Woodlawn Add to Green Lake
Plat Block: 52
Plat Lot: 9
1910 Address: 816 E 67th
Current address: Demolished August - September 2014
1910: Joanna Hilts, age 18, single, working as a salesman (sic) in a department store
Joanna I. Hilts was born in 1891 in Stevens County, Washington, the fourth child of Robert and Fannie NORMAN Hilts. By 1905, these hard-working farmer folks had moved to Seattle and purchased the house at 816 E 67th from Robert Scrunton.
Joanna's occupations ranged from clerk in 1908 to department store salesman in 1910; nurse in 1912; and finally, laundry worker in 1913. And it was as a laundry girl that Joanna made her mark and earned a place in local labor history.
As part of a series on "Seattle Women Who Maintain Their Own Independence", the May 28, 1905 Seattle Times printed "The Girl in the Steam Laundry",1 a profile of Harriet Graban of the Queen City Laundry. At that time, the laundry girl worked 10-hour days, six days a week, with Sundays and holidays off. Graban, who had worked at the Queen City Laundry for four years, had reached the point of making $15 a week. As she told the Times, "... a girl will like the work, pay attention and then the proprietors will raise her salary until she could support herself on her wages." (Emphasis mine.)
A quick search of the "Help Wanted - Female" ads of the time reveals the degree of specialization within the laundry. Ads called for shirt waist and neckband ironers, shirt finishers, ladies' clothes ironers, mangle girls, starch and flat work sorters, starchers, collar girls, and more.
Joanna had worked for the Troy Laundry for about a year when she was subpoenaed to testify before the Industrial Welfare commission in Olympia regarding setting a minimum wage for women laundry workers.
There she distinguished herself with her determination and wit. Taking to task laundry owner Frank Nixon, who thought the girls needed only 10 cents for each meal, she said "It's easy enough for you to say that girls can eat on 10 cents a meal. Talking that way doesn't hurt your stomach and it doesn't make your heart faint and your head swim as you slave, slave, slave. Your meal at noon today cost $2.40 for yourself. You've allowed yourself at one sitting more than you would give a laundry girl all week."2
(Nixon wasn't the only one who thought the girls should be kept hungry. Rev. H. R. McGinnity of Tacoma, at the conference as a representative of the disinterested public, had claimed that "working girls should not have coffee with their meals, that a 'horn of milk and a potato' had been good enough for working people" in Ireland.)3
Nixon estimated the annual cost of living for the laundry girl at $372. Joanna estimated $609.4 On May 16, the five male conference members outvoted the four female conference members to pass a resolution recommending $8.50 as the minimum wage.5 The Industrial Welfare Commission rejected it unanimously and called for a new conference: "Investigation has revealed the fact that $8.50 is not sufficient for a woman to maintain herself in health and comfort."6
(In May of 1914, the minimum wage for women working in stores was $10 per week, and had just been set at $8.90 per week for women factory workers. "Members of the welfare commission take the ground that there is little difference between the amount necessary to support a working girl in a factory or laundry, and they do not believe a marked difference in wages between the two industries would be justified.")7
Joanna returned home from Olympia at the close of the conference, but discovered when she reported to work at the Troy Laundry that she had been fired. The populist Seattle Star (in contrast to Colonel Blethen's Seattle Times, which allowed one grudging column to cover labor issues) made her dismissal front-page headline news.8
The Star editorialized on her firing,9 and reported on her subsequent blacklisting by every laundry in Seattle.10 Labor Commissioner E. W. Olsen investigated the case and demanded that B. F. Ivy and W. H. Kuhlemeier, proprietors of the Troy Laundry, reinstate Joanna. When they failed to promise to comply, Olsen decided to make a test case by prosecuting the proprietors and forewoman May Jeffries. Would the new state law authorizing a minimum wage for working women be "broad enough to protect from arbitrary discharge an employee who offends her employer by assisting the industrial welfare commission in fixing the minimum wage for workers in her craft"?11
In early July 1914, Justice of the Peace John B. Gordon found B. F. Ivy guilty of violating the state industrial commission act. Ivy was fined the maximum of $100.12 The Seattle Star lamented that the fine was nothing more than a slap on the wrist.13
The state, however, couldn't compell the Troy Laundry to rehire Joanna. It couldn't protect her from being blacklisted. She may not have worked again until the opening14 of the union-owned Mutual Laundry in December of 1914.
Though now securely employed by the city's first cooperative, Joanna continued to fight for the rights of the average laundry girl. In February of 1915 she appeared before a joint committee on labor and labor statistics, speaking of the fear of retaliation that kept the state's 2,000-some laundry girls from protesting the proposed amendment to the 8-hour law.15
By 1916, Joanna and her mother had moved to 514 Prospect on Queen Anne Hill (the Mutual Laundry was located at 714 Broad). Joanna's father, Robert L. Hilts, had died in Darrington, where he had been employed as a logger, in May of that year. In 1917, she and her mother had moved to L112 Valley, still on Queen Anne Hill, and Joanna had been hired as Business Agent for the Mutual Laundry.16 She had been serving as financial secretary, but when the previous business agent left, the two positions were merged to make a salaried, full-time job. In that capacity, Joanna continued to work for the laundry girl, speaking, for example, to the laundry workers of Everett who wished to form a union.17
On 18 May 1918, Joanna married Robert Edgar Wall, a Canadian-born iron moulder. She appears to have dropped out of public life after her marriage. She and Robert had three children together - Robert jr., Lena, and John - and lived in South Seattle for the entirety of their marriage.
Joanna died on 27 January 1961, in Duarte, CA, while visiting her son Robert.
Further reading:
Report of Commission on Industrial Relations, Olson Exhibit No. 3 - Laundry Conference, Senate Chamber, Capitol Building, Olympia, Wash., May 14 and 15, 1914
Home & Dry Gazette - The Story of the Seattle Empire Laundry
"Laundry Workers Struggle for Recogniztion", Kimberley Reimer, Seattle General Strike Project
1 "Seattle Women Who Maintain Their Own Independence - The Girl in the Steam Laundry", Seattle Times, May 28, 1905, Magazine section, pages 1 and 5↩
2 Johanna Hilts Fired" (headline, front page), The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 20 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
3 "Labor To Watch Scale Hearings", The Seattle Times, May 21, 1914↩
4 "Minimum Wage May Be Only $8", The Seattle Times, May 15, 1914↩
5 Ibid.↩
6 $8.50 Wages For Laundry Girls Too Low", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 16 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
7 "Minimum Wage May Be Only $8"↩
8 Johanna Hilts Fired", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 20 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
9 The Case of Johnna (sic) Hilts, The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 21 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
10 Johanna Hilts On Black List; Can't Get A Job", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 28 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
11 "State Comes To Aid of Worker", The Seattle Times, May 21, 1914↩
12 "Laundry Manager Fined", The Seattle Times, July 7, 1914↩
13 A Slap on the Wrist", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 08 July 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
14 Model Laundry Completed; Organized Labor Dances To Celebrate Its Success", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 12 Dec. 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
15 Girls Afraid To Protest 8-Hour Bill", The Tacoma times. (Tacoma, Wash.), 11 Feb. 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress↩
16 "Laundry Workers Get Girl Business Agent", The Seattle Times, May 11, 1917↩
17 Laundry Workers Organize Union", The labor journal. (Everett, Wash.), 22 June 1917. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.↩
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