The Looming Gate: Labor and the Fear of the Canal
As the opening of the Panama Canal approached, the Everett Trades Council lobbied for strict immigration restrictions, fearing a flood of 'undesirables' into Pacific ports.
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But what effect does this have on us out here on the shores of the Pacific, three thousand miles from Ellis Island? Admitting everything alleged to be true, it cannot affect us but indirectly, you say. Don't you realize that within three or four years the Panama canal will be opened for travel? That steamship companies promise to land European immigrants at Pacific coast ports for less than they are now landing them at Ellis Island? It is no stretch of the imagination to picture San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, rivals of New York and Boston as ports of entry. Unless we arouse to the peril that lies ahead and force legislative enactment that will curb wholesale immigration, we will see conditions here as bad as New York. The Everett Trades Council has already taken action, urging the passage of the Dillingham measure in Congress. We are not alarmists, but if an ocean steamship should drop anchor off the Everett dock and 2,500 immigrants should troop ashore, half of them afflicted with mental or physical diseases, there would be a near riot in Everett.
“The time to lock the door is before the horse is stolen.”
This editorial reflects the era's pervasive nativism, which frequently cloaked economic anxiety in the language of public health and 'fitness.' Today, these same ports are centers of global migration debates, though the rhetoric has shifted from the 'physical fitness' of laborers to the economic and security impacts of shifting trade routes and demographics.
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