Longshoremen Protest Japanese Crew Aboard Steamship Wilmington
A standoff on the Seattle waterfront leads to the arrest of a ship's captain for allegedly violating federal foreign contract labor laws.
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Captain John Ross of the steamer Wilmington was arrested yesterday on a complaint from the Longshoremen's Union. The union alleged he was violating U.S. alien labor contract laws by hiring Japanese laborers from Vancouver to unload the vessel. When the ship arrived with 150 tons of freight, union workers gathered to unload it but were rebuffed by the crew. After a standoff requiring police intervention, the Longshoremen complained to the custom house. Immigration Commissioner T. M. Fisher interviewed the Japanese laborers, leading District Attorney Patrick Henry Winston to secure a warrant for Captain Ross's arrest. Ross maintains he hired the men as sailors to replace white crew members who walked off the job in Portland, and he intends to fight the charge. Meanwhile, immigration authorities are investigating the status of dozens of Chinese and Japanese passengers on the same vessel.
“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 reflects the intense anti-Asian xenophobia and exclusionary labor politics of the era in Seattle, which would eventually culminate in widespread violence and legislative discrimination. The tension between organized labor's demands for protectionism and the mobility of international labor remains a central, unresolved friction in regional history.
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