The Eight-Hour Day Battle at the Port Madison Mill
After the mill workers in Port Madison held a meeting to demand the eight-hour day, they successfully pressured management into alignment with the major mills in Tacoma and Seattle.
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.
On Thursday evening, the men employed at the Port Madison mill met in the hall at that place for the purpose of discussing the eight-hour system. After a lengthy talk, it was decided that inasmuch as the Port Blakely Mill Company, the St. Paul Mill Company and the Tacoma Mill Company had conceded to their employees ten hours for a day’s work, it would be only right and proper for them to refuse to work ten hours for the same pay. A committee waited on Mr. Meigs and invited him down to hear the statements of his employees. He informed them that Port Madison would fall into line at once, and yesterday morning the mill started up on the ten-hour basis.
“It would be only right and proper for them to refuse to work ten hours for the same pay.”
This 1894 struggle captures the precise moment the ten-hour workday became a focal point of labor activism in the Pacific Northwest. Today’s debates over the 'gig economy' and the 40-hour work week continue to reflect these same tensions between corporate efficiency and worker dignity.
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