The Deckhands Who Walked to Edmonds
Two sailors, forcibly removed from their ship by union men in Seattle, recount a harrowing trek on foot to escape the reach of labor organizers.
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 two deckhands kidnaped from the steamer Wasco at Seattle at about midnight, having tramped all the way to Edmonds, about seventeen miles. They told Captain Green of the latter boat they had been released on condition that they would not return to the city. Being penniless, they walked to Edmonds to meet the Hassa. They begged the captain to take them on to their home at Coupeville, as they seemed to fear the anger of the union. They were in a pitiable plight, having had everything, including revolvers and knives, taken from them, and one of them had no coat, and had a handkerchief tied around his arm where his shirt-sleeve had been torn. The three non-union men were all hired in Coupeville; yesterday morning the one who escaped by hiding when the union men boarded the boat said the people of that town would mob the union men on any boat landing there in retaliation for the outrage. The union men are very reticent about the affair. They deny that anything was taken from either of the men, but claim to have positive knowledge that they were both armed. They say no violence whatever was used toward the men other than picking them up gently and placing them in the boat, and that both of them helped to pull the boat. They do not seem to consider the action as of any great consequence, remarking that similar actions had frequently been taken before.
“They begged the captain to take them on to their home at Coupeville, as they seemed to fear the anger of the union.”
This 1892 account highlights the fierce, sometimes violent clashes over labor organizing on the Puget Sound waterfront. Today, while the forms of labor disputes have evolved, the tension between worker power and industry management remains a fundamental and recurring theme in Seattle’s economic and political history.
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