Vigilante Justice on the Sound
When a steamer full of card sharps tried to fleece a group of shingle weavers, the workers fought back—and won.
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.
An exciting time was had on the steamer George E. Starr during its trip down from Seattle Sunday. Three Seattle gamblers, who have long been working their graft on the steamers, were given an experience which may lead to a great moral reform, or at least a temporary cessation of their activities. On the down trip, the gamblers were working a mark—an unsophisticated shingle weaver from Whatcom who had taken a few drinks. The gamblers cleaned out the crowd, and when the shingle weavers appealed to the captain, they received no help. The weavers, having more sense than to submit to professional gamblers, walked forward and conferred with a number of their fellows returning from a labor convention. Being lovers of fair play, they decided to take a hand themselves. They demanded the gamblers return the money taken from the shingle weaver. A wordy war ensued, followed by a free-for-all fight. The 'sports' were beaten into a state of collapse and when the dust settled, the gamblers were forced to cough up for all the glass windows broken in the fracas. They were considerably poorer, losing the rest of their money to the man they had attempted to cheat.
“Being lovers of fair play, they decided to take a hand themselves.”
This 1903 story captures the era's deep-seated tension between itinerant grifters and the organized working class of the Pacific Northwest. Today, the power dynamic has shifted from deck-side brawls to corporate labor disputes, yet the struggle over who controls the local economy—the 'gamblers' or the workers—remains a core narrative in the region.
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