The Price of Resistance: Seattle Unions Take On 'Dark' Boarding House Practices
While Seattle’s 1887 press was full of land speculation and railroad hype, a quiet labor dispute reveals how maritime workers fought back against predatory rooming house keepers who swindled sailors out of their hard-earned pay.
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.
The Seamen's Union is currently embroiled in a dispute at the Seattle waterfront. Mr. Andrew Furuseth, head of the union, spoke at a meeting regarding the detention of sailors. He noted that the union's goal is to secure employment for seamen at reasonable rates and to protect them from the rapacity of ship agents, ship brokers, and the cupidity of unscrupulous boarding-house keepers. 'The only boycott that has taken place against boarding-house keepers is to warn our members and seamen generally to give a wide berth to such boarding-house keepers as are in the habit of taking from the seamen, by ways that are dark, their hard-earned money,' said Furuseth. He stated that the union's actions had the full support of members everywhere, noting that when he was prevented from securing a crew for a ship due to interference, he could have provided them in one hour if allowed to do so. Furuseth maintained that the union was not trying to inaugurate a strike or prevent men from working, but rather protecting them from systemic exploitation in an increasingly boom-heavy city.
“Give a wide berth to such boarding-house keepers as are in the habit of taking from the seamen, by ways that are dark, their hard-earned money.”
Furuseth’s 1887 critique of 'unscrupulous' intermediaries echoes contemporary Seattle's struggles with gig-economy exploitation and the housing precarity faced by vulnerable service workers. The union's attempt to exert control over the labor-housing pipeline remains a core element of the city's ongoing labor-organizing DNA.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.