The Golden Rule Bakery was a major employer in Fremont from 1920 to 1964. It started with one production plant at 4450 Fremont Avenue and expanded into a second building at 3665 Stone Way where the company could park its one hundred delivery vehicles. Stone Way Electric occupied the building at 3665 Stone Way from 1974 to 2000. Both of the Golden Rule buildings have been demolished.

The Golden Rule Bakery was founded by an Irish immigrant, William Henry Pemberton, and two investors. Shortly after starting the business in 1918, Pemberton was arrested for refusing to fill out a draft card. World War One was winding down and, at age 29, Pemberton was unlikely to be drafted into active war service, but he still refused to sign a card, because he said he was a conscientious objector. Pemberton was jailed until 1920. His co-founders of the bakery carried on with the business until he was released.

The bakery was so successful that they built a second production facility in 1922 at 3665 Stone Way. But beginning in 1925, the company came under intense pressures of the growing labor movement in Seattle. Workers of many kinds, from waitresses to factory workers and delivery drivers, were organizing. Labor leader Dave Beck and the Teamsters were accused of trying to intimidate the delivery drivers of Golden Rule and were also accused of a plot to blow up the Golden Rule building at 4450 Fremont Avenue.

Pressure intensified in 1936 when labor leaders organized a boycott of Golden Rule products so that stores would no longer carry that brand. At this critical moment, company president William H. Pemberton died at age 47 on May 9, 1936. Four weeks later, the Golden Rule employees voted to unionize.

Sources:

Genealogy records; newspapers.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, February 24, 1931, page 15, and February 28, 1931, page 3: Bomb plot thwarted at the Golden Rule production plant at 4450 Fremont Avenue.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, April 17, 1936, page 12: Dave Beck & the Teamsters organization were charged with making attacks on the Golden Rule delivery drivers.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, May 12, 1936, page 14: Funeral for W.H. Pemberton, president of the Golden Rule company.

University of Washington Civil Rights and Labor History page: Labor organizing events of the year 1936 in Seattle.

Reference: The Golden Rule Bakery is mentioned in the book, The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. The main character, Joe Rantz, re-encounters his father Harry in Seattle where Harry is working as a delivery driver for the Golden Rule Bakery.