The Anti-Chinese Laundry Campaign
Local newspaper editors in 1888 openly called for the displacement of Chinese laundry workers, framing their exclusion as a 'great need' for the town.
A good laundry, conducted by a white man, or woman, is one of Pullman's great needs at present. A laundry whose proprietor and employees can distinguish dirt from green cheese, and will take pains to render the washing presentable. And for a reasonable price. Our Chinese laundry men are no good on earth—or elsewhere, for that matter. Their work is miserably done, their prices abominably high, and their impudence equal to the gall of Jezebel. We never did have any use for the pagans, anyhow.
“We never did have any use for the pagans, anyhow.”
This editorial reflects the intense, state-wide anti-Chinese movement of the 1880s in Washington Territory, which often utilized economic grievance to justify exclusion and racism. It is a sobering reminder that many small towns in the Pacific Northwest have histories of targeted displacement that were actively promoted by local media.
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