Roslyn Coal Miners Vow to Fight a 20 Percent Wage Cut
A mass meeting near Roslyn finds miners from Wilkeson, Franklin, and the Eureka and Navy camps ready to organize under the United Mine Workers — and unwilling to swallow a pay cut without a fight.
The story, cleaned up
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ROSLYN, May 24.—[Special.]—A mass meeting of the miners lately in the employ of the Northern Pacific Coal Company was held in a grove near this city this afternoon to hear the report of the committee sent to interview the miners in the camps on the west side relative to organization under the regulations of the United Mine Workers of America. The committee visited Wilkeson, Franklin, the Eureka and Navy mines, and reported an expression of full sympathy in the movement. They stated that at Franklin the men were ready to take the initiatory step, both white and colored miners, and that action would be taken when the call was made. The same sentiment was expressed at the Eureka and Navy coal mines, and at Wilkeson the committee was given to understand that if coal was being mined there for outside mountain consumption the men would walk out as soon as that fact was established.
No action was taken at the meeting this afternoon relative to the local situation, but Chairman Lane, of the executive committee, expressed to the POST-INTELLIGENCER correspondent the opinion that the men were now so fully determined as in the start not to accept the 20 per cent reduction, and that such terms would not be accepted except after an exhaustive fight. He said that the men had been offered financial support from British Columbia and other points, and that they were in receipt of letters of encouragement from various Eastern points.
General Manager Kangley and Assistant Manager H. C. Little were here today in consultation with Superintendent Harrison and others, but the result of the meeting can not be ascertained. They left for Tacoma this evening.
“The men were now so fully determined as in the start not to accept the 20 per cent reduction, and ... such terms would not be accepted except after an exhaustive fight.”
In 1894, a 20 percent wage cut was a life-and-death matter in coal country, and miners organized across camps to resist it. The Roslyn meeting shows an early Washington labor coalition that crossed racial lines at Franklin — a reminder that today’s fights over pay cuts, union recognition and the cost of living are not new.
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