Laundry Monopoly Targets Chinese Competitors
A newly formed interstate association of laundry owners eyes a coordinated campaign against Chinese-run businesses while resisting union wage demands.
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.
A league of the principal laundry owners of Washington and Oregon has lately been formed, known as the Oregon-Washington Interstate Laundrymen's Association. The officers are John Tait of Portland, president; P. H. Kilbourne of Seattle, vice president; and F. T. McCullough of Spokane, secretary and treasurer. The league includes the proprietors of major laundries across both states. It is understood that the association is formed for mutual benefits, though Chinese laundries are strictly barred from membership. A fight with material backing may be waged against the 'celestials' after the association has established itself. Additionally, the association has refused to raise wages for laundry workers, choosing instead to table the union's new contract scale indefinitely. The group represents a large amount of capital and, in case of a labor struggle, believes it is prepared to hold its own.
“Chinese laundries are barred from membership, and a fight with some material backing may be waged against the celestials.”
This 1903 report captures the era's organized effort to use industry associations as both a weapon against labor unions and a tool for systematic racial exclusion. The explicitly stated plan to leverage pooled capital against Chinese-owned small businesses serves as a grim example of the economic landscape that fueled anti-Asian sentiment in the Pacific Northwest.
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