The Lumber Town That Held Worker's Luggage Hostage

It has long been known that Cosmopolis is the hell-hole of the state from a labor standpoint. The Grays Harbor Post devotes a page of its issue of June 20 to a systematic expose of the scheme worked by the Grays Harbor Commercial Co. and the employment agencies of Seattle. Men are sent to Cosmopolis with the understanding that their wages will be $40 a month and upward. The company pays their fare, which is $4, and when they arrive they have to pay a hospital fee of 50 cents and an employment office fee of $1.50. Instead of paying them $40 a month, they pay them $1 a day and the men pay for their own rooms. If upon arrival the men refuse to work out the $6 charged against them, their baggage is kept by the company. Instances have been shown where men were discharged as soon as they had earned enough to square the $6. The Post prints a photograph of a dray load of baggage from Cosmopolis, noting that 210 pieces were confiscated by the company and sold to a second-hand dealer after men refused to submit to the company's treatment. The legislature has steadily refused to pass a law forbidding false advertising for labor, presumably because of the strength of the 'sawdust ring' in both senate and house.