The Great Strike Wave of 1894
Across the nation, laborers and coal miners are organizing and striking against wage cuts, prompting a debate in the press about the true state of the economy.
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.
There have been so many reductions in wages since the panic that labor is disposed to contest further reductions. The Great Northern railroad system, which extends from St. Paul to Puget Sound, is tied up. In accordance with the order of the National Miners' Convention that after April 21, no coal shall be mined in any state or territory where the organization has control until authorized by the executive board, there is a great strike of coal miners in progress that is likely to involve 150,000 men. The strike is for last year's scales, 70 cents per ton being the basis. The list of unemployed in Paterson, N. J., has been swelled by the strike of 700 employees of a jute manufacturing company. Nearly every major industrial center, from Ohio to New England, is reporting walkouts among longshoremen, laborers, and factory workers. Matthew Marshall of the New York Sun argues that these strikes prove the paralysis of industry is exaggerated; if the country were truly prostrate, he claims, a strike for higher wages would be an absurdity.
“Every black cloud has a silver lining, and Matthew Marshall in the New York Sun fairly argues that the prevailing strikes... are proof that the paralysis of industry throughout the country must be exaggerated.”
This 1894 reporting captures the immense economic anxiety of the 'Panic of 1893,' a depression that paralyzed the Pacific Northwest. Today’s labor actions in Seattle, particularly in the transit and service sectors, echo this historical struggle between wage-earning power and the boom-bust volatility of a city tied to global capital.
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