The Criminalization of Unemployment
A Seattle candy maker, down on his luck during hard times, faces repeated arrest for the 'crime' of being unable to find work.
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.
Is a man out of work, honestly seeking employment and finding none, a vagrant under the law, and liable to arrest and restraint of his liberty because he is in an enforced state of idleness consequent upon hard times? There is but one fair answer to this: no man is a vagrant who is willing and anxious to work in order that he may eat. An advertisement was inserted some ten days ago in a Seattle paper by a man who is a sober workingman, a candymaker by trade. Failing to get work, he advertised for employment of any sort, saying he was destitute and ready to do anything for his mere bread. This man has received no reply. He owes his bed today to 'the mission' and his bread for two weeks to persons who have known him as an honest workingman for several years.
This man has been twice arrested as a vagrant by a police officer, despite the fact that he provided the names of two responsible citizens who could vouch for him. Yesterday he was brought before Judge Glasgow and released on the testimony of one of the persons who have in vain sought employment for him. In these hard times, when hundreds of honest men willing to work cannot get anything to do, it is an inhuman and an unlawful act to arrest a man as a vagrant who is idle because nobody has any work for him to do. It is not a crime to be out of work; it is a great misfortune.
“It is not a crime to be out of work; it is a great misfortune.”
This editorial from 1891 captures a tension that remains central to Seattle politics: the treatment of those experiencing poverty. Just as the paper challenged the police practice of criminalizing idleness during the depression of the 1890s, contemporary civic debates often grapple with whether homelessness is treated as a systemic failure of the economy or a failure of the individual.
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