A Thousand Men Apply to Replace 400 Striking Railroad Machinists
After the American Railway Union ordered Northern Pacific carshop workers out at Edison, the company found a long line of replacements—while the old hands looked toward the Lakeview rolling mill.
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. 5.—[Special.] About 1,000 applications have been received for the places vacated by 400 machinists when the A.R.U. ordered out the Northern Pacific carshop men at Edison recently. The shops will be opened practically with new men. Most of the old men hope to find employment in the Lakeview rolling mill.
“About 1,000 applications have been received for the places vacated by 400 machinists...”
The Pullman boycott of 1894 turned railroad towns like Tacoma and Edison into battlegrounds over who had the right to a job. The detail that a thousand men applied for four hundred struck jobs captures the era’s brittle labor market—and echoes today’s fights over replacement workers and strike leverage.
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