The Eagle Mills Expansion
A major local manufacturer relocates to North Seattle, prioritizing a white, coin-paid workforce.
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.
The Mattus Manufacturing Co. have purchased the Puyallup Barrel Factory and will remove it to this city as soon as they can erect the necessary buildings near the Eagle Mills, North Seattle. The company now employs at the Eagle mills, 25 night and 80 day hands, turning out 3,000 barrels a day. The pay roll exceeds $10,000 a month. No Chinaman is employed in or about these works. The men are paid monthly, in coin, good living wages, and a more thrifty and intelligent congregation of laborers cannot be found upon this coast—or anywhere else.
This item highlights the explicit use of economic policy to enforce racial exclusion in the 1880s, a precursor to the systemic exclusionary labor practices that defined Seattle's industrial growth. The 'Eagle Mills' site is a reminder of the era when labor was segregated by explicit policy rather than just shifting market conditions.
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