Wageworkers Frontier and Shingleweaving Station
Encompassing the mining, fishing and canning, timber, shipbuilding, aviation, orcharding, and wheat harvesting industries in Washington, this section relates to Washington's natural resources and their related industries. The main icon in this space is the Product Tree, which emerges from a tree trunk to a huge collection of 19th and 20th century wood products.
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The Product Tree, with nearly 80 objects representing the wood products industry between 1880 and 1920, is one wild collection of stuff. From wheelbarrows to picket fences, duck decoys to caskets, you'll find just about everything Washingtonians once commonly made from wood.
Shingle weavers were highly paid in comparison to lumber mill workers, earning nearly twice as much. Shingle cutting was dangerous work, requiring the sawyer to push blocks of wood through a sharp blade spinning two hundred times per minute. Most sawyers lost at least one finger, and many suffered more serious injuries.
Miners worked 10 hours a day, six days a week in hot, humid, poorly ventilated mine shafts. Their clothes would become soaked with sweat, and breathing was often difficult. In return for this hardship, a miner could earn between 80 cents and $1.32 per ton of coal—sometimes earning as much as $5.00 per day, not in cash but in company credit.
At the turn of the 20th century, the workers of Washington, made up largely of recent emigrants, were a ripe and willing audience for labor activists. In a land without rigid traditions, people dream of a better future. Workers endured long hours under oppressive conditions, but were always interested in debating ways to change the world.