The Price of a Whitewash Job
A working man in Tacoma learns the hard way that 'at par' is a relative term when his employer tries to pass off devalued currency for honest labor.
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.
Not long since, a Tacoma man took a job for washing for a merchant living on Singapore Street. In settling for the job, the employer gave Plato—for that was the man's name—in payment, Mexican quarters at par. It was several days before Plato discovered that they were worth only twenty cents, and he was very much hurt about it. 'Just to think of Massa cheatin' this hard-workin' man out of thirty cents. Fo' de Lord, I would never have believed it on him. I hadn't orter took de job in de fust place.' And then he added more cheerfully: 'Just as if I hadn't whitewashed de fence, he wouldn't have found out whar all dem chickens roosted what I sold next morning for a dollar. De laugh is on de merchant, I reckon.'
“Just to think of Massa cheatin' this hard-workin' man out of thirty cents. Fo' de Lord, I would never have believed it on him.”
This 1878 account captures a timeless labor grievance: the struggle for fair pay in the face of wage theft. While 'Mexican quarters' are no longer in circulation, the tension between a local merchant’s 'at par' accounting and a worker's actual take-home pay remains a central theme in Seattle’s ongoing housing and labor affordability discourse.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.