South Tacoma’s Industrial Revolution
Northern Pacific Railway prepares to abandon steam for electricity in a shift that threatens the jobs of local coal-shoveling crews.
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.
Sometime before May 1 of the present year, there will be a change in the motive power at the South Tacoma shops. Electricity will supplant steam. The boilers that for many years have been kept warm will be allowed to cool. The fires will be extinguished and the men who shoveled coal into the mammoth furnaces and the skilled engineers who turned the steam on and off the monster stationary engines will be compelled to find work in some other place, if they remain in the South Tacoma shops. The Columbia Improvement company will furnish the power. When a reporter asked a railroad official what they would do if the city council refused the company's franchise, the official replied: 'The company will simply bring their wires down to our line and come into South Tacoma over our right of way.'
“The fires will be extinguished and the men who shoveled coal... will be compelled to find work in some other place.”
The transition from steam to electrical power in early 20th-century rail shops marked a profound shift in labor, echoing modern anxieties about automation and the displacement of workers by technological advancement. The legacy of these vast railway facilities remains a defining feature of the industrial history of Tacoma's South End.
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