The loggers overwinter in Spokane and are meat for the sharks in their tan suits: mister, want a job? got a line on a good one, two dollars and it’s yours. And then the job is a farrago or the bosses hire and fire folks so fast it might as well be. One company with a staff of 50 went through 3000 men in a season that way, each out on his rump after two days at most.

So the soapboxes come out and the placards go up, Wobblies marching up and down in front of the agencies on shark alley, chanting Don’t Buy A Job. Bordet is one of them, up from California by way of Seattle, and gets scooped up with the rest when the city cops decide to sweep up the suckers so the sharks can swarm in peace.

In the can he’s starved, hosed down, shuttled between unheated cells and sweltering steam rooms. His hair freezes, his gums recede, tuberculosis settles into his lungs. The cops beat him repeatedly. No charges are brought, but when he finally leaves town, his appendix is swollen fit to burst and the Portland hospital does such a hack job of removing it that the wound never closes entirely, weeping pus for months.

The Wobblies in Holtville pass a plate around to try to get him back in the hospital, try to crowdfund through the other chapters, but it isn’t enough, isn’t fast enough: Bordet sinks lower and lower and finally dies of his wounds a year later, seventy pounds lighter. The Spokane council repeals the ban on public speaking and the cops call it a victory. The Wobs call it murder.