Tacoma’s Floating Border: 142 Chinese Passengers Ordered Back Aboard the Mogul
A Northern Pacific steamer brought 242 Chinese travelers to Tacoma in 1893. Collector Wesson admitted 100, stretched a World’s Fair loophole for 32 actors, and ordered the rest deported—while smugglers counted the cost.
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, April 19.—[Special.]—Out of 242 Chinese passengers, including thirty-two actors, arriving by the Northern Pacific steamer Mogul, 100 were admitted by Collector Wesson, and 142 were tonight ordered deported on the Mogul, which leaves tomorrow morning. The actors were given certificates allowing them to remain in this country one year, on condition that they perform in a building within the World’s Fair grounds. Red Tom Sing, of Chicago, made an affidavit stating that the actors would be inside the fair grounds, and accordingly Collector Wesson admitted them under the World’s Fair act, which permitted foreigners to enter the country under contract if they were employed within the fair grounds. There are 215 more actors in transit aboard the Northern Pacific steamer Victoria, and if in the meantime the collector learns that they are not entitled to land, he will revoke the certificates given the thirty-two arriving by the Mogul and deport all of them. Most of the actors announce that they are female impersonators and will pass themselves off as women on the Chicago stage. Collector Wesson, commenting on the examination of the Chinese passengers tonight, stated that he favored the workings of the exclusion act coming under the special Chinese bureau and not under the collector of customs. It is taken for granted that the men who have been trying to land Chinese for a stipulated sum per head would go broke, as it will cost them, at from $90 to $100 per head on the deported Chinese, from $11,000 to $14,000 to return them to China. The smugglers seem to have been intimidated. They did not attempt to aid the Chinese much here, although nearly all of the parties spotted as being members of the gang were in the city during the past three days. If the smuggled Chinese are not allowed to enter freely at Portland, it is believed that there will shortly be little business for the smugglers, and that the traffic in them and opium will lag. Under the present condition, it would be useless for the Northern Pacific to agree to land Chinese, or for others to do so, unless the Chinese are returned merchants or capitalists.
“Out of 242 Chinese passengers, including thirty-two actors, arriving by the Northern Pacific steamer Mogul, 100 were admitted by Collector Wesson, and 142 were tonight ordered deported.”
The Chinese Exclusion Act made the Tacoma waterfront a gate that a single customs official could open or slam shut. Eight years after Tacoma’s Chinese residents were violently expelled, this report shows exclusion operating through paperwork, bonds, and steamship manifests—the administrative machinery that still shapes immigration detention and deportation today.
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