Arson Attack at Snohomish Mercantile
An incendiary device was discovered burning in the floorboards of a Chinese-owned store, nearly igniting the heart of the business district.
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.
Saturday night, an incendiary broke through a window in the basement under the Chinese store of Wah Chung, and placed a pan of charcoal upon which a quantity of coal oil had been poured on a box close up to the floor, and set the contents on fire. The fire, before being discovered, had eaten so far that a large hole was burned through the floor and the flames were consuming a piece of goods close by, when the proprietor was awakened from his sleep and fortunately succeeded in putting out the fire. Had a few minutes more elapsed, the fire would have obtained such headway that the entire building, and most likely the greater part of the business part of the city, would have been in ashes. There is no clue as to the perpetrator. It is generally supposed that it was done through revenge against someone in that establishment. The Chinese are supposed to frequent brothels among the whites, and on very slight provocation are prone to violence toward each other as well as towards whites. A $500 reward is offered by Wah Chung for the arrest and conviction of the incendiary, but we apprehend that he will not be caught, as 'for ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, the heathen Chinee is peculiar.'
This incident highlights the precariousness of early Snohomish's wooden business district and the pervasive, institutionalized racism of the era. The newspaper's reliance on Bret Harte’s xenophobic tropes to frame a serious attempted arson reveals how public rhetoric was weaponized against Chinese business owners, who were simultaneously targets of violence and scapegoated as the cause of it.
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