Longshoremen's Union Halts Cargo on the Manila
When the steamship 'Manila' docked in Seattle, a labor dispute between the captain and the longshoremen's union left a shipment of cargo stranded and tempers flaring.
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 steamship Manila arrived from San Francisco yesterday and is due to take on a load of freight for Tacoma. The local longshoremen's union refused to discharge the cargo until this morning, and another crew could not be secured. Captain Bennett, frustrated by the delay, gave the following statement: 'I arrived here and the members of the longshoreman's union refused to go to work until this morning. The best men in the union had gone to Vancouver with the mail; those who were left were intoxicated. The men with families who did not go on the Manila had evidently gone to bed, and those who were downtown had been filled up with booze from some craft on the Seattle and did not feel like going to work until morning. I had to be in Tacoma in the morning and could not possibly wait, so I went up town and gathered up sixteen or eighteen men, but they came down to the ship and the union men gave them a talk. They too decided not to go to work.' Bennett noted that he intended to sail to Tacoma and return with a new crew, and planned to telegraph the Mayor of Seattle for protection, as he felt his cargo could not await the pleasure of the union.
“I am in favor of the rights of workingmen and anything calculated to better the condition of the laborer, but I am not with such conduct that, at midnight, a small band of men, more or less drunk, prevent other men from going to work.”
The tension between maritime labor and shipping logistics is a cornerstone of Seattle’s history. This 1888 confrontation over the 'right to work' and union solidarity mirrors the ongoing labor struggles and logistical bottlenecks that remain a central, defining feature of the Pacific Northwest’s modern waterfront economy.
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