The City's Woodpile Punishment
Tacoma’s city council introduces a new mandatory labor program for prisoners, forcing them to supply city hall’s heat.
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.
The wood pile, that time-honored bane of the hobo, is to be brought into being in Tacoma. The council last night ordered Chief Duley to put all city prisoners to sawing wood. All the old plank off the streets, all the old logs and everything in the shape of wood that can be collected will be given to the hoboes to saw, and the result of their labors will be used to fire the furnace at the city hall.
“The wood pile, that time-honored bane of the hobo, is to be brought into being in Tacoma.”
The practice of using municipal prisoners for unpaid labor was a staple of early 20th-century city management, often criminalizing poverty and transience. Today, Tacoma continues to grapple with the ethics of prison labor and the treatment of the unhoused population, though the mechanisms have shifted from street-plank woodpiles to modern carceral systems.
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