The Tunnel City Strike
Labor unrest at the Cascade Tunnel project spills over into violence as workers protest low wages and forced debt to local saloons.
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.
All hands at the tunnel have struck for a reduction from eleven to ten hours and an increase of pay from $2.50 to $3.00. Threats were made to burn Nelson Bennett's store at Tunnel City. The workers of the Baring drills have no complaints to make, but succumbed to the pressure of the men who do wheeling and dumping. The trouble is said to have originated in the groggeries lining the road from Ellensburgh. Nelson Bennett, Sheriff Packwood, Marshal Wallace, and a posse from Ellensburgh are at the scene of the disturbance. Great difficulty is experienced in obtaining laborers on the Cascade branch. Men brought here from San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Paul pass by the work on arrival, engaging only as a means of getting to the Territory without expense. There are constant means of these frauds over the mountains. The San Francisco men are coming this way and the Eastern men are going to the East.
“Great difficulty is experienced in obtaining laborers on the Cascade branch. Men brought here from San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Paul pass by the work on arrival, engaging only as a means of getting to the Territory without expense.”
In 1886, workers building the Cascade Tunnel faced systemic exploitation through 'company store' style debts at local groggeries—a precursor to today's struggles against precarious labor and the high cost of living in booming infrastructure corridors. Like the tunnel laborers then, many modern workers find themselves trapped in cycles of debt while trying to navigate the transit and housing pressures of a rapidly growing Seattle region.
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