They went down on the boat to Seattle

They went down on the boat to Seattle, I.W.W. headquarters there was like a picnic ground, crowed with young men coming in from every part of the U.S. and Canada. One day a big bunch went down to Everett on the boat to try to hold a meeting at the corner of Wetmore and Hewitt Avenues. The dock was full of deputies with rifles, and revolvers. ‘The Commercial Club boys are waiting for us,? Some guy’s voice tittered nervously. The deputies had white handkerchiefs around their necks. There’s Sheriff McRae’ said somebody. Bram edged up to Ben ‘We better stick together…Looks to me like we was going to get tamped up some.’ The wobblies were arrested as fact as they stepped off the boat and herded down to the end of the dock. The deputies were drunk, most of them . Ben could smell the whiskey on the breath of the red-faced guy who grabbed him by the arm. ‘Get a move on there, you son of bitch…’ He got a blow from a riffle butt in the small of his back. He could hear the crack of saps on men’s skulls. Anybody who resisted had his face beaten to a jelly with a club. The wobblies were made to climb up into a truck. With the dusk a cold drizzle had come on. ‘Boys we got to show them we got guts’ a red haired boy said. A deputy who was holding on to the back of the track aimed a blow at him with his sap, but lost his balance and fell off. The wobblies laughed. The deputy climbed on again, purple in the face. ?You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your dirty mugs when we get through with you.’ He yelled.
Out in the woods where the country road crossed the railroad track they were made to get out of the tracks. The deputies stood around them with their guns levelled while the sheriff who was reeling drunk, and two well-dressed middle aged men talked over what they’ do. Ben heard the world gantlet.
‘Look here, sheriff,’ somebody said. ‘we’re not here to make any kind of disturbance. All we want is our constitutional rights of free speech.’
The sheriff turned towards them waving the butt of his revolver. ‘Oh, you do, you do. Well this is Snohomish County and you ain’t going to forget it… if you come here again some of your fellers is going to die, that’s all there is about it… All right, boys, let’s go.’
The deputies made two lines down towards the railroad track. They grabbed the wobblies one by one and beat them up.
From the book ‘U.S.A.’ by John Dos Passos