The Lumber Trust Strikes: 1,400 Men Cast Adrift in the Pacific Northwest
In a coordinated move across Puget Sound, the 'lumber trust' shuts down mills from Port Gamble to Port Madison, citing Southern California market weakness and throwing over a thousand workers into unemployment.
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.
PORT GAMBLE, Feb. 12.—The lumber trust operating its mills throughout the Puget Sound country today ordered the Port Gamble, Port Ludlow, Port Blakeley, Port Madison, Poulsbo and Port Wilson mills down for a period of eight days. The cause assigned is overproduction and decline of the market in Southern California. This throws 1,400 men out of employment and curtails the production of Puget Sound mills over 60,000,000 feet per day.
This 1890 report captures an early instance of corporate consolidation—the 'lumber trust'—using market manipulation to control labor supply, a dynamic that echoes in modern debates over gig economy algorithms and housing affordability driven by institutional investors. The sheer scale of the layoff (1,400 men) highlights how quickly regional economies could be destabilized by distant market forces, a vulnerability still felt in Washington's resource-dependent communities today.
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