The Wage-Theft Struggle of 1887 Seattle
Working women in the late 19th century fought back against exploitative employers who withheld pay, turning to labor unions to recover their stolen wages.
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.
The trouble which working girls experience and the personal danger they risk when they attempt to collect their hard-earned wages is illustrated in the case of a dressmaker to whom pay was due for a week's hard work. The girl had been sent home with a dress upon which she was to collect $4. It appears there was some old trouble between the woman who received the dress and the boss dressmaker, and the former refused to give back the dress to the girl or pay the $4 demanded. So the poor girl's week's wages were confiscated. A sick father was depending on her for support, and she could not see him suffer, and so she applied to the union. The dressmaker was sent for, but she said that she was not making any money and could not pay in less than two months. In a few days thereafter the father, pale and trembling, and his daughter, with her wrecked bonnet in her hand and sobbing as though her heart would break, appeared at the office of the union and said that when she went again to ask for her money the woman slapped her face, tore her hat from her head and pulled her hair. Then the law was appealed to and she had to furnish the girl with a new bonnet. In this way the virago escaped being arrested for assault.
Forty-three cents were due another poor working woman for making 140 buttons, and payment was refused her after the articles had been delivered. The poor woman had to go to bed hungry that night, but the next day the case was in the hands of the union. The offender, however, paid up without being sued, for she had felt the strong arm of the law in that quarter before.
“The trouble which working girls experience and the personal danger they risk when they attempt to collect their hard-earned wages is illustrated in the case of a dressmaker.”
Wage theft remains a pervasive issue for low-wage workers in Seattle and beyond. Just as these 1887 garment workers sought the protection of a union to reclaim pennies and dollars owed for their labor, modern workers rely on labor advocacy groups to combat systemic wage exploitation in the gig and service economies.
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