The Great 'Commonweal' Trek Across the Cascades
Striking workers and the unemployed navigate a treacherous path from Seattle and Tacoma toward Washington D.C., clashing with deputy marshals and local authorities along the Northern Pacific tracks.
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.
A thousand Northwestern Commonwealers are scattered along the Northern Pacific track from Stampede Tunnel to Pasco, in Central Washington. This evening, only a few more than 100 Industrials remain at Puyallup. Tonight, nearly 300 are at Lester and Weston, making their way eastward through a driving rain, walking when they have to and catching trains as they can. Deputy marshals cleared two freight trains at Lester of about 100 Commonwealers each, the men offering no resistance. Gen. 'Jumbo' Cantwell returned to Tacoma today and addressed a big meeting at the National theater, indicating he may run for sheriff. In Buckley, the town welcomed 100 Industrials with food and fires, showing a divide between local citizens and the government's harsh crackdown. Meanwhile, Attorney General Olney states that the government is spending $1,000 a day in Washington state to suppress the movement.
“I know every one, and they're all right. We don't steal the cars, the company says so long as we make no trouble and keep out of sight in the cars we can ride.”
The 1894 'Commonweal' movement—an early echo of the Bonus Army—was a desperate protest by workers crushed by the Panic of 1893. Today's debates over encampments and the criminalization of poverty in Seattle share a direct lineage with the way these men were chased from freight cars by federal marshals a century ago.
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