The Attempt to Keep Ah Och Out
A federal court hearing reveals a suspected plot among Seattle's Chinese community to prevent a merchant from landing.
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.
The habeas corpus proceedings in the case of Ah Och in the United States court Saturday before Judge Hanford, disclosed what is supposed to be a plot on the part of some of the Chinese residents of this city to keep Ah Och from landing. Och came from China on the steamer Mogul a few days ago and demands his right to land on the ground that he was formerly a merchant in this city. The case will not be decided until next Monday, when Judge Humes, of the superior court, will testify in the case. A. F. Boyd, ex-poundmaster; T. H. Campbell, Ben Thompson, ex-customs inspectors, and A. H. Manning, ex-police commissioner, testified to having seen Ah Och in Seattle at various times within the past three or four years. Mr. Manning caused quite a commotion by telling how he had been approached on the street Friday by a Chinaman, who told him that Mark Ten Rule and another Chinese resident of Seattle did not want Och to land because he was a friend of Ah How. 'I asked him how that made any difference,' said Mr. Manning, 'and the Chinaman then said that Ah How got $700 one day and wouldn't divide up with his fellows. He didn't tell me how the $700 was gotten, but said the enemies of Ah How didn't want him to land.'
This story highlights the volatile social climate of 1890s Seattle, where community disputes were often filtered through exclusionary immigration policies. It serves as a reminder that the Chinese community in Seattle was not a monolith, but a complex web of social and economic interests shaped by the severe constraints of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
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