Eight Hundred Armed Men, Two Dead: The Coal War the Guard Rode All Night to Stop
In the summer of 1891 the Green River coal towns of Franklin and Gilman armed themselves into rival companies. When the shooting started, a deputy sheriff wired Seattle for troops — and the colonel marched before he had orders.
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.
On the evening of Sunday, the 27th day of June, a riot occurred at the town of Franklin, in King county, which resulted in a battle between two contending factions numbering in all about eight hundred men, and in which two men were killed and several wounded. The deputy at that point was unable to quell the riot or disperse the mob, and the conflict ceased only on account of the approach of darkness; the factions withdrew a short distance from each other, evidently intending to resume the battle with the coming of daylight on the following day.
The deputy sheriff telegraphed Colonel Haines at Seattle requesting him to order immediately to Franklin one or more companies of his regiment to assist the civil authorities in preserving the peace. This telegram was received by the colonel at about half-past ten in the evening of that day. The members of his command were scattered throughout the city, but were collected and sent to Franklin, which is thirty-four miles away, before daybreak. Prompt action seemed necessary, and the colonel immediately sent to the governor the following telegram:
"SEATTLE, Wash., June 27, 1891. Elisha P. Ferry: I have received a request from a deputy sheriff to send a company of the National Guard to Franklin immediately, expecting a riot at any moment. Several persons have been shot. I have ordered a company there, and will accompany them. I have no specified orders from you except from Gilman. If my action is not approved, wire me at Franklin."
Companies B and D were ordered out, and as soon as a sufficient number of those companies were assembled to constitute one company available for duty the colonel proceeded with them at once to Franklin, arriving there at daybreak. To the telegram of June 27th no answer was sent by the governor. The arrival and presence of the troops at Franklin prevented any further outbreak at that point, and those companies remained in service until relieved from duty on the 15th day of July.
On the 29th day of June the threatened riot at Gilman occurred, and the sheriff, after endeavoring in vain to quell it, requested the colonel to send two companies of his regiment to that place for the purpose of assisting the civil authorities in preserving the peace and preventing the destruction of life and property. This he immediately did, sending Companies D and E of his regiment there. They arrived at Gilman on the morning of the 30th of June, reported to the sheriff's deputy, and remained on duty until the 16th day of July, preventing by their presence any further riotous demonstrations.
At the towns of Franklin, Newcastle, Black Diamond and Gilman, in King county, there are large and valuable coal mines, the operation of which constitutes one of the principal industries of the state; and at those places unlawfully armed bodies of men, organized in the form of military companies, paraded and drilled with arms in their possession, and threatened the property pertaining to the mines and the lives of those who labored in them, being a constant menace to the public peace, and causing great terror and alarm among the peaceable citizens of those towns.
“Several persons have been shot. I have ordered a company there, and will accompany them. I have no specified orders from you except from Gilman. If my action is not approved, wire me at Franklin.”
Franklin is a ghost town now, its coal works buried under fields outside Black Diamond, and Gilman renamed itself Issaquah. But the pattern set that June — armed camps in the coal fields, a company of the National Guard hurried out overnight, and a governor's order to disarm 'unauthorized armed bodies' — became the template for how Washington met labor conflict for the next thirty years. The men who dug the coal that heated Olympia and Seattle paid for the industry's fortunes twice over: once in wages, and once in the crossfire.
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