Turning the Chain-Gang Toward Thrift
A city commissioner rejects expensive wood bids for the pumping station, proposing to employ the chain-gang instead.
The story, cleaned up
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Commissioner McGregor does not think the city should pay $1.80 a cord for slabwood for the pumping station. He has thrown out the bids received a few days ago and today readvertised for figures. Unless lower prices are given it is probable the commissioner will see what he can do toward starting a wood business for the city. The chain-gang could be put to work gathering the old wood in the logged-off land in the suburbs of the city and sawing it up, and it is believed thousands of cords now going to waste could be secured at small cost.
“The chain-gang could be put to work gathering the old wood in the logged-off land in the suburbs of the city.”
This proposal highlights the brutal intersection of municipal austerity and the carceral state in early 20th-century Tacoma, where the labor of the incarcerated was viewed as a raw material for public infrastructure.
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