The raid of 1918 did not weaken the lumber workers’ Union in Centralia.  On the contrary it served to strengthen it.  But not until more than a year had passed were the loggers able to establish a new headquarters.  This hall was located next door to the Roderick Hotel on Tower Avenue, between Second and Third Streets.  Hardly was this hall opened when threats were circulated by the Chamber of Commerce that it, like the previous one, was marked for destruction.  The business element was lined up solid in denunciation of and opposition to the Union Hall and all that it stood for.  But other anti-labor matters took up their attention and it was some time before the second raid was actually accomplished.

There was one rift in the lute of lumber trust solidarity in Centralia.  Business and professional men had long been groveling in sycophantic servility at the feet of “the clique.”  There was only one notable exception.

A Lawyer—­and a Man

A young lawyer had settled in the city a few years previous to the Armistice Day tragedy.  Together with his parents and four brothers he had left his home in Minnesota to seek fame and fortune in the woods of Washington.  He had worked his way through McAlester College and the Law School of the University of Minnesota.  He was young, ambitious, red-headed and husky, a loving husband and the proud father of a beautiful baby girl.  Nature had endowed him with a dangerous combination of gifts,—­a brilliant mind and a kind heart.  His name was just plain Smith—­Elmer Smith—­and he came from the old rugged American stock.

Smith started to practice law in Centralia, but unlike his brother attorneys, he held to the assumption that all men are equal under the law—­even the hated I.W.W.  In a short time his brilliant mind and kind heart had won him as much hatred from the lumber barons as love from the down-trodden,—­which is saying a good deal.  The “interests” studied the young lawyer carefully for awhile and soon decided that he could be neither bullied or bought.  So they determined to either break his spirit or to break his neck.  Smith is at present in prison charged with murder.  This is how it happened: 

Smith established his office in the First Guarantee Bank Building which was quite the proper thing to do.  Then he began to handle law suits for wage-earners, which was altogether the reverse.  Caste rules in Centralia, and Elmer Smith was violating its most sacred mandataries by giving the “working trash” the benefit of his talents instead of people really worth while.

Warren O. Grimm, who was afterwards shot while trying to break into the Union Hall with the mob, once cautioned Smith of the folly and danger of such a course.  “You’ll get along all right,” said he, “if you will come in with us.”  Then he continued: 

“How would you feel if one of your clients would come up to you in public, slap you on the back and say ‘Hello, Elmer?’”