The Tacoma Ledger Lockout
After importing non-union machine typesetters, the Ledger faces a strike and a new rival daily paper born from the printer's union.
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.
Tacoma, Nov. 21. Tomorrow morning the Tacoma Daily Union will appear, backed by the Tacoma Typographical Union and all who are interested in rebuking the importation of non-union machine typesetters to work on the Ledger. David A. Malsby, formerly foreman, and C. C. Stewart, for several years telegraph editor of the Ledger, have been selected by the executive committee to manage the new paper. It is the purpose of those interested not to allow control to pass beyond the union. This morning, the Ledger experienced great difficulty in making an appearance; its management had not anticipated that the pressmen would be called out, and the press, an old and difficult machine, could not be operated by inexperienced hands. The best they could do was a four-column handbill. The union printers, meanwhile, successfully distributed a six-page paper. Charles E. Hawkes of Seattle, organizer for the International Typographical Union, expects a long fight, noting that citizen sympathy is strong. The union men are particularly bitter toward Managing Editor Snowden, whose long record of hostility to organized labor, they argue, is the true catalyst for the struggle.
“The saving in wages to be effected by the recent importation is a small matter; but Mr. Snowden is fighting for what to him is a glorious principle.”
This 1893 dispute over the introduction of 'machine typesetters' and the subsequent labor lockout mirrors contemporary anxieties about automation and gig labor. The struggle to maintain union control over the means of production—the printing press—remains a core theme in the history of Seattle's labor movement.
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