Date of Award

Fall 12-13-2024

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of arts (BA)

Department

Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences

First Advisor

William Burghart

Abstract

The Everett Massacre of 1916 was a fatal tragedy , a gun battle between members of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Sheriff’s deputized vigilantes. The shooting left at least 7 dead and many more injured. Historians past have explored the Everett Massacre and its contextual events to better understand the causes of this bloody labor conflict, but I seek to show that the Everett Commercial Club is ultimately responsible for the strife and crippling the Timber Workers’ Union. By November of 1916, the Commercial Club had undergone three schisms after which only the mill owners, bankers, industrialists, doctors, and other privileged Everett citizens remained. The interests of labor, once represented in the Commercial Club, were suppressed by the mill owners who used strikebreakers, hired ruffians, city ordinances, and law enforcement to undermine union efforts. Sheriff Donald McRae was a member of the Everett Commercial Club, and he sourced his deputy vigilantes from the Club. Mayor Dennis Merrill, a member of the Commercial Club, illegally passed a city ordinance forbidding public speaking along Hewitt Avenue. This ordinance was used as justification for the unlawful violence against and deportation of the IWWs. The massacre ended the ongoing Timber Worker’s Union strike which lasted six months. Who fired the first shot cannot be determined definitively, but the Sheriff and his deputies were trained, armed, and positioned for battle before the shooting began. Their fellow Commercial Club members benefited financially from the massacre which ended the strike and severely weakened the interests of labor within the city. “By 1921 there was no significant labor movement in Everett at all”, the mill owners had removed or silenced all opposition to their greed.

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