The Long Siege for the Eight-Hour Day
For over a year, Everett's machinists have held the line against Pacific Coast manufacturing giants in a battle for shorter hours.
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.
The magnificent fight waged by the machinists on the Pacific coast for an eight-hour work day has won the admiration of the labor world. It is now thirteen months since the men in contract shops from Los Angeles in the south to Vancouver, B.C., in the north went out, and the same courage and persistence marks their ranks today as when they first laid down their tools. In all this fifteen hundred miles of coast, scarcely a man has proven traitor to the cause. Strike benefits, which represent a mere bagatelle of their earning power, have been their sole means of subsistence. Before such an array of courage and sacrifice, many shop owners have given in, and each victory has strengthened the determination of the remaining strikers to stand firmly. It is an inspiration to talk to the band of striking machinists in this city. They are nerved by the absolute justice of their contention and believe the shorter work day is a sure phase of the evolution of industry.
“They are nerved by the absolute justice of their contention and believe, too, that the shorter work day is as much a sure phase of the evolution of industry as the modern machine itself.”
The struggle for the eight-hour day defined the labor movement in Everett a century ago. Today, the city’s discourse has shifted toward the 'gig economy' and the precarity of modern service labor, but the foundational question remains: who controls the value of a worker's time?
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