The Open Secret of Puget Sound Smuggling
A Treasury agent investigating the border dismisses reports of Chinese smuggling as 'exaggerated,' revealing the complicity of local lumbermen who view the law as a joke.
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.
Special Agent Evans, sent by the Treasury Department to inquire into the smuggling of Chinese into Washington Territory from British Columbia, states it as his opinion that the reports were greatly exaggerated, but indirectly admits that lumbermen of that section employ a large number of Chinese and are willing to take all they can get without wanting to know where the Chinamen have come from. He says the persons he encountered in Washington Territory laughed at the matter as a good joke. He concludes that the reports were sent for the sole purpose of having the customs force at Port Townsend increased so as to make those places more important in the Government service.
“The persons he encountered in Washington Territory laughed at the matter as a good joke.”
This 1883 report highlights the regional economic reliance on migrant labor that collided with exclusionary federal policy. It illustrates how local industries often circumvented national laws when their own bottom lines were at stake, a dynamic that remains a recurring point of tension in Pacific Northwest labor history.
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