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Mill Owners and Wobblies

The Event Structure of the Everett Massacre of 1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

John G. Richardson
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Abstract

This article examines the event structure of the labor conflict known as the Everett Massacre, which occurred in Everett, Washington, on November 5, 1916. The much-celebrated confrontation between members of the Industrial Workers of the World and local law officials and citizen groups came to symbolize the sharp class divisions that shaped the lumber industry in the latter years of the nineteenth century in the Northwest. The article uses event structure analysis (ESA) to identify the causal structure of this conflict. Guided by this analysis, the focus turns to the structure of discourse in newspaper articles to reveal changes in the contrasting accounts of mill owners and union members, or Wobblies. The article draws on the concepts of relational distance and the monstrous double as a theoretical interpretation for the comparatively more violent labor struggles in the Far West.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , summer 2009 , pp. 183 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2009 

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