Marriage on One Hour's Notice
A railroad foreman faced a strict hiring requirement and a ticking clock, but his resourcefulness—and a very quick wedding—landed him the job.
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.
When a man is in deadly earnest about securing employment he will not let such a small obstacle as the lack of a wife stand in the way, at least such is the fact in regard to a certain section foreman on the Columbia & Puget Sound road. He applied for the position to Assistant Superintendent McCabe, and his answers to that gentleman's queries were all satisfactory until the question came: 'Are you married? We want a married man to take this position, so that his wife can take care of the sectionhouse.' The man acknowledged that he still wandered in the wilderness of celibacy, and Mr. McCabe said in a peculiar way: 'Well you can have the job if you can get married in time. Hurry up and I'll give you passes for the 5:30 train.' It was then 4:30, and it seemed pretty short notice, but some men can get through a great deal of business in an hour. Before the time had arrived for the train to leave, the applicant returned, accompanied by a blushing bride, and said: 'Well, I got a wife. Will you give me the passes?' Filled with admiration at the man's readiness of resource, Mr. McCabe gave him the passes, and the happy couple left on their honeymoon.
“Before the time had arrived for the train to leave, the applicant returned, accompanied by a blushing bride, and said: 'Well, I got a wife. Will you give me the passes?'”
This story highlights the historical reality of the 'section house' system, where railroads outsourced the labor of maintenance housing to couples, treating a wife's unpaid domestic work as a job requirement. Today, it reads like a desperate, almost comedic hustle that underscores how much power employers held over the personal lives of workers.
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