A look at the ‘Grabow Riot’ where gun thugs attacked striking marchers on July 7, 1912 near Grabow, Louisiana. The workers defended themselves, setting the stage for imprisonment and trial for many B.T.W. members. Bill Haywood was on an organizing tour at the time, and is extensively quoted below. Three fellow workers Asbury Decatur (“Kate”) Hall, J. Tooley, and Ed Brown were killed, as was a gun thug. Fifty were wounded and dozens arrested. A major event in the southern class war of the times, the Brotherhood were not stopped, and continued their dogged struggle in the harshest of conditions, achieving modest successes over the following years.

‘Murderous Thugs Of Lumber Trust Kill Members of Brotherhood of Timber Workers’ from Solidarity. Vol. 3 No. 30. July 12, 1912.

And Charge Crime to Union.

Three members of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers were murdered by thugs in the employ of the Southern Lumbermen’s Association at Grabow, Louisiana, on July 7. Three others were reported dying and several more were seriously wounded. The union men, who came from another camp to hold a demonstration at Grabow, were attacked, it is said, while President Emerson, of the Brotherhood, was making a speech in front of the mill. Someone fired a shot, hitting a union man standing near Emerson, and immediately the gunmen of the company, led, so we are informed, by the superintendent and foremen, grabbed their guns and fired a fusillade of shots at the strikers, with the results as above stated.

The union men retreated, and later President Emerson and six others were arrested charged with murder. Three others were also arrested charged with inciting to riot. The superintendent and his gunmen were not arrested. Although not allowed to talk for publication after being arrested, Emerson stated that the Brotherhood men were well within their rights and knew what they were doing. It remains to be seen just how far the lumber trust controls the courts of Louisiana.

The trouble at Grabow grew out of the long and bitter war of the last year or more between the Brotherhood of Timber Workers and the Southern Lumbermen’s Association. About a year ago the lumber trust locked out several thousand members of the Brotherhood and established a blacklist against all active members of the union. Unable, in spite of most strenuous efforts, to break up the Brotherhood and reduce the southern lumber workers to peonage of the most degrading type, the bosses resorted to the usual methods of importing professional pluguglies and gunmen from the slums of the big cities, to terrorize the workers. But the union men served notice on the thugs that they, too, could handle firearms and would not hesitate to defend themselves, which has hitherto had a deterring effect upon the thugs. Now, however, they seem to have broken over the traces, and started their murderous work.

Great excitement prevails among the Brotherhood men over the murderous outrage at Grabow, and further trouble is feared.

William D. Haywood was in Louisiana at the time, and spoke in several of the lumber camps just prior to the riot of July 6. In a speech reported in the New Orleans Picayune of July 7, Haywood sized up the situation in the southern lumber industry as follows:

Haywood Tells of the Lumber Trust.

“There are developing in the south conditions which, if allowed to go unchecked, uncorrected, will develop into the bitterest labor war ever fought in the United States. The lumber industry is the third in importance in the whole country. Probably it employs more men than any other, there being, in round numbers, more than 34,000 active sawmills, practically all of which are controlled by the trust and represent greater financial capital than even the Standard Oil Co. From the standpoint of the laboring man, that lumber trust is more autocratic and vicious in its mandatory rule than any other employer of labor, and today it is contributing more largely than any other to place upon the brow of labor the crown of thorns that will some day be torn away and precipitate the battle between capital and labor that must come to the south if conditions do not improve.

“Conditions existing among the workers in this most important industry truly beggar description. There are towns in the lumber districts where the workers, both black and white, are held in what is practically a condition of peonage. High board fences, topped with barbed wire, have been built around the mills and entrance to the premises by a stranger is almost impossible, and without giving an account of one’s self it is a dangerous undertaking for a stranger to visit the towns which are held by the lumber trust.

“Lumber owners understand the unrest that prevails among the workers, and are using every means to prevent them from organization. In order to more effectively do this, the members of the Southern Sawmill Operators’ Association have established a blacklist, which, along with other radical and drastic measures, is used to prevent and stop organization.”‘

Mr. Haywood declared that every man employed by any member of the Southern Sawmill Operators’ Association is compelled to sign a record blank which gives the name and location of the mill or mills where he had previously worked since January, 1911.

“The age and color of the applicant must be stated, as well as the capacity in which he was employed, wages paid and all the information concerning himself and his family,” he said. “On each of the blanks is a record note, ‘Have you reason to believe that he sympathizes with or is a member of the Timber Workers of the World.’ A complete record of all the men employed in the territory embraced by the Southern Lumber Operators’ Association, comprising the states of Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, is kept at the headquarters of the association at Alexandria, the principal object of which is to establish a clearing house for sawmill labor.

“As the operators realize that with the coming of a labor organization the system of peonage that is now firmly established will be wiped out–if not by direct efforts of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, certainly by public aversion to such an institution as peonage–the lumber trust is doing everything in its power to kill the movement.

“There is nothing the lumber trust today abhors so much as publicity. When the white searchlight of truth is known on the methods through which the National Lumbermen’s Association membership has acquired four-fifths of the timber lands of the United States it will cause an upheaval of public opinion that the lumber barons are anxious to avert. Their method of dealing with the public, the state and the national government is as abhorrent as is their manner of dealing with their employees–the men who are working in their woods and their mills.

“Here they have employed a system of espionage through which vicious characters in the capacity of gun men are used to cower the worker into subjection. I have been informed of many instances where workers were refused the privilege of quitting their employment and forced to continue at work under protest. The same ends are obtained by holding back the wages of the men, the general custom being to retain at least one week’s salary, while the pay days, generally speaking, are once a month. In the interval a man in need of money or supplies is compelled to accept checks, payable in merchandise.”

Haywood branded as pernicious, un-American and outrageous the common practices of the lumber camp commissaries. He declared that higher prices, often outrageously high, are usually charged men for their supplies and the necessities of life. “And rental for what the lumber companies are pleased to call houses is but an- other of the many systems of graft. that brings in large returns. Exorbitant prices are charged for the meanest kind of quarters, and at one camp I have located old and abandoned box cars which are rented to the men at the rate of $4 per month. These, however, are but a few of the things the workers have to endure,” he declared.

The insurance system employed by some of the lumber companies was rapped by the lecturer, who contended that it was outrageous and that the companies are carrying it on for profit and at expense of the men and without regard to law.

He pointed out the objections of the employ es to the insurance feature, contending that it did not insure the men and that “any reliable insurance company would give each man not less than $5,000 worth of insurance for the amount of premium which is charged by the companies.”

Haywood reviewed the action of the Southern Sawmill Operators Association in closing down 46 of their mills last year to effect a shutout. He contended that the action of the mill men will not stop the organization of the men, and that their future depends upon united action and organization to overcome the abuses which he contended exist.

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1912/v03n30-w134-jul-20-1912-Solidarity-SD.pdf