The Price of Challenging the Northern Pacific
After suing a railroad giant for injury, George Conroy was met with a perjury charge, jailed for the summer, and driven to insanity.
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.
About a year ago, George Conroy sued the Northern Pacific Railroad Company for injuries received by falling into a cesspool the company had dug on their right of way just out of Mr. Heroux’s barn. Last winter, the company took a change of venue to Olympia, where the case came up in June last for trial and Conroy was nonsuited. Upon the termination of the suit, the company made a complaint against Conroy for perjury and had him bound over to the December term of court to await the action of the Grand Jury. Conroy lay in jail all summer, and in consequence of his confinement and suffering from his rupture and ill health, his mind became affected. Last Saturday, he was sent to the Insane Asylum at Steilacoom.
There is very little use of anyone attempting to get satisfaction out of a railroad company, especially the Northern Pacific. Poor people particularly ought to know that they have no show to right their wrongs through the courts against railroads. Railroads delight in the reputation they have that 'it is no use to law the railroad,' no matter how just the cause may be against them. They will hire men to commit perjury or anything to gain their ends, and when now and then a poor devil does try to get his rights, the company will hire a host of witnesses and, in the end, send the man to jail until he becomes insane. This is the way the railroads have of terrifying the people.
“Railroads delight in the reputation they have that 'it is no use to law the railroad,' no matter how just the cause may be against them.”
This 1885 account of a power imbalance between a massive corporation and a single injured citizen echoes modern frustrations with legal and systemic barriers faced by those fighting corporate negligence in a booming Seattle economy.
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