The Newspaper Tried to Boycott the Fair; the Fair Boycotted Back
When the Ledger moved to oust union man Jim Dow from the Interstate Fair, Tacoma's businessmen chose the fair over the paper.
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.
Several thousand people visited the Interstate fair grounds today, and the small boys and the young sisters amused themselves with the animals and dogs which are on the grounds for the streets of Tacoma. Jim Dow was not on the ground, notwithstanding the attempt made by the Ledger to drive him out. He would no doubt have been driven out but for the interference of leading business men, and to them, and not to the Ledger, he renders thanks for his retention.
The Ledger placed a boycott on the fair because Dow was employed to superintend the construction work, and had everything in readiness to oust Dow, because he, as president of the federation of local trades unions, supervised the boycott of the typographical union on Mr. Bennett's paper. The Ledger made a great ado about the movement to bounce Mr. Dow. It quieted when several of the best business men of the city stood ready to withdraw their advertisements from its columns if it did not quit knifing the fair and let Dow alone. It quit. Dow was not ousted, either. In this instance the boycott proved to have a double razor edge. It cut both ways. But the Ledger printed only such facts as suited its purpose.
“In this instance the boycott proved to have a double razor edge. It cut both ways.”
A labor leader kept his job because advertisers — not editors — held the real leverage, and a newspaper's own boycott boomeranged. The dynamic is uncannily familiar: unions using collective pressure, a press outlet picking a side, and the business community deciding which way the money flows.
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