Protecting the Immigrants on the Northern Pacific
Railroad officials implement new dining standards for emigrant passengers to prevent exploitation and food price gouging.
E. J. Westlake, superintendent of the dining car department of the Northern Pacific road, has returned from Portland, Oregon, where he went to perfect the dining car system of that road. A new car will be put on from Sprague to Ainsworth, in Washington Territory, which fills up the entire line to Wallula Junction. Another arrangement was to supply immigrants with edibles. Heretofore there has been any amount of speculating and swindling practiced upon these poor people in the matter of something to eat, and the Northern Pacific people intend to protect this class of travel and put a stop to the bad practices that have prevailed. Hereafter dining car conductors will carry supplies—canned meats, coffee, etc.—which will be furnished to immigrants at about actual cost. This system will bring about a much-needed reform. Another change that has been made is in the matter of waiters in the cars—white servants having been substituted for negroes on the trains between St. Paul and Mandan. The experiment has proved so satisfactory that it is likely the colored fellows will have to go all along the line.
“Heretofore there has been any amount of speculating and swindling practiced upon these poor people in the matter of something to eat, and the Northern Pacific people intend to protect this class of travel.”
While framed as a 'reform' to protect immigrants from price gouging, the report also casually notes the railroad's active displacement of Black workers. This juxtaposition of progressive consumer protection alongside discriminatory labor practices captures the complicated, often exclusionary nature of corporate expansion in the Pacific Northwest.
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