Vigilante Justice on the Monte Cristo Road
After a foreman was killed in a brutal dispute at a railroad camp, the workers took the law into their own hands and lynched four suspects.
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.
Peter Bresslin arrived in the city tonight with the story of the terrible murder of a boss on the Monte Cristo road and the lynching of four Italians who perpetrated the deed. There are about 150 Italians working for Smith Bros., contractors, and about forty other men, beside the bosses. On Monday last, a gang of eight Italians who were working under John Nelson, a Swedish foreman, became angered at him. At noon, when they quit work, they caught him alone, held him, and hurled a crowbar completely through his body. Four escaped into the woods, and four more went back to camp. The other men in camp heard of the murder and immediately set about finding the men. They finally captured the four Italians in camp and strung them up to a tree without ceremony. The hanging was done so quietly that hardly anyone knew about it, even at Sauk City.
“The other men in camp heard of the murder and immediately set about finding the men. They finally captured the four Italians in camp and strung them up to a tree without ceremony.”
This incident highlights the volatile, lawless conditions of the early frontier labor camps during the rapid expansion of Washington's rail infrastructure. The quick resort to extrajudicial violence against immigrant workers illustrates the dark side of the 'boom' era that was often ignored by the city boosters of the time.
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