The Fight for 'Japanese Jennie'
A Spokane court battles a Montana requisition order for a woman held under a restrictive labor contract, marking a local test of indentured servitude.
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.
Japanese Jennie, who has been the subject of a hot legal fight in the municipal court in Spokane for the past ten days, was discharged today by order of Judge Curry. Jennie was arrested here last Saturday week on a telegram from Butte, Montana, charging her with grand larceny. It subsequently developed that she had run away from a man whom she was under a three-year contract with, entered into before she left Japan. Her friends claim that the charge of grand larceny is only a pretext to secure her return to Butte to fulfill the performance of a contract. The attorney general of the state was present and stated that the requisition papers were defective. The governor has ordered a thorough investigation, and if the case is found to be as represented, he will refuse to issue the requisition.
“The attorneys have informed Gov. Ferry that the object of the charge is simply to compel her to return to Montana to fulfill the performance of a contract.”
This 1892 case reflects the intersection of labor exploitation and racialized policing in the Pacific Northwest. Today, it resonates with ongoing debates regarding human trafficking, restrictive employment contracts, and the vulnerability of immigrant workers to state-sanctioned deportation mechanisms.
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