Hunger and the City Council
Tacoma’s unemployed protesters storm City Hall, forcing local leaders to prioritize local families for municipal public works.
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, Feb. 5.—The city council held a long and breezy session this evening. Dolph Hannah, who addressed the unemployed on A Street, together with B. Egbert, led 300 of them before the council, demanding work. Hannah said they were starving; that hungry stomachs had no conscience, and he would not be responsible if work was not provided. Egbert held that non-citizens were employed in city work, and that married men were not given work. However, a committee was appointed to see that heads of families were given preference, and that the men be changed every week to allow others to work. The unemployed called upon the city officials to expend the money voted by the people for public improvements, and not to allow it to remain idle.
“Hannah said they were starving; that hungry stomachs had no conscience, and he would not be responsible if work was not provided.”
This 1894 protest highlights a recurring tension in Seattle and Tacoma: the demand that municipal infrastructure spending serves the local working class during economic downturns. The call to prioritize citizens and heads of households was a common, if exclusionary, rallying cry during the Populist era's economic depressions.
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