The Fight for Cheap Labor in the Pacific Northwest
In 1887, prominent Seattle and Tacoma business leaders sat down to argue over the 'necessity' of the Chinese exclusion movement and the future of regional trade.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
That letter of William H. Coleman’s to Mayor Meyer Townsend of the City Council, on Saturday, has been the topic uppermost in the public mind since its publication. Not the least interesting of the discussions that grew out of it was that which occurred in the Tacoma office of the power-line today, between O. P. Ferry, ex-Mayor Meath, Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce Wheelwright, and T. L. Nixon.
'We don’t want the Chinese,' said Mr. Meath. 'This city has gone ahead from the day they left us. While they were here, we had to go down in our pockets, as I have done many times, to keep many white laborers from starving.'
'Am I to understand that you don’t want any Chinaman to come here, even to remain through your state?'
'Many a time I have remained out at night to take care of them and helped to pay for their care.'
'You would not have the Chinaman come here, then, to remain?'
'No, sir. I want none of them.'
'And yet you expect to establish a line of steamers between here and China, and want to do business with that nation?'
'Exactly, that’s all right, but we don’t want them to come here to reside.'
Mr. Ferry continued: 'The life of the trade with China which we expect to establish—that means immense business. The intercourse with nations builds up nations. We cannot bar anybody out for any length of time; we may temporarily, but they will come at last. Besides, this western country is too new for that. It has only been wretched and will not be developed for 100 years. So long as there are any unoccupied free lands to be taken up, there will never be any pressure in the labor market. Therefore, we want cheap labor to develop the country. To be a great town we must have manufactories here, and to have manufactories we must have cheap labor. Where they do have it, they are not a drop in the bucket compared to the labor to be done. There is enough work for all of them to do of a kind that white men will not do. There are departments in all manufactories that they will fill, and the operation of which requires the employment of white men in other departments; hence they are a benefit rather than the reverse.'
“To be a great town we must have manufactories here, and to have manufactories we must have cheap labor.”
This debate perfectly captures the brutal hypocrisy of 19th-century Pacific Northwest expansionists, who sought the wealth of Chinese trade while simultaneously using nativist rhetoric to justify the exclusion and expulsion of Chinese residents. It serves as a stark reminder that the 'boosterism' of early Seattle and Tacoma was often built on the exclusion of marginalized groups, a tension between global economic ambition and local social hostility that continues to haunt regional housing and labor politics today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.