Seattle's Barrel Factory Doubles Its Shifts — 'No Chance for Chinamen There'
The factory near Belltown boosts production to 4,000 barrels a day and hires about a hundred men and boys, all white, in a blunt public statement of racial hiring policy.
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.
On and after the 6th inst., the barrel factory will double its force, running two shifts instead of one, turning out 4,000 barrels daily. About one hundred men and boys are employed; all white, who receive fair wages and ready pay. No chance for Chinamen there.
“About one hundred men and boys are employed; all white, who receive fair wages and ready pay. No chance for Chinamen there.”
This is the documented face of the anti-Chinese labor movement that would culminate in Seattle's 1886 expulsion of Chinese residents: jobs were not just scarce, they were explicitly reserved for white workers. The barrel factory's boast makes visible the racial contract written into Washington labor history decades before the federal Exclusion Act.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.