The Great Walla Walla Prune Crisis
A labor strike on the Puget Sound puts Walla Walla’s entire fruit harvest at risk as packaging supplies vanish.
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.
Local produce firms are in a quandary how to fill their orders for prunes. The prunes are plenty enough—never more so—but baskets cannot be secured to pack them in. The baskets are made on the Sound, and the girls who make them have gone on a strike for higher wages. The consequence is that the supply of baskets in Walla Walla is gone and no more can be shipped here. Just what the outcome will be is hard to tell, but prunes are ripening and will be lost unless they can be marketed in the old way.
“The prunes are plenty enough—never more so—but baskets cannot be secured to pack them in.”
This 1903 story highlights the fragility of local agricultural supply chains when dependent on distant labor markets. Just as then, modern Walla Walla farmers grapple with the complexities of labor, market volatility, and the perennial race against the harvest clock.
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