Anti-Chinese Rally Held at Pioneer Square
Local populist orators gather to denounce the Geary Act's suspension and demand the expulsion of Chinese laborers.
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A large and orderly gathering comprising perhaps 500 people listened for an hour and a half last night in Pioneer Place to anti-Chinese oratory of various degrees of mediocrity. Speakers included J.P. Ennis and E.J. Jeffries, who denounced President Grover Cleveland for suspending the anti-Chinese law and called for the immediate enforcement of the Geary Act. The crowd applauded demands for the deportation of Chinese residents, claiming they created ruinous competition for American laborers. Resolutions were read and passed calling for the attorney general to proceed against the 'Six Companies' and for the enforcement of laws treating Chinese residents as criminals for failing to register.
“I would render unto China the men that belonged to China and have America for Americans.”
This event captures the peak of the nativist, exclusionary movements that defined Seattle's late 19th-century civic life. The rhetoric used—blaming immigrants for economic woes and attacking federal authorities for perceived leniency—remains a potent, if darker, ancestor to contemporary debates over labor, immigration, and sovereignty.
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