A Seattle Fish Firm Fires Its Chinese Workers — and the Paper Cheers
In 1877, Tull & Co. dismissed all of its Chinese employees and hired white men in their place, a move the Dispatch celebrated as patriotism.
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.
We are glad to be able to chronicle one fact in relation to the Puget Sound fisheries. We are informed that Tull & Co., formerly of Mukilteo, now of Seattle, after a careful trial, have concluded to discharge all of their Chinamen and employ white men in their places. We are glad there is one firm operating our fisheries for the benefit of our own country instead of the Mongolian empire. There are hundreds of white men on this coast, who are knocking at our doors for work, and yet Capital brands them Tramps, casts them rudely aside, and negotiates with some Boss of a Chinaman, for a cargo of Coolies, to flood our land with this class of laborers, and grind the face of our poor still deeper into the dust. Shame—Slur.
“We are glad there is one firm operating our fisheries for the benefit of our own country instead of the Mongolian empire.”
The Dispatch cheered a Seattle fish firm for firing all its Chinese workers, part of a wave of anti-Chinese labor agitation that culminated in the 1885-86 expulsion of Chinese residents from Seattle and Tacoma. The language of 'our own country' versus 'the Mongolian empire' echoes a recurring American pattern of casting immigrant workers as an economic threat — a frame that continues to appear in debates over immigration and labor today.
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