The Pullman Strike Reaches Seattle
Striking railroad workers and their sympathizers gather at the depots as a tense national labor dispute ripples through the city.
The first sign of resistance to the police since the beginning of the great strike was given by the crowd gathered at the Lake Shore depot last evening. About 200 to 300 strikers and sympathizers jeered at the crew of the passenger train from Snoqualmie. Police officers under Captain Rogers forced the crowd back from Railroad Avenue to Columbia Street, and finally toward Front Street, dispersing the gathering without arrests. The strike, linked to the national Pullman boycott, has remained largely peaceful in Seattle, though the Northern Pacific and Lake Shore railroads are struggling to maintain schedules. Strikers are organizing along the rail lines, and the local American Railway Union has officially pledged not to handle Pullman cars. While the atmosphere is tense, there has been no violence, unlike reports from Tacoma, where a railroad worker was assaulted by a crowd.
“The usual body of 200 to 300 strikers and their sympathizers, with a large mixture of idle curiosity-seekers, had assembled there and spread out over Railroad avenue toward the track.”
This 1894 standoff during the Pullman Strike captures a moment when Seattle was a key node in a national movement for labor rights. Today, Seattle remains a hub of labor organizing, though the battleground has shifted from railroad depots to the tech and service sectors of a vastly larger city.
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