The Puget Sound Smuggling Ring Scandal
A government inspector uncovers a vast operation allegedly smuggling Chinese migrants and opium into the Pacific Northwest, implicating customs officials and steamship lines.
Collector Wasson stated regarding charges in the San Francisco Chronicle implicating him and his officers with Portland smuggling rings that he never admitted a single Chinese in this district without first investigating the merits himself. Special Inspector Noyes, who sent a report to Washington, alleges that corrupt officials in the North were as common as flies in midsummer. Noyes claims officials protected large smuggling rings dealing in Chinese and opium, with profits running into six figures. Proof that officials were part of the ring was alleged to be clear, involving forged certificates and bypassed investigations. William Dunbar, of the Merchants' Steamship Company, which operates the Haytien Republic, claims that they only charged for passage and that if smuggling occurred, it was the work of others.
“They were not common inspectors of customs, the charges stated, but men of the highest standing.”
The 1885-86 expulsion era and subsequent legal battles over the Chinese Exclusion Act define much of Seattle's early civic history. This story highlights how the machinery of exclusion, meant to strictly manage borders, often became a corrupt marketplace of its own.
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