Labor History
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The Everett Massacre
Compiled by the Everett Public Library
Sunday, November 5, 1916 marked the bloodiest battle in Pacific Northwest labor history. On that day, about 300 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) boarded the steamers Verona and Calista from Seattle and headed north toward Port Gardner Bay.
The I.W.W. (or Wobblies) planned a public demonstration in Everett that afternoon, to be held on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore, a spot commonly used by street speakers. Hoping to gain converts to their dream of One Big Union, the Wobblies began street speaking in Everett during a local shingle weavers' strike, encountering brutal suppression by local law officers. Free speech soon became the dominant issue. The number of demonstrators and the violence of the response from law enforcement grew as the weeks wore on.
More on it from Everett Library | More on it from University of Washington
Child Labor: A Pictorial Account
Children Working in Canneries, Early 1900's
Children Working In the Coal Mine Breaker Rooms in early 1900s
Youngsters Who Toiled In the Glass Factories
Child Labor Law At the Federal Level
Child Labor, A World Wide Problem
Photographs of Child Labor in the early 1900s by Lewis W. Hine
