Abandoned and Starving in the Mountains
After the Wellington disaster, laborers recount being treated like 'cattle' by the Great Northern Railway while awaiting unpaid wages.
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.
Railroad workmen reported suffering extreme hardships while laboring for the Great Northern. After being promised pay in Everett, they arrived to find the company had no record of their identity slips. Starving and desperate, they were finally paid only after the situation reached the public and the State Labor Commissioner was alerted. The men reported that they were fed poorly and treated like 'cattle' during their work in the mountains. Local police provided humane support while the men waited for their wages, which were finally released in a flurry of activity after media scrutiny. The paper notes that corporations cannot stand the light of publicity regarding their treatment of workers, arguing that even the lowest laborer deserves the same dignity and protection as skilled rail staff.
“The company treated us like so many cattle and fed us like hogs—Worse than hogs, because there is money in hogs and there was just so much work in us.”
The 1910 Wellington avalanche is one of Washington's deadliest disasters. This report captures the immediate, often ignored aftermath: the labor exploitation of the workers tasked with the dangerous cleanup, mirroring contemporary struggles over the treatment and wages of contract laborers in the Pacific Northwest.
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