Tacoma’s Chinese Merchant Question Turns to Threats of Violence
A visiting Chinese businessman tests whether Tacoma will admit Chinese merchants, while the Trades Council calls them “a pestilential social element” and a crowd waits at the depot.
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.
TACOMA, July 21.—[Special.]—Mov Ham, representing a Chinese house, today conferred with the agent of the Northern Pacific’s new steamship line to the Orient and others regarding the attitude of Tacomans toward allowing Chinese merchants to locate here. On arriving at the depot he was told that there was no law here for a Chinaman, but he said he had business here, and went ahead and attended to it, and no one molested him. He stopped at the Tacoma Hotel, and is not sure yet if he will report in favor of Chinese merchants coming here. He admits that if Tacoma has no use for Chinese the Chinese have no use for Tacoma. His firm do not propose to bring coolies here, but only such Chinese as are useful in carrying on their business, that of handling silk, teas, flour, etc., both wholesale and retail. The Trades Council tonight adopted resolutions opposing allowing Chinese to locate here in any capacity. The Chinese are referred to as “a pestilential social element,” and their coming a calamity to be avoided. Citizens are taking sides on the subject, and there is talk of violence on both sides should an attempt be made to secure lodgment for the Chinese here. It is noticeable that many employers favor, for the benefit of the city’s growth, the coming of Chinese merchants, while employes, as a rule, strenuously object. The Committee of Fifteen is charged with outliving its usefulness on the one side, while the committee’s admirers declare it to be of great influence. One side says that if the Chinese merchants come they will be protected, and the other declares that they will be mobbed and driven out of the city should they come. It is held by some that if the Chinese come as merchants, the city will be overrun with them. A large crowd went to the Twelfth Street depot at 11:30 tonight in anticipation of the arrival of several Portland Chinamen. The train was delayed below Chehalis by an accident and came in late. The engine struck a bull and the mail car was thrown from the track, but nobody was injured. There were no Chinese on the train.
“He admits that if Tacoma has no use for Chinese the Chinese have no use for Tacoma.”
In 1892 Tacoma was still defined by the anti-Chinese expulsion of 1885, and this debate shows exclusion being enforced through labor pressure and the threat of a mob rather than only through law. The argument over whether a city should welcome Chinese merchants for “growth” while workers demand exclusion echoes in today’s fights over immigration and who gets to belong.
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