'We Can Fight Both Them and the Company': Seattle's Railroad Strike Falters
As Northern Pacific engineers straggle back to work in Tacoma and Seattle, a union chairman vows to fight on — while dynamite vanishes and a log train is fired on near Puyallup.
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 railroad strikers in Seattle and Tacoma, while outwardly keeping a brave appearance, are feeling very despondent concerning the ultimate outcome of the strike. General Manager Kendrick's order, giving the old men on the Northern Pacific a certain time in which to return to work, has had a woeful effect in breaking up and disorganizing their ranks on the Pacific division. A well-known Northern Pacific official said yesterday:
"The employes through Idaho and Montana are pretty generally accepting the terms of Mr. Kendrick's order and are applying for work. On the Dakota division and at Tacoma the men are still holding out to some extent, however."
A brotherhood locomotive engineer who came to Seattle yesterday from Tacoma says the engineers over there are seriously considering re-entering the employ of the company in a body. "Several of us have returned to work," said he. "I went back this morning and signed the court's order to be loyal to the United States and the interests of the company. A good many others are bound to follow suit."
Chairman Crehan, of the local branch of the American Railway Union, says: "None of the 900 or more men at the car shops have gone back. In fact, the engineers are the only ones that went back as a body. They have all along been 'scabs' at heart, and waited only for an opportunity to go to work. Their committee informed us last night that they would not return to work, but they got together this morning and straggled back. We can fight both them and the company."
Mr. Crehan has received messages from E. V. Debs in Chicago, urging the men to give up nothing under any conditions, and from Spokane, where a meeting of over 300 strikers passed resolutions condemning all who took the oath required by the Northern Pacific as traitors to themselves, the committee, the people and prosperity.
A log train was fired on near Puyallup this evening by a man on horseback, who fled as soon as two deputies gave chase on foot. It had been intended to withdraw the train guards tomorrow, but on account of tonight's shooting this will not be done. Seven hundred pounds of dynamite was stolen from a powder magazine in the suburbs Thursday night. Some think the strikers secured it, but there is no evidence to that effect. All passenger trains are running, and the sale of tickets to Eastern points was resumed today.
“None of the 900 or more men at the car shops have gone back... We can fight both them and the company. — Chairman Crehan, American Railway Union”
This is the Pullman Strike of 1894 — the moment federal courts and the railroad brotherhoods broke the back of the American Railway Union on the Pacific Coast, and a template for how injunctions would be used against labor for a century. The same tension — solidarity versus a paycheck, workers versus a company backed by the courts — is the argument still being fought in Seattle's ports, warehouses and picket lines today.
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