Corporate Lobbying Against Miners' Eight-Hour Day
A major mining company pays to bring immigrant miners to Olympia to lobby against the very labor protections intended to help them.
Uncle Jim Anderson of the Pacific Coast Company is in Olympia to ensure that a bill providing for an eight-hour day for miners does not become law. Anderson arrived accompanied by a dozen miners with powder marks on their faces. These miners are violently opposed to the eight-hour day and express a desire to work even longer hours. A curious incident is that their expenses, hotel bills, and car fare are all paid by Mr. Anderson. The labor lobby denies that these men are representative of the underground workers, asserting instead that they have been hand-picked to betray their fellow laborers. It is worth a great deal to the Pacific Coast Company to defeat this law, and the corporation is among the best represented in the state.
“They apparently yearn for labor; they long for more hours of toil.”
The practice of 'astroturfing' or using corporate-funded proxies to lobby against labor protections is a tactic as alive in Olympia today as it was in 1910. The struggle over worker hours and safety remains a core part of the state's political history.
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