The Ghost of Fort Steilacoom: Workers Cheated Out of Their Wages
A group of laborers at the new asylum construction site speak out against contractors and commissioners who left them unpaid and used rot-prone materials.
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.
We know that in all questions of public interest your paper has been looked upon as an independent journal through which reliable information could be derived. Hence, we choose your paper to state our grievances. We are a number of defrauded laborers. We have been employed by J.D. Rainey & Sons, and worked on the new building for the insane of Washington Territory, at Fort Steilacoom, and have not been paid. Who is to blame? Is it the wandering, penniless, scheming contractors, or the trusted Commissioners, or both? If not our Commissioners, let them say why they did not ascertain the financial standing of each of the applicants before they awarded the contract. They must have known that the bond which they were to receive did not hold its signers responsible for the payment of labor expended or material used in the erection of the building; but, only for its completion according to contract. They must have known, also, that the building was exempt from any lien or attachment. Knowing this, why did they award the contract to J.D. Rainey & Sons? There could have been no trouble in ascertaining their financial standing. The Auditor's Office and Assessor's Office lay open before them. If they had troubled themselves so much as to have searched them, they would have found that J.D. Rainey & Sons possessed no real estate and but very little personal property. As it is, the Territory has erected a building, paid for inferior and rotten material, and cheated a number of hard-working men who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows.
“The Territory has erected a building, paid for inferior and rotten material, and cheated a number of hard-working men who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows.”
This 1887 report echoes today’s recurring headlines regarding wage theft and the oversight of public contractors in Seattle. Just as these workers faced a 'liens-exempt' building project, modern laborers often find themselves navigating complex legal barriers when trying to recover unpaid wages from large-scale development projects.
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