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Home / Washington Business - January/February 2004 / AWB Legends: Mark Reed Authored Washington’s Workers’ Comp Program, Supported the Eight-Hour Day and Advocated for Private Power |
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AWB Legends: Mark Reed Authored Washington’s Workers’ Comp Program, Supported the Eight-Hour Day and Advocated for Private Power |
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Written On: January/February 2004 |
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Written By: By Don T. Brunell |
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Editor’s Note: As AWB celebrates its 100th birthday, we’re going to tell you about people like Mark Reed. They are legends not only in business and politics, but have been the very fabric which made our state great.
In 1923, the Washington State Federation, the state’s leading labor union at the time, called Mark Reed “honest, honorable, fearless, and upright….a great mountain of righteousness.” Those are powerful words, especially from folks who tend to be on the other side of the bargaining table.
Mark Reed was a remarkable man who set the cornerstone for some of our state’s basic and enduring labor laws just as he poured the foundation a successful forest products company.
He was born in Olympia in 1866 when Washington was a territory, became mayor of Shelton and the first native born speaker of our state house. He was also the son-in-law of Sol Simpson, founder of Simpson Timber Co., one of AWB’s first members. Reed died in 1933.
Reed was a political powerhouse in our state from 1910 until 1929. He was so powerful and well-respected that the GOP wanted to draft him to succeed retiring Gov. Louis Hart, a fellow Republican, in 1924. But becoming governor would mean giving up control of Simpson which is something Reed was unwilling to do.
For us, it is important to know that CEOs like Mark Reed cared about the people in their communities and who worked for them. He set the pace to make the logging camps located deep in the woods safe, sanitary and livable just as he did for loggers’ families who stay in rural towns like Shelton. His story is important because all too often employers are characterized as uncaring, money-grubbing people. Reed put his money to good use in many ways. For example, just ask some very old-timers in Shelton who may have been around in 1920 when he financed the building of Shelton General Hospital.
In 1911, Rep. Mark Reed, a second-year Republican, pushed our state’s the first workers compensation bill through the legislature; however, he believed the bill didn’t go far enough because it only covered lost wages. The worker’s doctor bills were not covered. Rather than just focusing on medical costs, in 1917 Reed’s bill created a no-fault insurance program that paid wages and other expenses of the injured worker. In effect, the legislation became the state’s first medical insurance act and it set up accident prevention programs. To Reed job safety and prompt injury treatment were essential for workers.
Although Reed deplored the tactics of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), more commonly known as the “Wobblies,” he believed that violent strikes, iron-spiking of trees and work disruptions that boiled to a head in 1917 need to end. In 1918, staking a good deal of personal and family risk, he convinced the logging companies and sawmill owners to adopt the eight-hour work day to restore order. They did and the brutality subsided.
Along with labor unrest, the public versus private power fights permeated the legislature and the ballot box. The battles were over who would build the mighty dams, construct the power lines and sell electricity. Reed sided with the private power advocates and joined legendary Wenatchee World Publisher Rufus Woods as a prominent promoter of Grand Coulee Dam, which in the end was a publicly financed project.
In 1924, that fight came to a head when Tacoma legislator Homer T. Bone filed a referendum allowing municipal utilities like Tacoma City Light to sell power outside the city limits. Reed, the Speaker, countered with his own referendum taxing those sales. In the end, voters defeated both to his satisfaction.
Today, Mark Reed’s lineage continues at Simpson. Colin Moseley, his great grandson, runs the family-owned company.
Don T. Brunell is a graduate student at the University of Portland. He wrote this article from his senior history paper at Washington State University. If you are interested in the entire paper, please contact AWB’s Alexis Nepomuceno at AlexisN@awb.org.
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