In the early summer of 1917 the strike started. Sweeping through the short
log country it spread like wild-fire over nearly all the Northwestern
lumber districts. The tie-up was practically complete. The industry was
paralyzed. The lumber trust, its mouth drooling in anticipation of the
many millions it was about to make in profits, shattered high heaven with
its cries of rage. Immediately its loyal henchmen in the Wilson
administration rushed to the rescue. Profiteering might be condoned,
moralized over or winked at, but militant labor unionism was a menace to
the government and the prosecution of the war. It must be crushed. For was
it not treacherous and treasonable for loggers to strike for living
conditions when Uncle Sam needed the wood and the lumber interests the
money? So Woodrow Wilson and his coterie of political troglodytes from the
slave-owning districts of the old South, started out to teach militant
labor a lesson. Corporation lawyers were assembled. Indictments were made
to order. The bloodhounds of the Department of "Justice" were unleashed.
Grand Juries of "patriotic" business men were impaneled and did their
expected work not wisely but too well. All the gun-men and stool-pigeons
of Big Business got busy. And the opera bouffe of "saving our form of
government" was staged.




Industrial Heretics and the White Terror



For a time it seemed as though the strikers would surely be defeated. The
onslaught was terrific, but the loggers held out bravely. Workers were
beaten and jailed by the hundreds. Men were herded like cattle in