Railroad Tragedy on the Puyallup Reservation
A laborer seeking his final paycheck meets a violent end in the dense fog near Tacoma.
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.
E. J. Wilson, aged 27, a Northern Pacific railroad laborer, was killed this morning on the Puyallup Indian reservation by the Seattle train due in Tacoma at 8:15 a.m. He had been walking on the track with E. H. Murray, another laborer, and was coming to the city to secure his pay, for which he had a time check in his pocket. There was a dense fog, and Wilson was not seen by the engineer until the train was close upon him. The danger signal was given, it is thought, in time for him to have jumped, but he was struck by the locomotive, causing instant death. Murray escaped by having stepped from the track to get a drink of water. Wilson, who had worked at Anacortes, is thought to be a resident of New York or Illinois. The body is currently at Hoska's undertaking parlors.
“Gather the rosebuds while you may, Old Time is still a-flying; The fairest flowers that bloom today Tomorrow may be dying.”
This tragedy highlights the perilous, often dehumanizing conditions faced by itinerant laborers in the late 19th-century Pacific Northwest, where the promise of a paycheck frequently led men into the path of industrial danger. Today, the Puyallup reservation and the surrounding industrial corridors remain critical hubs of regional freight, though modern safety standards and land-use planning have drastically altered the geography of the tracks.
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