Setting the Record Straight on Local Labor Troubles
The manager of the Lakeview rolling mills clarifies that an assault took place on a public road, not within the company's property, amid rumors of internal company conflict.
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.
W. S. Bart, manager of the Lakeview rolling mills, wishes the public to know that neither Jack Foley nor David Pickerill has been employed at the mill for about a year and that the assault yesterday did not take place at Lakeview, but on the road between Rigney hill and South Tacoma. It is said that the cause of the trouble was that Pickerill and Foley thought that John I. Davis, the man whom they assaulted, informed on them for going into a saloon or breaking some other rule of the company. Mr. Bart wishes to have it expressly understood that the trouble is not a squabble among the employees.
“Mr. Bart wishes to have it expressly understood that the trouble is not a squabble among the employees.”
Management's quick reaction to distance the company from labor-related violence is a sharp reminder of the precarious power dynamics in industrial towns and the stigma associated with 'informing' or 'breaking rules' in workplace cultures.
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