Seattle’s Unemployed Planned to Get Arrested Rather Than Go Hungry
In 1895, a new Workhouse Club proposed a march on City Hall to demand work—and a mass arrest as the backup plan.
Seattle, March 1.—A handful of leaders and reformers have begun the formation of the Workhouse Club, to organize the unemployed workingmen and see what can be done at the opening of the outdoor season. It is announced that they will march in a body to the city hall and demand of the director of public works that he give them work. If he says he is not able to do so, which they anticipate, they propose marching in a body to the workhouse, that they may have work and food.
Jealousy and jockeying. If the police refuse, which is considered probable, they declare they will deliberately violate some city ordinance in order to be arrested and sent to the workhouse—probably by trampling on the grass in a public park or seizing a streetcar team. One of the men back of the scheme is Robert [surname illegible], of the Central Labor Union.
“If the police refuse, which they consider probable, they declare they will deliberately violate some city ordinance in order to be arrested and sent to the workhouse that they may have work and food.”
The Workhouse Club’s strategy—demand public jobs, then force the city to shelter and feed you—is an ancestor of today’s fights over homelessness, encampments and the criminalization of poverty. Seattle still debates what the city owes people with nowhere else to go.
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