The Sawmill Strike That Never Happened
When mill workers in Seattle banded together for a small wage increase, they didn't need to walk out to get it.
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 Seattle labor market has just witnessed a moment of quiet adjustment during the last week. The threatened strike of the sawyers in the various mills for a small increase in their wages of 25 cents a day resulted in success. They had been feeling dissatisfied since the commencement of the season in making their demands; the sawyers declared in very plain terms that if the increase were not granted by the 15th inst., they would walk out as a strike. Twelve to sixteen men, all members of the Master Sawyers' Union, were directly concerned in the trouble. The result was that the proprietors of the various mills informed the men that they had decided to increase the pay 25 cents a day, thus settling the difficulty. A reporter interviewed a number of knot sawyers this morning and found that they were quite satisfied with the arrangement. One of the workers, speaking of the threatened strike, said: 'If we had not been given the increase we asked, every wheel would have turned to a stop in the mills operated by every mill company in the city. We made a reasonable demand, and simply prepared to stand by it.'
“We made a reasonable demand, and simply prepared to stand by it.”
This 1899 labor dispute over a small wage increase captures a perennial tension in Seattle: the reliance of local industry on organized labor versus the desire of capital to keep costs low. Today, as in 1899, the city remains a site where the cost of living—whether it be 25 cents or the modern equivalent—drives labor to organize to keep pace with the city's economic growth.
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