Page:History of Washington The Rise and Progress of an American State, volume 4.djvu/423

 were sleeping, and killed three of them and wounded three others. The rest fled to the woods and escaped.

The perpetrators of this cowardly act were easily traced, and within a few days were arrested and taken to the jail at Seattle. In due time they were indicted for murder, but such was the state of public feeling at the time that they were not convicted. They were also indicted for riot, and on this charge one of the number was convicted and a trifling penalty imposed, but an appeal was taken and the case was not decided until long afterwards.

On the night of September 11th, only four days after the attack on the hop-pickers in the Squak valley, the quarters occupied by the Chinese coal miners at Coal Creek were raided by ten of fifteen masked men, and burned. Some of the inmates were roughly used. Guns and pistols were fired to frighten the Chinamen, but none of them were killed. They were however, told that they must forthwith leave the country.

These outrages were openly applauded by the lawless element, as that at Rock Springs had been. The perpetrators of them were praised as men of spirit, by the street orators in both Seattle and Tacoma, who were every day finding it easier to get attention. Street meetings were held more frequently than ever. Parades were organized in which tableaux, showing women in chains, and children supposed to be starving as a result of competition with cheap labor were exhibited, while numbers of banners or transparencies with denunciatory inscriptions were displayed, all of which amused or excited the idle, and alarmed the timid, disturbed and unsettled business and made conditions, which were bad enough at the beginning, even worse than they otherwise would have been.