A Company Turns to Black Miners to Break the Roslyn Strike
With 165 Roslyn miners signing contracts to return, the Northern Pacific's manager admits importing Black laborers as a last resort — and promises to keep the number small.
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.
TACOMA, Aug. 3.—[Special.]—Manager John Kangley, of the Northern Pacific Roslyn mines, left for Ellensburg and Roslyn tonight. He says the editorial in the POST-INTELLIGENCER today regarding the importation of negro miners was to the point, but as a last resort the company was compelled to engage some of them, and they would have to be provided with work. However, Mr. Kangley said, he would endeavor to make the number imported as small as possible. This morning 165 Roslyn miners had signed contracts to return to work. The Northern Pacific Coal Company says that the King county mine managers had nothing to do with colored miners going to Roslyn.
“as a last resort the company was compelled to engage some of them, and they would have to be provided with work.”
The 1894 Roslyn strike saw the coal company import Black miners from the South as strikebreakers, splitting a workforce along racial lines that the company itself had drawn. The episode left a bitter legacy in Kittitas County, and it rhymes uncomfortably with today's fights over who gets blamed when employers pit workers against each other.
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