The Unpaid Streets of Tacoma
A bitter legal battle reveals the messy, unpaved reality of infrastructure development in late 19th-century Tacoma, pitting laborers against local developers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
James Ashton, attorney for Castle & Fraser and Alexander McReady, yesterday filed his petition in court asking that a receiver be appointed to take charge of the notoriously mismanaged affairs of the Tacoma Avenue Improvement Association. A number of suits have been begun before Justice Lawrence in the name of the men employed on Tacoma Avenue against Alexander McReady, treasurer of the Tacoma Co-operative Association, to recover money for their work. Besides asking for the appointment of a receiver, Mr. Ashton prays for an injunction against Justice Lawrence commanding him to stop proceedings in the matter. The petition charges that the parties to the suit before Lawrence are conspiring to defraud Castle & Fraser; that the plaintiffs in the suits are co-partners with Castle & Fraser in the work; that a great number of claims against the Association of which they are members remain due to laborers and that they should be paid before any money is appropriated to the use of the members. The suits before Justice Lawrence came on to be heard this morning at nine o'clock, and the interest heightens as the question as to whether they will be allowed to proceed or not is determined.
“The plot thickens around these unhappy thoroughfares and grows daily more involved.”
This 1887 dispute over unpaid labor and the mismanagement of infrastructure improvements mirrors the enduring tension in Seattle's growth: who pays for the physical expansion of a city—the developers who stand to profit, or the laborers who move the earth? Just as workers sought justice in the 1880s, today's labor movements continue to wrestle with developers over wage theft and accountability in the construction boom.
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