forty-one men left Seattle by boat in a
determined effort to reach the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues in
order to test the validity of the alleged ordinance prohibiting free
speech at that point. They were the first contingent of an army of
harvesters who were just returning from a hard season's labor in the
fields and orchards. The party was double the size of any free speech
group that had tried to enter Everett at any previous time.

They were met at the dock by a drunken band of deputies, most of whom
wore white handkerchiefs around their necks as a means of
identification. The deputies were armed with guns and clubs, and they
outnumbered the I. W. W. body five to one. Several of the lawless crew
were so intoxicated they could scarcely stand, and one in particular had
to be forcibly restrained by his less drunken associates from attempts
to commit murder in the open. The I. W. W. men were clubbed with gun
butts and loaded clubs whenever their movements were not swift enough to
suit the fancies of the drunken mob. John Downs' face was an
indistinguishable mass of blood where Sheriff McRae had "sapped up" on
him and split open his upper lip. Boat passengers who remonstrated were
promised the same treatment unless they kept still. In its mad frenzy
the posse struck in all directions. So blindly drunk and hysterical was
deputy Joseph Irving that he swung his heavy revolver handle with full
force onto the head of deputy Joe Schofield. He continued the insane
attack, while McRae, awry-eyed and lusting for blood, assisted in the
brutal task until warning cried from the other vigilantes showed them
their mistake. Schofield was carried to an automobile and hastened to
the nearest drug store, where it was found necessary to call a physician
to take three stitches to bind together the edges of the most severe
wound.

The prisoners were loaded into large auto trucks and passenger cars,
more than twenty of which were lined up in waiting, and were taken out
to a lonely wooded spot near Beverly Park on the road to Seattle. McRae,
with deputies Fred Luke, William Pabst and Fred Plymale, took one I. W.
W. out in their five-passenger Reo, McRae afterward endeavored
unsuccessfully to prove an alibi because his own car was in a garage.
Deputy Sheriff Jefferson Beard also took out a prisoner.

Upon their arrival at Beverly the prisoners were made to dismount at
the point of guns and stand in the cold drizzling rain until their