Forced Expulsion of Japanese Workers
Citizens in Darrington organize to forcibly remove immigrant laborers from town.
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.
Harrington people didn't content themselves with a lot of resolutions on the Japanese question. They saw how much attention the mercenary corporation that dominates Mukilteo paid to resolutions and so when the lumber company at Darrington imported a motley crew of Japanese into their midst, they just got up on their hind legs and did something. They turned out en masse and escorted the brown fellows to the railroad depot, loaded them on the train and started them out of town. And there wasn't a drop of blood shed in the process, either.
“They turned out en masse and escorted the brown fellows to the railroad depot, loaded them on the train and started them out of town.”
This article documents the exclusionary violence that defined many Washington timber towns during the early 20th century. While the paper frames the forced deportation as a non-violent civic action, it reflects the systemic xenophobia and organized labor's role in the dispossession and removal of Asian workers from the local economy.
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