The Foundation of Prosperity in Roslyn
A report on the coal mining boom town of Roslyn, where the labor of the 'tin bucket brigade' powers the regional economy.
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.
Four miles from the little town of Cle-Elum and about thirty miles from Ellensburg is the coal mining town of Roslyn, containing about 1,500 people, who derive their support from the coal mines operated by the Northern Pacific Coal Company. This company employs 960 men, and during the year just ended has shipped 450,000 tons of the best steam-producing coal in the state. The company's payroll foots up about $60,000 per month, therefore Roslyn is looked upon as a good business point. In addition to the large number of white men employed by the company, about 250 colored men find employment in the mines. They were brought by the company from the East at a time when a strike was feared. All branches of business are established at Roslyn; the Knights of Labor, Masons, Odd Fellows, and Knights of Pythias have strong organizations there; schoolhouses and churches have been built, a good system of waterworks constructed, and the citizens are justly proud of the little city which they have hewn from the wilderness. Roslyn is one town where the complaint of dull times is never heard, because it is supported by the tin bucket brigade, that foundation of prosperity in every country. Go where you will and if the laboring classes are prosperous, there will you find a happy, contented people, for the entire system of our government rests upon honest labor. Capital and labor are each dependent upon the other and their interests are identical.
“Roslyn is one town where the complaint of dull times is never heard, because it is supported by the tin bucket brigade, that foundation of prosperity in every country.”
Roslyn’s history as a company town built on coal extraction mirrors the cyclic 'boom and bust' nature of Washington’s resource-based economies. The 'tin bucket brigade'—the lunch-pail workers—remains a powerful, if nostalgic, symbol of the industrial labor force that defines much of the state's historical identity, even as the jobs have shifted from the mines to the tech and service sectors.
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