The $1,000 Payroll: How Seattle’s Hop Boom Put Cash in Local Hands
A local farmer’s record-breaking harvest didn’t just fill warehouses—it injected a thousand dollars into the city’s economy by hiring Indigenous laborers who spent their wages right here.
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.
Mr. Hayes, who has been running his hop farm for about four years on a fourteen-acre plot, has gathered a crop of seventy-five hundred pounds. This field was at first considered worthless due to poor soil, but through careful management and the use of manure, it yielded an unprecedented result. The wet weather this season affected other fields, but those planted on high sandy ridges along the river bank did well.
Mr. Hayes brought down samples of his hops, cured by an experienced hop dryer in his employ. Local experts attest that they are superior to California hops, being said to be fifty percent stronger and better in every respect. Mr. Hayes employed about 100 persons, mostly Indians, in picking the crop, to whom he paid altogether in wages $1,000. Nearly all of this money has been spent in Seattle, the larger portion of which has paid out for provisions, dry goods, etc.
It is much better for the business interests of the community that Indians should be employed than Chinamen. In California, hundreds of Chinese are employed in the hop-fields each season. The money they earn is primarily paid into the Chinese companies, while most of their clothing and food comes from China instead of being bought of local dealers. Mr. Hayes, however, states the result of his experience that he purpose in the future to employ white labor exclusively, if Seattle can furnish it, as he finds Indian labor the cheapest in the end because more reliable and less troublesome, although all kinds have their place, and their relative value.
This 1876 account of a 'local boom' highlights how early economic development relied on the exploitation of cheap Indigenous labor while simultaneously fostering local commerce. The tension between relying on low-wage immigrant/Indigenous workers for profit versus the desire for 'reliable' white labor mirrors modern debates about gig economy wages, immigration policy, and the racialized nature of service work in Seattle's growing industries.
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