A Tense Town Meeting Over Business Leases
Citizens gathered at City Hall to protest the arrival of Chinese businesses, only to find themselves divided and without a legal strategy.
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.
F. D. Schnebley, of Ellensburgh, has leased the building formerly occupied by Vance & Halford to Chinamen for a period of three years, and carpenters have been at work remodeling it for restaurant purposes. The encroachment of the Chinese on the business portions of the city has been viewed with regret and alarm by our citizens and resulted in the issuance of a call for a public meeting to be held at the city hall Tuesday evening. There were upwards of a hundred citizens present, but all did not seem to be of the same tenor of mind. The call was issued by 'The Committee,' but no one would acknowledge being a member, and several speakers ridiculed them for issuing the call and then not having the stamina to publicly father it. O. A. Feebler was called to the chair and took the opportunity to deny that the firm of which he was a member had leased the Schnebley property to the celestials. L. B. Sperry was chosen secretary. Messrs. Needham, Cox, Morford, Coe, and others spoke, but no plan could be formulated to cure the evil. Attorney Rudkin was called upon for an expression of opinion. He said he had investigated the matter, but that he could find no legal remedy. The Chinaman who had rented the Yakima avenue property was present and remained throughout the meeting.
“The encroachment of the Chinese on the business portions of the city has been viewed with regret and alarm by our citizens.”
This meeting reflects the intense, exclusionary anti-Chinese movement that swept through the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s and 90s, when local committees often attempted to use public pressure to drive residents out of business. Today, Yakima's history is shaped by a diverse immigrant population, a direct contrast to the exclusionist rhetoric documented in this 1891 report.
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