Grays Harbor's Mill Workers Turn on the Sawdust Ring

Aberdeen and Hoquiam on Grays Harbor are in the throes of an industrial war that is shaking those communities like a reed in a storm. Starting months ago with a shingle weavers' strike, it has spread like a prairie fire until the entire milling, logging and shipping industries are involved. Skilled and unskilled labor alike is involved; skilled workmen, members of A.F. of L. unions, and common laborers affiliated with the I.W.W. are alike engaged in the conflict. Business men are loudly bewailing the state of affairs. Two of the three city commissioners are threatened with the recall. It is an unfortunate state of affairs in the formerly thriving cities of Grays Harbor. When one starts to place the blame for present conditions, however, one finds that the trail leads straight back to the same business men who are now so terrified and indignant. They are reaping what they have sown. For years they have been under the thumb of Lytle, the shingle magnate of Hoquiam. In business and politics he has ruled with a mailed fist while the business interests cringed and cowered before him like whipped curs. There could be no other result but that some day the men in the camps and mills would turn on Lytle and his associates and declare war to the knife. Business men of Grays Harbor allowed the sawdust ring to dictate their politics, run their business and treat their employes like dogs. Cosmopolis has always been a blot on the map by reason of the despicable treatment accorded to the men by the Cosmopolis mill owners. Now the whirlwind. If the business men of Grays Harbor will learn that a well paid, well treated working class is of vastly more benefit to a community than a dozen plants like Hob Lytle's or the Cosmopolis concern, the war they are up against will have been worth while.