The Tragedy of the 'Industrial Army'
A boat carrying members of the Coxeyite protest movement capsized in the Yakima River, resulting in four deaths and a harrowing nine-hour rescue.
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 party of eighteen industrials started down the Yakima river in a boat at 8:30 in the morning. When four miles down, they struck a big eddy, which flung the boat against a log lodged in the middle of the stream, turning it bottom side up. Eleven men succeeded in climbing on the log, three—Carpenter, Haley, and Maple—swam out, and four drowned. The names of the dead are W. M. Larrun, an old man from Seattle; H. Davis, a young man from Seattle; J. C. Brown, a young man from Seattle; and J. Wikes, of Spokane. Many citizens and 'Wealers' (members of the Industrial Army) worked for three hours to get a rope to the men on the log. By a system of pulleys, they finally hauled the eleven survivors to the top of a pine tree one at a time, then down to the ground by a ladder. By 6 o'clock in the evening, they were safely ashore, nearly frozen after nine hours in the icy water.
“They were on the log about nine hours, in water cold as ice. They suffered severely. This thoroughly weaned them from the idea of going by boat down the Yakima river.”
The Coxey's Army protests of 1894 were a desperate response to the severe economic depression of the era, mirroring the frustration of citizens facing systemic economic collapse. While the 'march' is now a historical footnote, the intense civil unrest and the militarized response by authorities in Washington remain an early example of the state's aggressive handling of labor and protest movements.
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