Seattle: 1900-1920 -From Boomtown, Through Urban Turbulence ...

136 Part Fourleave) monthly. Kempster thought the company emerged in good condition, not havingto concede the eight-hour workday, one of the stumbling blocks in the ongoing lumberstrike.One more familiar union target was struck after the trainmen’s strike, when theMeat Packers Union walked out of the Frye plant in early August. The union demanded tenhours’ pay for eight hours’ work and elimination of the requirement that they were to eat atthe company boardinghouse. After one week the strike was won. Other packinghouses fellin line.At the end of September, twelve hundred shipyard workers struck the nonunionyards. Not until 22 October was arbitration agreed to. And telephone workers, inspired bythe success of the laundry workers, signed with the International Brotherhood of ElectricalWorkers in early August, becoming Local 42-A. They had not received a pay increase since1913 and the companies had rejected their recent request for one, alleging that giving thema raise would be “unpatriotic.” So it came as no surprise when the “Hello Girls” struck allalong the coast in October, amid widespread sympathy from the public and many antiunionnewspapers. Federal authorities promised to help out. The operators returned to work, butthey resumed their walkout on 2 November, after federal intervention had failed to movethe companies. Finally, a mediation agreement was signed in early December, giving thestrikers “two-thirds” of their demands, according to the Union Record.Also inspired by theexample of the laundry workers,four hundred workers in candyand cracker factories struckin September. The Teamstersjoined them in a sympathy strike.However, the employers got alandmark court injunction in theSt. Germain Bakery case, whichresulted in a ban against picketing.The Washington State SupremeCourt ruled that the recentClayton Act (which modified theSherman Antitrust Act) did notapply to disputes confined withina state’s boundaries.Top: Office equipment and dress for “HelloGirls” in a 1902 photograph of a Seattleswitchboard. Bottom: Posing for theUnion Record photographer, members ofthe International Brotherhood of ElectricalWorkers flash copies of the labor paper’sheadline “Telephone Workers All Out.” Thetelephone operators have just walked outfor their 1916 coast-wide strike against thetelephone companies.