When I.W.W. organizer and speaker James Rowan arrived in Everett on June 31, 1916, Everett became the home of the I.W.W.'s newest "Free-Speech Fight". This fight started relatively peacefully. Perhaps purposely, the I.W.W. speakers chose to speak at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore, a corner where public speaking was illegal, although it was legal at other corners. At first, the speakers were merely arrested and released.

The worst of these beatings was on October 30, 1916. Forty-one I.W.W. members had come by ferry to Everett, to speak at Hewitt and Wetmore. The Sheriff and his deputies beat these men, took them to Beverly Park, and forced them to run through a gauntlet of 'law and order' officials, armed with clubs and whips.

The Verona arrived first, pulling in along side the dock. McRae asked "Who is your leader?" When he was told "We are all leaders!", he informed passengers they could not land. A single shot was fired, followed by minutes of chaotic shooting. Whether the first shot came from boat or dock was never determined. Passengers aboard the Verona rushed to the opposite side of the ship, nearly capsizing the vessel.

Five I.W.W. members (Abraham Rabinowitz, Hugo Gerlot, Gus Johnson, Felix Baran and John Looney) were killed, as were two of the deputies (C.O. Curtis and Jefferson Beard). Dozens more from each side were wounded. At least 6 additional I.W.W. members disappeared and were either drowned after falling overboard, or shot while in the water.

In the growing hysteria, anyone with even vague I.W.W. connections or leanings was jailed. In the search for Wobblies, two groups of vigilantes, each unaware of the other group, converged on an empty cabin. Each group believed that the other group were Wobblies, exchanged gunfire, and John Haney was killed.
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The US Attorney advised holding all suspected I.W.W. members throughout the nation on federal charges. Washington soon passed a law making it illegal to belong to the I.W.W. Many feared that the Centralia Massacre, as it had come to be known, was a planned piece of a larger conspiracy.

"I will confine myself to a consideration of these relations as they have been induced by the action of the reserve-rule. I will first describe briefly the origin, intent, and effect of the rule; I will then trace in detail its subsequent development; I will show that there has been a complete departure from its original intent, and in consequence a total change in its effect; that abuse after abuse has been fastened upon it, until, instead of being used to the ends for which it was formed, it has become a mere pretence for the practice of wrong." - John Montgomery Ward, August 1887

The first reserve agreement was entered into by the club members of the National League September 30, 1879. By that compact each club was conceded the privilege of reserving for the season of 1880 five of its players of the season of 1879, and each of the eight clubs pledged itself not to employ any player so reserved by any of the others. The five men so chosen by each club were thus forced either to sign with the club reserving them at its own terms or withdraw to some club not a member of the League; and, as there were no such clubs then in existence, the reservation was practically without alternative. The club thus appropriated to itself an absolute control over the labor of five of its men, and this number has since been enlarged to eleven, so that now the club controls practically its entire team.

A practical illustration of the working of this construction was given in the case of Charlie Foley. During the season of 1883 he contracted a malady which incapacitated him for play. He was laid off without pay, though still held subject to the direction of his club. In the fall he was placed among the players reserved by the club, though he had not been on the club's pay-roll for months. The following spring he was still unable to play, and the Buffalo Club refused to either sign or release him. He recovered somewhat, and offered his services to the club, but it still refused to sign him. Having been put to great expense in securing treatment, his funds were exhausted, and it became absolutely necessary for him to do something. He had offers from several minor clubs, to whom he would still would have been a valuable player, but on asking for his release from Buffalo it was again refused. He was compelled to remain idle all that summer, without funds to pay for medical treatment; and then, to crown all, the Buffalo Club again reserved him in the fall of 1884.

In brief, the sports leagues are cartels, whose members compete on the field but collude to varying degrees off the field in order to ensure a competitive balance among their teams to guarantee continued attendance. One of the key characteristics of this organizational structure is that players are contracted employees, and have no ownership interest in the corporations (clubs) for whom they work. Also, players have no voice in league operations, and are subject to have the right to their labor traded or sold to other corporations (clubs) without the player's consent.8 The Players' League was the only attempt to create a rival league organized on a different basis. It was a co-operative, where players were investors in their clubs, player trades were by consent, and the "capitalists" (not owners) were to divide the profits equally with all the players.

"The idea was as old as the hills, but its application to Base Ball had not yet been made. It was, in fact, the irrepressible conflict between Labor and Capital asserting itself under a new guise.... Like every other form of business enterprise, Base Ball depends for results on two independent divisions, the one to have absolute control over the system, and the other to engage in... the actual work of production." - Andrew Spalding

toward the end of the reign of the Pharaoh Ramses III widespread corruption and inefficiency had made Egypt barely governable, and construction at the city of Thebes had apparently severely depleted the grain reserves used to pay the workers at the royal necropolis. On the 21st day of the second month, in Ramses's 29th year, the scribe Amennakht personally delivered a formal complaint about this situation to the royal mortuary temple that was part of the large administrative complex of Medinet Habu. The workers implored,

"We are hungry: eighteen days have elapsed in the month."

Although a payment was soon made, the poor conditions continued, and in the sixth month of that year the workers organized the first recorded strike in history. The men of the two crews stopped work and marched together to one of the royal mortuary temples, where they staged what would today be called a sit-in. The men insisted,

"It was because of hunger and thirst that we came here. There is no clothing, no ointment, no fish, no vegetables. Send to Pharaoh our good lord about it, and send to the vizier our superior, that sustenance may be made for us."

The workers repeated their protest on the following day within the complex of another temple, and possibly a third, until their complaints were recorded by the priests and sent across the river to Thebes. Only then were the rations owed finally distributed. However, similar protests were repeated before the reign of Ramses III ended; and even in the reigns of subsequent Pharaohs workers had to go on strike in order to receive payment.

It was the custom to draw up articles of agreement before the commencement of a voyage, and it can be certain that the men who joined [Captain] Kidd on the Adventure Galley at London signed such an agreement. These articles regulated the various charges and payments to all members of the crew. Esquemiling, in the Buccaneers of America, writes of such agreements in the following terms:

[snip]
Lastly, they stipulate in writing what recompense or reward each one ought to have that is either wounded or maimed in his body, suffering the loss of any limb, by that voyage. Thus they order for the loss of a right arm 600 pieces-of-eight, or 6 slaves; for the loss of a left arm 500 pieces-of-eight; or 5 slaves; for a right leg 500 pieces-of-eight, or 5 slaves; for a left leg 400 pieces-of-eight, or 4 slaves; for an eye 100 pieces-of-eight, or one slave; for a finger of the hand the same reward as the same eye.

Canal work was dangerous and the living conditions primitive. Canallers toiled from sunup to sundown, exposed to injuries common to physical labor and the epidemics that regularly swept public works construction - malaria, yellow fever, and cholera, which struck the C&O in 1832...Theirs was a difficult existence marked by hard toil, rude conditions, a bare subsistence, and a high degree of transience.

Andrew Jackson becomes the first president to use federal troops to quell labor unrest; called on Secretary of War Lewis Cass to send Federal troops in to quell the workers; set a dangerous precedent for future labor-management relations. Workers building the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal were rebelling because of persistent poor working conditions and low pay.

WHEREAS, it appears to this Assembly that, in the year one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four, a number of the House Carpenters of the City and County of Philadelphia formed themselves into a Company, for the purpose of obtaining instruction in the science of architecture, and assisting such of their members as should by accident be in need of support, or the widows and minor children of members;...

In 1786, Philadelphia's employing printers collectively attempted to reduce the wages of skilled print craftsmen to $5.83 per week. In response, on 31 May 1786, twenty-six Philadelphia craftsmen jointly resolved to "not engage to work for any printing establishment in this city or county under the sum of $6.00 per week," and to "support such of our brethren as shall be thrown out of employment on account of their refusing to work for less than $6.00 per week." Standing by their resolution, these craftsmen waged what was probably the new nation's first labor strike, successfully procuring a $6-per-week minimum wage for skilled printers citywide.

Three hundred armed Irish longshoremen marched through the streets calling workers to join them on strike. Leather workers, printers, carpenters, bricklayers, masons, city employees, bakers, clerks and painters joined in, carrying their tools.

the brevity of only a sixty-hour week would be harmful to workers, that all the extra time would be "applied to useless and unworthy purposes."