The Great Northern Cut Wages—and the Unemployed Took the Jobs
Car cleaners and repairers at Interbay quit rather than accept cuts to $1.50 and $1.25 a day. The company had a full replacement crew before the day was over.
The story, cleaned up
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The Great Northern officials did not find any difficulty in filling the places of the car-cleaners and repairers who quit work rather than accept a reduction of wages to $1.50 and $1.25 a day, respectively, the foreman’s wages being cut from $75 to $50 a month. There was quite a rush of the unemployed to the office of Master Mechanic Toper at Interbay station, and he had a full force before the day was over.
One of the men who struck said of the reduction: “A man might as well be out of a job as work for wages like those. They are little more than half what the Northern Pacific is paying, even since the reduction made last fall. The foreman now gets $50 a month, the car-cleaners get $1.50 a day and the repairers $1.25 a day.”
A reduction is also made in the wages of the extra gangs of section hands on the Coast lines. They have been paid a day wage, but are to be cut to $1 a day, the rate paid the regular gangs. The extra gangs are those chiefly employed in clearing slides off the Coast line and keeping the track in repair.
“A man might as well be out of a job as work for wages like those.”
Wage cuts followed by instant replacement is a pattern that still defines labor disputes: the balance of power turns on how many workers are waiting outside the gate. The Interbay shops are gone, but the same argument over pay, replacement workers, and the cost of living persists.
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