The Eight-Hour Day Battle in 1887
Washington territorial legislators spar over radical new labor laws, including mandates for an eight-hour workday and the end of company-scrip payment systems.
The story, cleaned up
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Among the measures introduced today, Mr. Lewis proposed a bill requiring railroad companies to erect fences on each side of their tracks where the line passes through improved or cultivated lands, and to construct cattle guards. More significantly, he introduced a bill prohibiting the payment of wages in any order, check, memorandum, token, or evidence of indebtedness unless the same is negotiable and redeemable at its face value in good money. Violations would carry a fine of $50 to $500. Furthermore, he proposed fixing the number of hours for a day’s labor in mines, mining camps, mills, and lumber mills, flour, grain, and shingle mills, railroad construction and operation, and in all manufacturing establishments, at eight hours; any contracts to the contrary to be null and void.
“Contracts to the contrary to be null and void.”
In 1887, Washington Territory was already debating the very issues that would define the next century of American labor: the danger of company scrip (which forced workers to spend wages at company-owned stores) and the fight for the eight-hour day. Today, these echoes persist in the ongoing struggles of gig-economy workers and the push for predictable scheduling in a city where the cost of living has far outpaced the static nature of these late 19th-century protections.
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