The Struggle for Tacoma’s 'Salvation'
A committee of business owners meets to address the proposal of re-introducing Chinese workers to a city that prided itself on their total expulsion.
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.
The recent Chinese exclusion movement episode had the effect of bringing the old question of Chinese immigration to the front. Yesterday in a Major's office, a meeting was organized to discuss the proposition of Mr. Coleman to bring Chinese labor back to the city that has so rejoiced in its immunity from them during the past two years. They finally determined to give some public expression of their views of the proposal. The committee reported resolutions which were unanimously adopted. They will be taken to the press tomorrow. It was also decided to prepare a careful and dispassionate address upon the Chinese question, showing by figures and data the evils growing out of the presence of the Chinese in the United States. The resolutions condemned any action calculated to revive the old agitation and asked, in a word, that the city be left to 'work out its own salvation' on the lines it has been for a year past. The preliminary 'whereases' set forth that the city has been free from the Chinese for nearly two years; that their removal from the city was accomplished without so much as a breach of the peace; that no personal injury resulted to any person and no injury to property was done. The resolution notes that the city is now at a station where the previously unemployed have found work, largely because of the absence of the Chinese from the community.
“They asked, in a word, that the city be left to 'work out its own salvation' on the lines it has been for a year past.”
This 1887 report captures the dark period following the 1885 forced expulsion of Tacoma's Chinese residents, a systematic act of ethnic cleansing. It echoes modern debates about labor, displacement, and municipal policy, showing how local 'salvation' was built on the foundation of institutionalized xenophobia.
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