The Day the Waterfront Turned on Its Workers
In November 1916, a boatload of union men arrived at the city dock and were met by two hundred armed deputies. Everett has never fully agreed on what happened next.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The steamer Verona drew alongside the city dock at the foot of Hewitt Avenue shortly before two o'clock Sunday afternoon, carrying some two hundred and fifty members of the Industrial Workers of the World from Seattle.
Sheriff McRae hailed the vessel and demanded to know who their leaders were. The answer came back: "We are all leaders." Within moments gunfire broke out — from which side first, no two witnesses agree — and when the Verona backed away from the dock, five of her passengers were dead and two deputies had fallen.
The shingle weavers' strike that set these events in motion had dragged on since May, over a wage scale the mill owners had promised to restore when prices recovered, and did not.
“We are all leaders.”
A century later, the argument underneath the Everett Massacre — what a fair day's pay looks like, and who gets to organize for it — is still being had on the same waterfront, from warehouse floors to coffee counters.
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