The Price of Coal and the Cost of Labor
After shifting from Chinese laborers to white workers, mining companies find themselves in a standoff over wages that leaves miners idle and mines shuttered.
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.
It is unfortunate that the dealers in Pacific Coast coal in San Francisco cannot regulate the price to be paid them for coal. If they could, they would have no difficulty in paying such prices for the production of their coal as their laborers demand. The reason they cannot regulate the price of coal is that the tariff on foreign coal is really equivalent to nothing, and ships coming to California for grain charter for foreign coal in place of ballast. This coal, from Australia and elsewhere, which is superior to our coast coal for nearly all purposes, can be bought by the ton and has been sold during the past year at from $4 to $5.20 per ton, delivered on the wharves. During the past year the Oregon Improvement Company handled 75,000 tons of Australian coal, for the reason that it could be bought cheaper than the product of the Newcastle mines could be mined and transported to San Francisco. For a long time the company employed 400 or 500 Chinese as laborers and coal pickers at the mines, at a wage of 97 cents per day to the man. Some months ago, in response to a popular demand, the company dismissed its Chinese and employed white laborers in their places at $1.50 per day, thus increasing the expense of running the mine about $200 per day. Since that time there has been some friction between the miners and the company as to the price to be paid for mining the coal, but that finally was satisfactorily arranged. Mr. Howard was notified that a demand would be made, backed by the miners, for an advance to $2 per day for outside labor. With this staring him in the face, Mr. Howard realized that the advance could not be acceded to without a positive loss on every ton of coal taken from the mines; so he ordered the mines shut down until such time as the price of coal would again justify the resumption of work. The question which presented itself to the company was this: Shall we accede to the demands of our employees and run the mine at an actual loss, or shall we shut the mine down until such time as we can run it at a fair profit? The latter plan was adopted, and the mine shut down indefinitely.
“Shall we accede to the demands of our employees and run the mine at an actual loss, or shall we shut the mine down until such time as we can run it at a fair profit?”
This 1886 labor dispute over the transition from exploited Chinese labor to white workers—and the subsequent demand for living wages—highlights the historical intersection of Seattle's labor movement, racial exclusion, and the extractive resource economy that defined early Washington.
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