The Women Taking Over the Anti-Japanese Boycott in Mukilteo
After years of failed agitation by men to remove Japanese workers from the local lumber mill, the Seaview Improvement Club has launched a new campaign of petitions and pressure.
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For years, the men of Mukilteo have struggled in vain to remove Japanese laborers from the local lumber mill, failing to persuade a 'money-mad' corporation to hire white workers. Now, the women of the Seaview Improvement Club have taken up the fight. President Mrs. S. E. Wetstein and secretary Mrs. C. Birge are leading the effort, circulating monster petitions to be sent to the company's head offices. Critics of the company claim it employs Japanese labor to suppress wages and prevent unionization, alleging that workers are supplied by the Oriental Trading Co. of Seattle under conditions that resemble forced labor. Local residents express anxiety over reports of Japanese military discipline among the mill hands, though these claims remain unverified by authorities. The club aims to succeed where the men have failed, hoping to transform Mukilteo into a town where white labor can once again thrive.
“They do not conform to any rules of war known to the sterner sex, but on innumerable occasions man has discovered, sometimes to his discomfiture, that they did the business.”
This piece documents the anti-Japanese sentiment common in early 20th-century Washington labor politics, reflecting the era's exclusionary atmosphere. Today, Mukilteo is a diverse community, far removed from the exclusionary 'whites-only' campaigns of 1910, though the town's history remains deeply tied to the industrial boom and bust of the lumber era.
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