Black Diamond Coal Operator Replaces Chinese Workers With White Labor
The operator of the Black Diamond coal works discharged all Chinese employees and replaced them with white labor, a change greeted with jubilation amid exclusionary sentiment in Black Diamond and Franklin.
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.
Mr. Jones has discharged all the Chinamen from the Black Diamond coal works, and now it is all white labor here. There are but few white men in Black Diamond or Franklin idle, and all are feeling jubilant over the flight of the 'heathen Chinee.' Meanwhile, a Northern Pacific Railroad surveying party is running a preliminary line for a branch from the Franklin claim to connect with the Northern Pacific Railroad at Deep Creek Headquarters. The coal experts recently sent here from the East have all agreed that there is no vein of coal worth opening on the south side of Green River above the Franklin vein.
“Mr. Jones has discharged all the Chinamen from the Black Diamond coal works, and now it is all white labor here.”
This dispatch documents the organized displacement of Chinese immigrants from the coal industry, a pivotal moment in Washington's labor history that eventually led to the 1886 Seattle riots. It captures the raw, exclusionary language used to justify labor segregation at the time.
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