The Rising Sentiment Against Chinese Labor in Seattle

We naturally infer from the fact that professionals are arriving to our city that we are receiving more than our share of this undesired class of emigrants. By the steamer from up the sound, on the 15th, twenty Chinamen arrived. They marched up Mill Street in single file with their bamboo sticks and baskets on their shoulders, and excited a great deal of attention. By the steamer on the previous evening, twenty more arrived, and marched into town in the same order. We hear it frequently asked about town, what is to be done with so many Chinamen? The echo only answers, what? Especially in this large influx of these laborers stir the laboring men. One fact is well settled in the minds of the citizens on this coast, and that is that we would be better without them. It is a fact that the law of finance has its application to peoples as well as commodities, and that in a labor market, an inferior race will drive out a superior one. Many also are fearful if Chinese immigration continues that their disguised slavery, termed peonage, will take the place of free white labor. It can be said to the credit of Puget Sound companies that the practice in employing Chinamen is not as common here as in California, and from our observations in that State, we may say that we know of no town of size or business importance where so few Chinamen are employed as in Seattle. Our businessmen and capitalists are as a general thing opposed to the employment of Chinese, and justly so. Therefore, we think that the laboring and productive classes of this city have less reason to complain of being out of work in consequence of the employment of Chinese, than the same classes of any other city on this coast.