The Mob Rule at Our Doorstep
When an organized society in Walla Walla issued threats against anyone hiring Chinese labor, the press decried the move as a return to the lawless spirit of the frontier.
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.
Printed circulars were scattered about Walla Walla last Wednesday signed 'Mutual Aid Society,' notifying all persons 'employing or patronizing Chinamen that they must stop so doing within two weeks from the date of this notice, or they will cease to receive the support of the Mutual Aid Society of Walla Walla.' This is not the first time that notices of a kindred sort have been issued in this state, and it is a good time to say that their issue is a disgrace to our civilization. If it is proper to threaten a man with a loss of business because he hires such labor as he likes, then it is proper to threaten a man with loss of business because he selects his own church or votes his own party ticket. All this business is clearly in line with the spirit of lynch law, a spirit that darkens the face of society and politics in the most ignorant regions of the old slave states, but has no excuse for existence in any of the states of the free North. To threaten a fellow-man with persecution because he manages his own private affairs in his own way peacefully and lawfully is the act of a coward, a knave, a bigot, and a fool. The political methods of the South are spreading slowly like a pestilence over the land, so that we are threatened with a civilization of lawless might as opposed to legal, lawful right.
“To threaten a fellow-man with persecution because he minds and manages his own private affairs in his own way peacefully and lawfully, is the act of a coward, a knave, a bigot and a fool.”
This 1892 editorial captures the volatile intersection of labor movements and xenophobic exclusion in early Washington. The rhetoric echoes the modern tension between organized economic protest and the protection of individual rights within a multicultural society.
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