Great Northern Workers Plead for Survival
Striking car repairers and cleaners appeal to the Seattle Chamber of Commerce against starvation wages in a time of economic depression.
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 Chamber of Commerce trustees were chiefly occupied at their meeting yesterday afternoon in hearing the plea of the car cleaners and car repairers who recently quit work on the Great Northern railroad, against the reduction of wages which caused them to strike. W. P. C. Adams, secretary of the American Railway Union in this city, and their spokesman, presented a petition on behalf of the employes of the car department. The petition states that last August, when the signers were receiving the standard wages, a cut of 25 to 35 percent was made. Now, a further reduction has been made, bringing car repairers to $35 per month and car cleaners to $1 per day. These men are all men of family, citizens, voters and taxpayers. The petition states that the last reduction places their earnings below the requirements of Chinamen and deprives business men of a patronage they would gladly give. All they asked was a return to the rates prevailing prior to March 7. Then follows an appeal to the Seattle spirit, the rule to stand together which has made this city famous the country over, a declaration that the wage-earners have displayed it and a request to the chamber and each member to interest themselves in their behalf.
“Such wages might be enough for an unmarried wanderer, and it was such men, or men who preferred slavery to crime, who had taken their places, for such wages were slavery.”
This 1894 strike highlights the long-standing tension between the 'Seattle spirit' of boosterism and the reality of the working class struggle. Today's debates over living wages and the affordability of the city echo these exact grievances from the late 19th century.
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