The Groceries Run
When a mill worker demanded his pay early, a local dispute sparked an accidental raid on a company store in Hamilton.
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.
There was a 'run' up at the little town of Hamilton, Wash., last month that ought to find its way in literature devoted to queer things. The run in question was on a grocery store belonging to the Washington Red Cedar Shingle Company. The filer of the mill 'jumped his job' and wanted his cash before pay day, contrary to the rules. The mill owners refused to pay the disconsolate filer until pay day. The filer thereupon filed an attachment on the company's shingles, and this caused the 'run.' Without looking into the situation, local creditors and mill hands commenced a 'run' on the company's grocery store, with the object of taking out their wages and debts in lard, dried apples, syrup, tobacco, chow-chow, bacon and other necessaries of life. The clerk, who had been dozing behind the counter, told the crowd to help themselves while he checked up the goods. When the manager returned in the evening, the clerk was lying exhausted across an empty pickle barrel, and the store had the appearance of the last act of a cyclone.
“The clerk... jumped four feet in the air when the door opened and a half dozen brawny, wild-eyed shingle weavers appeared.”
This 1893 account of workers 'taking out their wages' in groceries highlights the precarious nature of the company-store model in early Washington resource towns. While modern workers receive direct deposit, the tension between employers controlling liquidity and workers needing immediate access to essentials remains a recurring theme in labor history.
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