Millionaires and Mayors Lay Shingles
When union carpenters walked off the job at the Spokane Falls exposition building, the city’s elite picked up hammers to finish the roof themselves.
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.
A remarkable spectacle was presented Wednesday morning at the Spokane Falls exposition building. Two hundred union carpenters struck work because the board of directors found it necessary to use a small quantity of lumber from a boycotted mill, being unable to get it elsewhere. Public indignation was at once aroused, and prominent citizens, bankers, merchants and councilmen, with hammers in their hands, went to the building and engaged in the work of laying the shingles on the immense roof. Among those who went to work were J. J. Brown and A. M. Cannon, both millionaires; W. H. Tyler, president of the board of trade, and Mayor Clough.
“Public indignation was at once aroused, and prominent citizens, bankers, merchants and councilmen, with hammers in their hands, went to the building and engaged in the work of laying the shingles.”
This anti-union 'scab' action by the city's elite mirrors long-standing tensions over labor rights and economic control in the Pacific Northwest. The tension between organized labor and municipal boosterism remains a resonant theme in Washington's history.
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