The Myth of the Transient Worker
A Snohomish editor argues that young men wandering the river camps for work are missing their chance to claim homesteads before the land is claimed by others.
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.
We have frequently pointed out to the young men who come here on the river seeking employment, the advantage that would accrue to them in taking up land. If they have not the money to pre-empt, they can homestead, and five years’ residence and cultivation will give them a title. Every inducement is held out for settlement. The tide of emigration will be greater this fall and next season than ever before. Thousands of claims are now vacant that in a year or two will be taken by new comers. Young men are wandering from camp to camp, looking for work, and pass over land that will soon be the site of happy homes, which they might now have by taking up but which they cannot buy at any price in a few years from now. These young men will yet envy some settler his home, that they could have had as well as not. The thoughtless, the discontented and the newcomer may run down the country all they please. Times, wages and business generally is better on Puget Sound than anywhere else.
“Young men are wandering from camp to camp, looking for work, and pass over land that will soon be the site of happy homes.”
This 1880s editorial frames the struggle of transient labor as a failure to capitalize on frontier ownership—a stark contrast to today's Snohomish, where land is no longer 'vacant' but remains largely unaffordable for the modern equivalent of the transient worker.
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