Blacklisted on the Waterfront: Northern Pacific Punishes Strike Leaders
After the 1894 railroad strike, a Northern Pacific superintendent admits the company will not rehire “strike leaders or agitators” — and one ex-switchman says the boycott follows him even to a steamship wharf.
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. 28. [Special.]— Regarding the alleged blacklisting of men who joined the strikers, M. M. Perl, General Assistant Superintendent Dickinson’s chief clerk, says:
“We do not ask men any questions regarding the labor organizations to which they belong. We have no interest in interfering with them if they try to get work outside of our jurisdiction or on other roads. There is no blacklist, although it is not the purpose of the company to employ men who were strike leaders or agitators.”
Superintendent McCabe covers the same ground gone over by Mr. Perl, and adds:
“No man can draw pay from this road who threw us down during the strike and incited men to desert the company. Such men as Feehan, Gleason and Burns, of the executive committee of the American Railway Union, cannot work for the Northern Pacific. I came across Gleason’s name in signing a voucher the other day. He was handling our steamship freight as a stevedore on the wharf, and getting 40 cents per hour. I signed the voucher, and gave notice that it was the last Gleason would ever get.”
Thomas Gleason, an ex-switchman, the man referred to, says:
“The company proposes to drive me out of town with their boycott on me. I have property here, and will not go. I would not have felt so bad about this matter if the company had not gone outside of its jurisdiction and gave notice that I could not work on the wharf at all. I was working for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, which has nothing to do with the Northern Pacific Company. The President of the Stevedores’ Union told me that Mr. Canfield had informed him that Superintendent McCabe had said I must not be allowed on the wharf at all. He, the president of the union, said the company could cause the stevedores trouble, and I then got out rather than be instrumental in any more trouble. I have had enough. This boycotting of men who took part in the strike will do the Northern Pacific company no good.”
Superintendent McCabe says he would be just as well satisfied not to have Gleason on the wharf among the men. However, he says he did not interfere with his work outside of the Northern Pacific. Still, the labor organizations are discussing the matter and, in the meantime, the railroad company is taking back a large number of the strikers who did not take an aggressive part in the strike.
“No man can draw pay from this road who threw us down during the strike and incited men to desert the company.”
The 1894 strike was a national turning point in union busting; the railroad’s claim that there was “no blacklist” while naming men who could never work again is a familiar corporate denial. Today’s fights over “union avoidance,” no-poach lists and worker databases echo the same power to bar people from a trade.
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