The Railway Strike and the Law
An editorial arguing that the American Railway Union's sympathetic strike is an unlawful conspiracy against public welfare.
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.
The present sympathetic strike enforced by the American Railway Union is not only exceedingly bad public policy for the interests of labor, but it is in the nature of a conspiracy against the common weal. If every time there is a local labor dispute between some employer and his workmen the business and comfort of the whole people from Mobile to Montreal, from Portland, Me., to Portland, Or., are to be tied up, we may be sure that this kind of tyranny will not long be endured. Suppose a man has a dispute over his wages with his employer, does anybody suppose that the whole American people are going to go without water, gas, coal, food or transportation until this dispute is settled? You might as well say that because of a local labor dispute Seattle should go without water, gas, fuel, food or transportation. The law considers and treats it as a conspiracy against the public weal for capital to combine to corner the absolute necessities of life; the law will certainly not permit a combination of labor to execute the same sort of oppression. Because a man is discharged from the employ of the city water works, he may not lawfully combine to cut off the whole people of Seattle from their water supply.
“Because a man is discharged from the employ of the city water works, he may not lawfully combine to cut off the whole people of Seattle from their water supply.”
This 1894 editorial reflects the intense anxieties surrounding the Pullman Strike, a pivotal moment in American labor history. It highlights the tension between collective labor action and the 'public interest'—a framework frequently invoked in modern Seattle labor disputes to criticize actions that disrupt public services.
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