The Railroad Gamble
In an 1878 editorial, the Seattle Weekly Dispatch argues that the economic survival of the region depends on using Chinese labor to build the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad, claiming that white capital refuses to invest unless labor costs are kept low.
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 have no controversy with Mr. Bayley upon the general principle of the employment of Chinese labor in exclusion of, or in competition with, white labor. It is only in its misapplication to the proposed extension of the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad that we take issue. We have no doubt that now, in this time of general labor depression, white labor could be obtained sufficient for the construction of the railroad. The practical question presented is: Who will undertake to furnish the means for the employment of white labor? Had the railroad company a government subsidy, we would say, make the employment of white labor an indispensable condition. But when it has become an established fact that white capital cannot be had upon the condition of employing white labor, it ceases to be a matter of discussion because it is utterly impracticable. The only practical question now is whether we will allow the road to be constructed by the capital and labor of Chinamen or do without it. By refusing to allow the road to be built by Chinamen, no white man would be benefited in any manner. When the road is finished it will be under the exclusive management of white men; no Chinamen will own one dollar of its stock or have any voice in its direction. It will make available for farms and homes thousands of acres of now wilderness country. It will open to profitable use immense coal fields and iron mines, and thus give an impetus to settlement, manufactures and commerce which will afford profitable employment to thousands of white laborers now unemployed.
“The only practical question now is whether we will allow the road to be constructed by the capital and labor of Chinamen or do without it.”
This editorial captures a defining tension in Pacific Northwest history: the conflict between anti-Chinese nativism and the ruthless economic drive to expand industrial infrastructure. Much like current debates over public-private partnerships, housing development, and 'local hire' mandates, the 1878 editors argue that practical economic necessity outweighs the social and political labor abstractions of the day.
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