Tacoma Printers' War Against the Ledger
A standoff in Tacoma pits union printers against a newspaper management that replaced them with imported 'rat' labor.
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The Ledger newspaper in Tacoma has locked out its union printers, triggering a 'fight to the finish.' Management demanded a 20 percent wage reduction, which the union refused, citing existing contracts. In response, the Ledger imported non-union machine typesetters from Los Angeles—men described by the union as 'disreputable outcasts' trained in Col. Otis’s anti-labor shop. The locked-out printers, many of whom have families to support, have established headquarters in the Wheeler block and are launching their own daily newspaper, backed by local sympathy and a new stock company. The printers claim the Ledger's move is a broader attempt to crush organized labor rather than a genuine cost-saving measure.
“The union printers have declared a fight to a finish. They have headquarters in the Wheeler block and have accepted the invitation of the Puget Sound Printing Company to publish a paper.”
This 1893 labor struggle echoes modern disputes over the gig economy and the erosion of worker protections, as printers at the end of the 19th century fought to preserve their professional dignity and wages against the introduction of new technologies and aggressive union-busting.
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