Title: The Centralia Conspiracy Author: Ralph Chaplin Release Date: January 16, 2004 [eBook #10725] Language:

English Character set encoding: US-ASCII ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CENTRALIA CONSPIRACY*** E-text prepared by Curtis A. Weyant The Centralia Conspiracy By Ralph Chaplin [Illustration: cover] A Tongue of Flame The martyr cannot be dishonored.

English Character set encoding: US-ASCII ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CENTRALIA CONSPIRACY*** E-text prepared by Curtis A. Weyant The Centralia Conspiracy By Ralph Chaplin [Illustration: cover] A Tongue of Flame The martyr cannot be dishonored.

It is an honest effort to unravel the tangled mesh of circumstances that led up to the Armistice Day tragedy in Centralia, Washington.

The nation was shocked on November 11, 1919, to read of the killing of four American Legion men by members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Centralia.

In this light the Centralia affair does not appear as an isolated incident but rather an incident in an eventful industrial conflict, little known and less understood, between the lumber barons and loggers of the Pacific Northwest.

This viewpoint will place Centralia in its proper perspective and enable one to trace the tragedy back to the circumstances and conditions that gave it birth.

And it is this effort to form a union and establish union headquarters that led to the tragedy at Centralia.

Centralia is only one of the incidents of this struggle between owner and worker.

Is it any wonder the lumber barons hated him, and sought to break his spirit with brute force and legal cunningor that they conspired to murder it at Centralia with mob violenceand failed?

Strange to say, almost the first really important clash occurred in the very heart of the lumber trust's domain, in the little city of Aberdeen, Grays Harbor Countyonly a short distance from Centralia, of mob fame!

This event may be considered the beginning of the labor movement on Grays Harbor that the lumber trust sought finally to crush with mob violence on a certain memorable day in Centralia seven years later.

And I couldn't make myself believe that it was in the same world with Centralia.

"Katie, as the days went on it was just as hard to believe that the world of the opera was the same world I was working inright there in the same cityas it had been the first night to believe it was the same world as Centralia.

But it was on the wirejust as in Centralia it had been in the picturesand in the box.

Didn't it ever occur to you that God had more to do with your Something Somewhere than He did with things done in His name in Centralia?" "Why, Katie, how strange you should think of that.

Sometimes a picture of Centralia would come to me when I'd hear you telling about my having lived in Florence.

It was not that she expected Centralia to furnish any information about Ann.

It was hard to say just why she was so certain Ann had not gone back to Centralia.

The conviction had something to do with her belief in Ann. Centralia, however, might be an avenue to something.

But as she stepped from the train and approached a group of men lounging at the station it came to her that "Ann's father," particularly as Ann had not been Ann in Centralia, was a somewhat indefinite person to be inquiring for.

After a moment's consideration she approached the man who looked newest to his profession and asked how many churches there were in Centralia.

Then Katie explained her predicament; she wanted to find a man who was a minister in Centralia and she didn't know his name.

Her two blocks on "Main Street" showed her Centralia as a place of petty righteousness and petty vice.

She retraced her steps and waited for two hours at the station, reconstructing for herself Ann's girlhood in Centralia and thinking larger thoughts of the things which spoiled girlhoods, the pity of it all.