A Fair Held 'To Spite Bennett': Tacoma Refuses to Be Killed Over Union Labor
Nelson Bennett attacked the Interstate Fair for hiring union workmen and nearly broke the enterprise. The trustees answer with a whoop: the fair goes on, and Seattle says it will stand by it.
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.
TACOMA, July 13. — [Special.] — The darkest hour of the Interstate fair has passed, according to the interpretation of the committee by the board of trustees, and with a mighty whoop they have announced their determination to hold the fair, and hold it at once, as originally planned, and not kill it forever by postponing it, as proposed by the Ledger. For a short time the fight made upon the fair by Nelson Bennett, because of the employment of union workmen, broke the hitherto unbroken ranks of those favoring the enterprise, but there is now a front.
A director returned from Seattle this morning full of facts and promises. He said: "The Seattle people are going to stand loyally by the fair. They say they want it and we must have it. There is to be no further guessing or tasking, we are going to have it. We have telegraphed those who have engaged concessions to come and claim their space."
The $15,000 reported as necessary to open the fair has not been raised as yet in its entirety, but the forty-eight hour limit has been discarded, and the committee having charge of the raising of the fund is confidently at work. The board of trustees will meet daily, and everybody is expected to "whoop it up lively" for the interstate fair.
“There is to be no further guessing or tasking, we are going to have it.”
In the summer of 1894, with the Pullman strike convulsing the country, whether a fairground hired union carpenters was enough to sink a civic institution. Tacoma's boosters chose the unions and the fair both, and Seattle's promise to show up carried the day — a reminder that labour disputes and civic boosterism were once the same argument.
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