Longshoremen Win 17-Minute Pioneer Place Tug-of-War
Thousands pack Pioneer Place to watch a grueling seventeen-minute battle of strength between Seattle’s longshoremen and sailors.
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 tug-of-war in the evening at Pioneer Place between teams from the Longshoremen's Union and the Coast Seamen's Union crowded the space in the triangle and the doors and windows of the adjacent buildings to their fullest extent. It was a victory for the longshoremen after a stubborn struggle for seventeen minutes. As the opposing teams, each composed of ten brawny, horny-handed fellows, sat down between the cleats nailed to the planking of the street and braced themselves for work, it would have been difficult indeed to pick a winner. Once the pulling commenced, however, the superiority of the longshoremen made itself apparent. They handled themselves with more judgment and pulled better together, while their captain urged them on with encouraging shouts. Gradually, they pulled their opponents from cleat to cleat, while the red rag tied to the middle of the rope slowly but surely crept up to the winning mark.
“As the opposing teams, each composed of ten brawny, horny-handed fellows, sat down between the cleats nailed to the planking of the street and braced themselves for work, it would have been difficult indeed to pick a winner.”
Pioneer Square remains the heart of Seattle, though the 1892 industrial tug-of-war has been replaced by different struggles over the neighborhood's identity and use of space. The 'horny-handed' labor power described here was a defining force of the city’s early waterfront, a physical reality of the working-class backbone of old Seattle.
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