The Commonwealers' Battle for the Rails
Striking workers and the unemployed attempt to travel across Washington via hijacked trains, triggering violent clashes with federal marshals.
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.
Ninety-one Coxeyites captured a single gondola coal car at Cle-Elum on the Northern Pacific main line. The Industrials guarded every switch, making the railroad men powerless to interfere. From Cle-Elum to Ellensburg, the track has an easy 28-mile downgrade. The men jumped aboard and started for Ellensburg, where they joined a hundred or more of their friends. Deputy Marshals W. C. Chidester and Jack Jolly were shot in a fight at North Yakima; Jolly’s wound is considered critical. In North Yakima, the entire force of seventy-seven deputy marshals moved in to arrest fifty members of the 'wealers' following the previous night's battle, including several local citizens accused of inciting the riot. The army is struggling to move forward, with some groups turning to the Yakima River in a boat dubbed the 'Pride of Ellensburg' to reach the Columbia.
“The men here who are familiar with the river say they will have no trouble at the present high stage of water, as the boat is very strong. The current at this point is now running nearly seven miles an hour and they will simply go with it.”
The 1894 Coxey's Army movement was a direct reaction to the economic depression of 1893, mirroring modern anxieties about civic instability and state responses to protest movements. Today, the tensions between labor, public rights, and railroad infrastructure remain a core part of the American landscape.
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