Vigilante Justice Looms in Skykomish
An assistant engineer reports that a gang of gamblers and outlaws has taken control of the Great Northern Railroad laborers' camp.
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 desperadoes rule the roast in the laborers' camp along the Great Northern railroad west of the mountains, according to a statement to a Post-Intelligencer reporter yesterday by Assistant Engineer John Sullivan. He said: 'The road is simply covered with men engaged in surfacing, raising the track, shoveling snow, building culverts and section houses. The headquarters on this side of the mountains is at Skykomish, and that place is simply run by the toughs. On pay day the whole gang goes there, and Big Kid and a few other toughs 'roll' them all and take their pay from them. Kid rolled one man, gave him a beating and took $400 from him.' About three weeks ago, Kline the divekeeper got up a petition for the appointment of a bartender as constable and another divekeeper as justice of the peace. He got all the other toughs and gamblers to sign it, and they were appointed. It was on Sunday, April 2, that Heff Anger went to Kid's dive at the head of a crowd of laborers and told him to get out of camp. Kid refused, and some of the men wanted to hang him, but Heff would not countenance anything of the kind. Kid did not leave, and that night Kline deputized about twenty of the toughs and armed them to protect Kid. The justice of the peace is another tough, and I have seen him dancing with one of the prostitutes in Kline's joint. The sheriff and the commissioners ought to take this matter up, remove these officials and put men there who will preserve order.
“On pay day the whole gang goes there, and Big Kid and a few other toughs 'roll' them all and take their pay from them.”
This report from the 1893 Great Northern expansion reveals the dangerous lack of civil oversight in remote railroad camps, where corporate interests and frontier lawlessness collided. It captures the exact moment when the 'wild west' was being replaced by industrial infrastructure, albeit through the exploitation of laborers who were often left to the mercy of predatory local figures.
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