The 'High-Handed' Abduction of Non-Union Sailors
A group of laborers were forcibly removed from their ship at Port Gamble by a union crowd and sent penniless to Victoria under false pretenses.
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.
Consul Myers was visited this afternoon by a party of six sailors, who told a sensational story. According to H. Sanson, he and five others formed the crew of the schooner Robert Lewers at Port Gamble. Because they were not union members, they were pressured by union crews from other vessels. On Wednesday, Agent Leighton of the Sailors' Union and a man named Martin arrived from Seattle. They told the crew they were 'scabs' who could not work on the Pacific coast unless they joined the union. Under threat of force, the men were taken to Port Townsend, kept under guard, and eventually shipped to Victoria on the North Pacific with a fraudulent letter addressed to a local hotelier promising 'comfortable' treatment. Upon arrival, the men found no one to receive them and were left destitute. Consul Myers expressed indignation, calling the affair high-handed, noting that the union likely intended to strand the men in Victoria during the smallpox quarantine to prevent them from causing trouble.
“We were told to come along and make no fuss, or it would go hard with us.”
This 1892 maritime labor dispute reflects the era's intense volatility in port labor, illustrating how deep the rift between organized labor and 'scab' or non-unionized workers was during the rapid industrialization of the Sound. The tactic of coercing laborers onto boats and sending them across international lines shows the raw, extra-legal nature of late 19th-century labor battles.
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