The Grays Harbor Sawmill Strike
The President of the State Federation of Labor details the brutal suppression of striking sawmill workers in Aberdeen and Hoquiam.
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.
At the Spokane convention of the State Federation of Labor, I called attention to the spirit of discontent among the employees of the 'sawdust ring' of southwestern Washington, to the suppression of free speech and free press by city officials owned by lumber barons, and to the probability of an early outbreak against the un-American and unendurable conditions of employment. The strike began on Grays Harbor because wages were cut to $1.80 for ten hours. Eventually, all the sawmills on Grays Harbor (about twenty) were shut down. Employers refused to negotiate, then attempted to break the strike by promising a minimum wage of $2.20 and threatening to replace foreign-born workers with Americans. In Hoquiam, a committee of mill superintendents and corporation attorneys formed an armed mob, deported workers, and attempted to herd them into boxcars, nailing them shut. Only the intervention of the Sheriff prevented a mass deportation. The strike has been effectively broken by coercion, intimidation, and the closure of all places of assembly.
“The mayor proclaimed it. Special deputies with courage to carry guns and clubs against unarmed working men were hired to defend militarism and the mills began one by one to resume operations.”
This account of the 1912 Grays Harbor strikes highlights the violent tension between industrial capital and labor in Washington's timber industry. It serves as a stark reminder of how 'law and order' were frequently deployed by vigilante committees to crush labor organizing long before the modern era's debates over labor rights.
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