The 'White Man's Country' Rally
A contentious anti-Asian labor meeting in Mukilteo proceeds despite alleged sabotage by corporate interests.
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.
Some poor pawn of the anti-labor crowd tried to put the anti-Japanese mass meeting of last Wednesday evening out of business. A woman called the caretaker of the hall about noon, representing herself as Mrs. Wetstein, and announced the meeting was called off. When the crowd arrived, the hall was dark, but organizers reopened it by 8 p.m. to a fair-sized audience. A.A. Brodeck presided, featuring speakers P.O. Armistad of the Mukilteo Chamber of Commerce, Judge Loutitt, and Charles Perry Taylor of Tacoma. The speakers argued that corporate reliance on 'Asiatic labor' suppressed wages and threatened the American standard of living. Mrs. Wetstein and Mrs. Birge were lauded for their persistence in organizing these meetings.
“There are two classes of undesirables in this country, the directors of our great corporations who reap their fortunes by the debasing of American labor... and the laborers of Asiatic blood who take the wages out of the pockets of American people.”
This reflects the volatile labor and racial tensions in early 20th-century Everett, where labor unions often framed their protectionist economic agendas through a lens of exclusionary nativism. It highlights how local history was deeply entwined with the anti-Asian movements that shaped Pacific Northwest policy.
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