The Price of Labor in the New Metropolis
An 1889 editorial wrestles with the tension between rising Seattle labor costs and the realities of an booming frontier economy.
The question of labor protection which has been brought to the front by the recent strike of the stevedore laborers in New York is one that may well be considered in the city of Seattle. The New York laborers asked for a raise of $1 per day of ten hours, that is, 10 cents an hour extra, which would make their pay $3.20 per day. To live on the Pacific Coast costs about the same as in New York. If labor is $2.20 in New York, and it is $3.20 here, it is plain that the advantage is in favor of the labor in this part of the United States. Our prosperity is based on the building of homes, the opening of mills, and the development of new enterprise. As a matter of fact, the laborers in the city of Seattle are better paid than their brothers in the East. They know how to take their own interests into account. We find that the laboring men of the city of Seattle are generally prosperous, and the demand for labor in our mills and building trades ensures a standard of living that would be impossible if our resources were confined to a purely agricultural field.
“Our prosperity is based on the building of homes, the opening of mills, and the development of new enterprise.”
In 1889, Seattle’s labor market was booming, with high wages reflecting the intensity of the city's rapid expansion. Today, that same 'prosperity' creates a cost-of-living crisis, where the high wages required to build the city are barely enough to secure a place to live within it, echoing the same tension between development and worker survival found in this editorial.
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