The Great Railway Strike Hits Seattle
Northern Pacific officials push trains through picket lines as rail unions and the ARU prepare for a showdown.
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.
Both parties to the great strike on the Northern Pacific road are preparing for a fight to a finish, and the next few days will in all probability decide the struggle. The company scored yesterday by getting passenger trains from Tacoma to Seattle and Portland, while the strikers scored by gaining the support of the engineers at Tacoma. The train that arrived yesterday was met by a crowd of several hundred people, composed chiefly of railroad men and their friends. The engine was run by Bullock, who was not a Brotherhood man; the train had a scab brakeman and the conductor was named Stamper, who is a member of the Order of Railway Trainmen and had been appointed a deputy marshal for the occasion. The train was received with very slight movement among the crowd, and hardly a sound was made except an occasional jeer at the crew, and even that was free from any sulphurous words, the most offensive word used being 'scab.'
“Don't care if the company starts a few trains, because with green hands there are bound to be wrecks, and that will help us.”
The 1894 Pullman Strike remains one of the most significant labor disputes in American history, marking the emergence of industrial unionism. Seattle’s rail infrastructure, once the site of these tense picket lines, still serves as the backbone of the region's transport economy, though the power dynamics of labor have shifted dramatically since the era of deputy marshals with Winchesters.
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