffin of a cell, Buried alive, That song of Chaplm's was written from a cell in Leavenworth "Working people," he later mourned, "have a way of forgetting the struggles and sacrifices that made possible the improved conditions they enjoy today " When the mill closed last month the union was silent AD that remained were a few tired Weyer-hauser workers patiently awaitmg their severance workers resigned to closure of mill, noted the Seattle Post-lnlelhgencer, and that was that Closure is getting to be an old story in this part of the country, where the unemployment needle seems stuck at 16 per cent The lumber industry is dying, a victim of its own rapacious axe (and of new river antipollution laws forcing mills either to clean up or shut down) Meanwhile, the aerospace industry, which for years had been riding the crest of Pentagon expansion, has of late fallen on its face Engineers wearing frayed white collars line up at the welfare window This year more than 100,000 jobless persons m the state, having been too long on relief, will become ineligible for unemployment benefits In days gone by that statistic alone would have presaged certain rebellion Nowadays the unions are soft and discreet A few weeks ago when the Federal wage-price board rejected proposals for a 12 per cent wage increase to aerospace workers, protests from union leaders were barely audible It is true that the board later consented to an 8 per cent rise, but that action seemed less a consequence of union pressure than of common decency among the board members The irony is that Seattle was formerly a hotbed of labor activism "There are 47 states," James Farley once complained when he was Postmaster, "and the soviet of Washington " Seattle is the only city in the United States ever to have brought off a general stake—a total shutdown of local industry and services lasting six days and involving 60,000 workers More irony The strike was to protest a Federal wage freeze It began in the shipyards on February 6, 1919, and lasted through Lincoln's birthday The U S Shipbuilding Adjustment Board had announced a new, uniform nationwide wage scale which failed to take into account the higher cost of living west of the Rockies Pacific Coast workers appealed to the board for a more generous formula?8 a day for skilled workers, $5 50 for unskilled laborers, and a 44-hour week Their demands were turned down On January 21 the shipyard workers in Seattle walked out The next day the strikers asked the Seattle Central Labor Council to call its members out in sympathy The Council put it up to the individual unions, and to everyone's surprise the unions voted to strike The reason, according to Murray Morgan in his superb Seattle history, Skid Road, was that most of the leaders were in Chicago attending a rally while the rank and file voted "The carpenters, perhaps the most conservative of all unions, voted to strike," notes Morgan "So did the typographers So did the musicians and the longshoremen, the stagehands and the millworkers, the hotel maids and the teamsters One after another, 110 unions voted to strike The Wobbhes were not represented on the Central Labor Council, but they sent delegates to applaud the strike votes, the Japanese unions, kept off the Council by racial restrictions, sent delegates to say they'd strike too " Two days before the walkout, a young militant journalist, Anna Louise Strong, wrote an editorial for the Union Record, labor's official voice in Seattle "There will be many cheering," she wrote of the stnke-to-be, "and there will be some who fear Both these emotions are useful, but not too much of either We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by Labor in this country, a move which will lead NO ONE KNOWS WHERE " In the end it led nowhere The workers grew bored No pickets were beaten up, no one was arrested There were no martyrs On the fourth day some of the hotel maids and typographers went back to work, by the seventh day, Lincoln's birthday, the first general strike in America was over—but not its consequences Anna Louise Strong was arrested and indicted for sedition (The charge, based mainly on her "No One Knows Where" editorial, was later dropped ) The following year labor's radical candidate for mayor was easily defeated by a conservative Republican The reaction had set in, and Seattle's Establishment could feel reassured "Seattle is safe against the dictatorship of the proletariat," a commentator wrote Anna Louise Strong went to Moscow and remained there 29 years, only to be expelled as a turncoat and spy When she returned to Seattle?before settling in Communist China, where she died nearly two years ago —her hometown had changed "It was a middle-class town now," Murray Morgan observes, "a town of high wages and white collars, a prosperous town dominated by a fat, bland, tough labor leader named Dave Beck " The last stanza to Chaplin's Leavenworth song is But tather mourn the apathetic thi ong...