Railroad Men Pack a Tacoma Hall to Kill the Grain-Rate Bill
Seventy railroad employees — or, the P-I suspects, the roads themselves wearing workingmen's clothes — ask the Legislature to reject a bill cutting wheat freight rates. Their argument: lower rates mean lost jobs.
Tacoma, Feb. 18. — Seventy employes of railroads entering Tacoma held a meeting tonight and adopted a strong resolution asking the Legislature not to pass the bills now before it reducing rates on wheat and other grain. The employes say they believe they are entitled to the same consideration and protection that are afforded any other class of citizens; that they are familiar with the cost and workings of the various roads in the state; that official statements as to the cost of handling grain have been correct, and that "we have no reason to believe we can escape the hardships worked upon other railroad employes throughout the country where such legislation has been enforced."
“"We have no reason to believe we can escape the hardships worked upon other railroad employes throughout the country where such legislation has been enforced."”
Then as now, freight rates were a fight over who captures the value of Washington's harvest — the farmer who grows it or the road that hauls it. The paper's own headline calls the workingmen's meeting a "cunning railroad move," the 1895 version of an astroturf campaign. A century and a quarter later, the state is still arguing over rail rates and port access, and "this bill will cost jobs" is still the first line of defence.
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