Railway Men Fight a Rate Cut to Save Their Wages
A hundred railroad employees packed a Masonic hall at Second and Pike to oppose legislation lowering freight and passenger rates, arguing that cheaper trains would mean smaller paychecks.
About one hundred railroad men representing the Northern Pacific, Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern, and Columbia & Puget Sound roads met at the Masonic hall, corner of Second and Pike streets, last evening and passed resolutions condemning Helm’s bill in the state legislature providing for the reduction of railroad rates. The employees argued that lower rates would force the companies to cut wages and jobs, bringing hardship to working men. J. W. U. Johnson of Tacoma, chairman of the general committee representing the federated employees of the Northern Pacific, presided. A committee drafted resolutions, which were unanimously adopted and ordered forwarded to Olympia, protesting the proposed legislation and asking the legislature not to pass it. Johnson was a railway conductor employed by the Northern Pacific, running out of Tacoma to Ocosta. He said railroad men at Ellensburg, and the farmers as well, were interested in protesting the bills, and that feeling at Spokane was about the same as in Seattle. Copies of the resolutions were to be sent to all the legislators.
“Any legislation for the reduction of the revenues of the railroad companies will tend to force a corresponding reduction in the number of employes and salaries paid to such employes.”
Then as now, workers could find themselves defending their employers’ revenue when a public fight over prices threatened jobs. The 1895 protest also shows an early Seattle labor coalition organizing across competing railroads—and trying to influence Olympia from a neighborhood hall.
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