733 results for: Labor and Labor Unions
Photograph
Wallace Bridge & Structural Steel employees, Seattle, March 4, 1930
John Duthie opened a small shipyard in Seattle around 1900. By 1930, Duthie & Company had changed its focus and renamed itself Wallace Bridge & Structural Steel Company. The Wallace plant fabricated structural steel for a number of bridges in Washington state, including Seattle’s Montlake Bridge (1925), the Lewis & Clark Bridge over the Columbia River (1929), and the Deception…
ID Number:SHS12521
Date:1930
Photograph
Bayview Brewery with horsedrawn wagon of beer, circa 1900
The Seattle Brewing & Malting Company was founded in 1878 and built its large new Bayview Brewery on Ninth Avenue South in 1890. When Washington state's prohibition laws closed down alcohol production in 1916, this was the state's largest brewery, and the sixth largest in the world. Rainier Beer was the firm's premium brand.This photo, taken around 1900, shows a…
ID Number:SHS12871
Date:Circa 1900
Photograph
Laundry woman during gold rush, circa 1902
While some women traveled to the gold fields with their husbands, others made the trip on their own. Women worked on mining claims, taught school, or set up businesses of their own. They did laundry, cooked meals, ran hotels and dance halls, and otherwise provided services to others in the community.This photo shows an African American woman at her laundry…
ID Number:SHS12965
Date:Circa 1902
Photograph
Workers making metal work for Smith Tower, circa 1912
Gaggin & Gaggin, an architectural firm in Syracuse, New York, designed Seattle's Smith Tower. Construction began in 1910, and the 42-story building opened in 1914. At that time, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.This photo, taken in 1912 or 1913 shows workmen, including one teenager, making the iron and brasswork used in the the Smith Tower's…
ID Number:SHS15303
Date:Circa 1912
Photograph
Hop picking, circa 1895
In western Washington, hop vines were grown on tall poles. At harvest time, workers lowered the vines and picked the hops into wooden boxes. The boxes were a standard size and had handles so that two people could carry them. Pickers were paid by the box or by the pound.In this photo, probably taken in the 1890s, a man checks…
ID Number:SHS15558
Date:Circa 1895
Photograph
Four men digging tunnel in gold mine at Eldorado, circa 1898
In Alaska and the Yukon, placer gold was found along ancient stream beds, some of which were twelve to forty feet underground at bedrock. The gold was frozen in the dirt or gravel. Miners chopped away at the frozen earth with picks or tried to thaw it with fires or steam machines. They "drifted" all winter, digging tunnels in the…
ID Number:SHS15820
Date:Circa 1898
Photograph
Coxey's Army in Seattle, 1894
The 1893 nationwide depression threw many Americans out of work. In 1894, the Commonweal of Christ, made up of groups of unemployed people from all over the country, marched to Washington D.C. They wanted the government to create jobs and reform the money system. People called these groups Coxey's Army, after Jacob Coxey, the movement's leader. Congress did not pass…
ID Number:SHS16535
Date:1894
Photograph
John Henry Smith, Seattle, circa 1921
Typed on verso: Smith, John Henry, active in I.W.W., 1913-25. Born in England, he immigrated to Canada shortly after the turn of the century, coming to Seattle about 1910. A hod carrier by trade, he became active in I.W.W. circles about 1913. He married Helen L. Livingston in 1913. They had two daughters, Helen (1914) and Edna (1916). Smith died…
ID Number:SHS16652
Date:Circa 1921
Photograph
Seattle City Light line crew with horse-drawn wagon, January 1914
By the 1910s, electricity from Seattle City Light powered homes and businesses as well as the streetlights and trolleys. This photo, taken in 1914, shows a Seattle City Light line crew and their horse-drawn wagon parked near a power line. The caption on the photo notes that this was one of four line crews, and identifies the workers as, left…
ID Number:SHS17525
Date:1914
Photograph
PT&T operators working at Garfield Exchange, Seattle, circa 1921
Telephone service in Seattle began with 90 customers in 1883. One of Seattle's original service providers, Sunset Telephone-Telegraph Company (later Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, then AT&T) built a new exchange building in 1921 to help handle what was by then 83,347 customers, making half-a-million local telephone calls every day. The Garfield Exchange was built on Queen Anne Hill at…
ID Number:SHS17731
Date:Circa 1921