Yakima's Sheriff Rounds Up the Jobless and Puts Them on the Chain Gang
With the valley crying out for labor at $2.50 to $3 a day, the county decides that any man without a job is a vagrant — and sentences him to hard labor.
NORTH YAKIMA — The sheriff has decided to take a hand in the labor situation. A roundup has begun of all men with no occupations. There is a crying demand for laboring men up and down the Yakima Valley. The Sheriff says that, with wages at $2.50 and $3 a day, men who are out of jobs don't want them. He therefore dubs them vagrants and transfers them to the city chain gang.
“He therefore dubs them vagrants and transfers them to the city chain gang.”
The sheriff's logic — that if work is available, a man without a job must be a criminal — is an old American reflex. Today's fights over encampments, 'vagrancy' and clearing the homeless from downtown streets echo North Yakima's 1910 chain gang, where falling behind was met with forced labor rather than help.
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