The 'Charitable' Boycott of Seattle's Chinese Laundries
A Seattle letter writer wants customers to register with charity officials so their washing can be steered to white women—an economic boycott wrapped in the language of neighborly aid.
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.
Seattle, Jan. 28, 1895.
To the Editor: We all know that times are hard through the lack of employment; much poverty and distress exists in our midst, and while giving credit for a kindly, sympathetic feeling on the part of the well-to-do section of our citizens, that sympathy does not result in help to their less fortunate brothers. I believe this is owing to the lack of a ready mode of rendering aid without its assuming the garb of charity, distasteful alike to the giver and recipient.
My purpose, sir, in writing this letter is to suggest a way by which patriotic Americans can help their poorer neighbors to many a comfortable meal without taxing their energies or their pockets. My plan is that all who have their laundry work done by Chinese should in future give it to their impoverished neighbors. But the difficulty arises of finding out who the parties are in our particular locality in distress. It can be found out in this way: Let all those now fostering the pigtailed Mongolians register their names and address with the secretary of the Bureau of Charities or with Labor Commissioner Lamb, and let all those who are anxious to earn a little to feed their famishing families make application to those gentlemen, who will, after ascertaining their address, give them the names of those kind persons near their homes who are willing to have their weekly wash done by white labor, and thus hundreds of dollars weekly will be diverted into a better channel than enabling the pagan alien to hoard large sums of money to take with him out of the country, to whose prosperity he has contributed so little.
If this suggestion is acted on, people in comfortable circumstances and with kindly hearts will thus be enabled in an inoffensive way to help their poorer neighbors, and produce a kindly feeling between the, at present, rich and the presently poor. I ask you, Mr. Editor, to aid in this matter by giving the foregoing publication.
WILLIAM JACKSON.
“My plan is that all who have their laundry work done by Chinese should in future give it to their impoverished neighbors.”
The 1885–86 anti-Chinese expulsions had already driven Chinese residents out of Seattle and other Western towns; this 1895 letter shows how exclusion continued through everyday economics—'buy white labor' campaigns and consumer boycotts. The language of charity masks a familiar pattern: economic anxiety channeled into racial blame, with the Chinese worker cast as an alien draining money from the community. The tension between 'protecting local jobs' and scapegoating immigrant workers still echoes in debates over labor and immigration.
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