The Labor Competition of 1885
Local woodcutters engage in a deliberate attempt to price out Chinese laborers in a demonstration of the era's xenophobic labor practices.
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 couple of teams of white men were engaged yesterday—E. J. Johnson and others—in sawing wood in competition with the Chinese, the price obtained being $1 per cord. Householders should give white labor the preference in every case.
“Householders should give white labor the preference in every case.”
This reflects the period of intense anti-Chinese sentiment in the Pacific Northwest, eventually leading to the expulsion riots of 1886. It stands as a dark reminder of how labor disputes were weaponized to fuel structural exclusion and racial violence.
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