The Human Cost of the Seattle Labor Crisis
As unemployment rises in the late 19th century, Chinese laborers in Seattle face severe hardship as employers replace them with white workers during a period of economic depression.
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.
It would seem from the statement of a gentleman of this city, that the Caucasians are not the only race affected by the present financial crisis and depression in the labor market, but that the Chinese suffer from the same causes. No matter how cheap their labor can be purchased, if there be no demand for it they must go hungry or depend upon the charity of the wealthy of their class. Like the 'bloated bondholders' of our own race, the heads of Chinese companies are not overflowing with the milk of human kindness, and hence it is stated that numerous cases of suffering for want of the necessaries of life are known to exist in the Chinese quarters in this city. This undoubtedly arises from the fact that numbers of our citizens who have heretofore employed Chinese have discharged them and placed white men in their places, thus cutting off their supplies and reducing them to starvation point. We also learn that unless the labor market revives, hosts of these sons of the Flowery Kingdom will soon make a straight wake for the land of their fathers. This, then, is a simple solution of the Chinese problem, without the intervention of legislation or workingmen’s parties: Refuse the Chinaman the means to earn a subsistence and he must either starve or emigrate, and our word for it he will in every instance choose the latter alternative.
This 1878 report captures the grim economic scapegoating that defined early Seattle, where labor fluctuations were often settled by displacing vulnerable immigrant communities. The rhetoric mirrors modern debates over housing and employment, proving that Seattle's tension between economic progress and the exclusion of its own residents is a cycle nearly as old as the city itself.
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