The Night Watchman Who Traded His Lantern for a Crab Net
After trading the damp misery of night-shift railroad duty for the docks, a Seattle man explains how he makes a living pulling crab from the bay—and why the job comes with its own set of neighborhood troubles.
Down at the wharf, an old man, probably fifty years of age, was sitting and snapping his fingers at a rapid rate while staring intently at the water. He said: 'I was formerly a night watchman for the Puget Sound Railroad Company, but I then struck a new and better job than that town. I tell you this: sitting up all night in a drenching rain just to keep some thief from running off with a coal oil can at a saw mill is anything but pleasant.' When asked what this 'soft job' was, he explained that he had gained from the superintendent the exclusive right to catch crabs off the company's wharf. He had six or eight nets out all the time, and they made him a good living. 'A crab net is nothing but a large piece of hoop-iron to which a net is attached, and it does not cost me anything. A piece of beef is tied to the center of the crab net by which to draw it up. The net is then dropped into the water and sunk to the bottom. Pretty soon Mr. Crab comes along and starts in devouring the bait, and while engaged at that I happen along and draw him up to the surface. The netting, which sags under the weight of the bait, holds the crab until I get him up to the wharf. I then put him in a sack and keep on in this way until I have enough.' He complained of a 'big, fat loafer' in the neighborhood who 'tried to make a living off my labor' by poaching the nets. 'I have to watch him day and night,' he said.
“I tell you this: sitting up all night in a drenching rain just to keep some thief from running off with a coal oil can at a saw mill is anything but pleasant.”
This story captures a snapshot of Seattle's early industrial waterfront, where the line between legitimate work and scraping by on the margins was thin. Today, that same waterfront is dominated by the monolithic cruise terminals and the Pike Place Market 'tourist industrial complex,' yet the struggle of the precariat to find a 'soft job'—and the conflict over who owns the right to labor in public spaces—remains a defining feature of the city's housing and employment crisis.
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