Longshoremen Battle Steamship Crew Over Alien Labor
A confrontation on the waterfront erupts after a ship's captain replaces union workers with a Japanese crew, sparking a legal test case on contract labor laws.
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.
Captain John Ross of the steamer Wilmington was arrested on complaint of members of the Longshoremen's Union for allegedly violating United States alien labor contract laws by bringing a Japanese crew from Vancouver to discharge the vessel. The Wilmington arrived yesterday morning with 180 tons of freight, and when union longshoremen arrived to unload it, they found the Japanese crew already tasked with the work. After police cleared the wharf, the union filed a complaint with the customs house. Immigration commissioner T.M. Fisher and District Attorney Patrick Henry Winston investigated, leading to the arrest of Captain Ross. Ross contends he hired the men as sailors after union men in Portland abandoned his ship, and he intends to fight the case in court. The union maintains the right to all work on the wharf.
“For every white man they took away from him he would employ four Japanese until they got tired of fighting him.”
This 1892 labor dispute over the use of imported contract labor reflects the intense, often exclusionary, tensions regarding the definition of 'local' work that defined Seattle's early waterfront history. Today, the port remains a focal point for labor-capital relations, though the modern focus has shifted from national origin to automation and the gig economy.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.