The Night the Coal Ran: How a Company Outsmarted Strikers with Negro Labor and Winchester Rifles
In a brazen move to break the Koslyn coal strike, company managers smuggled in replacement workers from Illinois under cover of darkness, escorted by armed deputies who fired through the sleeping village of Seattle.
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.
WHILE THEY SLEPT: The New Miners Safely Landed in Bed.
A special train loaded with new labor arrived in Seattle about 12 o'clock last night, conveyed from there by a special train over the Sound branch straight through to Roslyn. The mine is being operated exclusively by negro labor. The strikers expected the men, if they came, to stop at Cle Elum and were on the lookout, but when they saw none on the regular train from the East they went away convinced that the rumor that there were new men on the train was false.
About daylight two coaches with 12 colored men and 12 deputies all armed with Winchesters and double-barreled shotguns, pulled out from Cle Elum. The branch from Cle Elum to Roslyn had been guarded all night to prevent the strikers from obstructing the track, and the train flew through at high speed.
ABOVE 6 O'CLOCK THE TRAIN FLEW THROUGH THE SLEEPING AND UNSUSPECTING VILLAGE OF SEATTLE. A man was at every switch, watching. On without a stop the train went to Mine No. 1, where the negroes, in high spirits and proud of the double-barreled shotguns they had been furnished by the company, disembarked and were soon running around through the brush after jack-rabbits. After seeing the new men safely inducted with the rest of their colored brethren, where no one could distinguish the new from the old, the train with deputies returned to Cle Elum for the night.
The strikers at Roslyn were chagrined at the way they had been fooled... The company intends to run mines night and day to supply the railroad company with coal until some conclusion is reached in the strike.
Mr. Lytle, general manager of the coal company, said: 'The way things have been going on lately the coal company has had nothing to say about the management of their works... The company will keep the mines shut down until we can manage our own business... We have 200 men in the East we can bring in any time we think we have ample protection.'
This account reveals the brutal mechanics of strike-breaking in early 20th-century Washington, where companies routinely imported non-union labor (often from marginalized groups) and armed private security to bypass local resistance. The use of 'negro labor' as a wedge tactic highlights how racial divisions were weaponized to undermine white worker solidarity, a dynamic that echoes in modern debates over immigrant labor and union busting.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.