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Updated: June 8, 2025
The homes that gave perfection to this beauty were those old, large, belvidered colonial villas, of which you may still here and there see one standing, battered into half ruin, high and broad, among foundries, cotton-and tobacco-sheds, junk-yards, and longshoremen's hovels, like one unconquered elephant in a wreck of artillery. In Frowenfeld's day the "smell of their garments was like Lebanon."
Occupational safety still demands attention, as I pointed out last year, and legislation to improve the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act is still needed. The improvement of the District of Columbia Unemployment Insurance Law and legislation to provide employees in the District with non-occupational disability insurance are no less necessary now than 12 months ago.
When he hustles to catch a tide or to get to sea Saturday night or Sunday morning he drives his mates and tries to make them do longshoremen's work. When he bullied a weak mate into doing that, there was nobody to pay exclusive attention to the slingloads as they came into the ship, and naturally accidents resulted.
In detailing certain arrests Sheriff McRae had claimed that men taken from the shingleweavers' picket line were members of the I. W. W. B. Said was one of the men so mentioned. Said took the witness stand and testified that he was a member of the longshoremen's union and was not and had not been a member of the I. W. W.
Why don't you go out and get it, take it off the scabs the way I do; that in September Feinberg had to make Reese leave the speaker's stand in Everett because he was talking on matters harmful to industrial union propaganda; that on November 4th the witness went to the place where Feinberg was employed and left a suit of clothes to be pressed, saying to Feinberg, after he had ascertained that Feinberg was thinking of going to Everett on the following day, "mark the bill 'paid' so I will have a receipt if you don't come back;" that on August 16th, the day before the big dock fire in Seattle, Reese went to the down-town office of the same dye works in which Walker C. Smith was manager and in charge of the purchase of chemicals and tried to get Smith to purchase for him some carbon disulphide to be used in connection with phosphorus; that in the month of November in the Labor Temple, in the presence of Sam Sadler, Reese had said to Albert Brilliant that if the longshoremen had any guts they would go out with guns and clean up the scabs on the waterfront; and that Reese tried to get other men to co-operate with him in a scheme to capture a Government boat lying in the Sound during the progress of the longshoremen's strike."
Roth was a member of the International Longshoremen's Association and had joined the I. W. W. on the day before the tragedy. John Stroka, a lad of 18, victim of the deputies at Beverly Park and a passenger on the Verona, gave testimony regarding the men wounded on the boat.
Moore stated some of the things he would prove if permitted by the court: "That on or about August 1st Reese went to one J. M. Wilson, an official of the longshoremen's union, and endeavored to get $10.00 with which to buy dynamite to blow up a certain city dock; that on September 20th the witness gave Percy May, a member of the longshoremen's union, a bottle of phosphorus with instructions to start a fire at Pier 5; that in the month of July the witness opposed a settlement of the longshoremen's strike and when members of the union argued that they could remain out no longer as they had no money, Reese clapped his pockets and said, 'you fellows wouldn't be starving if you had the nerve that I have got.
Little did he and his fellow workers realize that they were to learn later, thru the development of the trial, that the principal person engaged in the despicable work was George Reese, a member of the I. W. W. and of the I. L. A. It was on learning this that many of the actions of Reese were made clear; his connection with dock riots during the longshoremen's strike, his establishment of a "flying squadron" to beat up scabs on the waterfront, his open boast on the floor of I. L. A. meetings that his pockets were lined with money gained by robbing the strike-breakers after they had been beaten up and his advice to other strikers to do likewise, his activities just prior to the various dock fires, his seemingly miraculous escape in every instance when strikers were arrested, his election as delegate from the longshoremen to the Seattle Central Labor Council, his requests of prominent I. W. W. members that they purchase various chemicals for him, his giving of phosphorus to members of the I. L. A. and the I. W. W. with instructions as to how and where to use it, his attempts to advocate violence at an Everett street meeting, his gathering of "souvenirs" on the Verona all actions designed either to aid the employers in their fights against the workers or to furnish an excuse for his further employment as an "informer."
The longshoremen's strike was begun by 200 men, employed by the Old Dominion Steamship Company, against a reduction in wages and the hiring of cheap men by the week. The strikers were not organized, but the Ocean Association, a part of the Knights of Labor, took up their cause and was assisted by the longshoremen's union.
The industrially united employers of the Pacific Coast did not relish the idea of the workers grouping themselves together along lines similar to those on which the owners were associated. The longshoremen's strike started on June 1st and was marked by more or less serious disorders at various points, most of the violence being precipitated by detectives placed in the unions by the employers.
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