The Hypocrisy of Convict Labor
An editorial draws a direct, nativist parallel between New York's stance on prison labor and the push to expel Chinese laborers from the Pacific coast.
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.
The amendment submitted to the electors of New York at the election this month forbidding the contracting of prison labor was adopted by a large majority. It is strange that the good people of New York, while protesting against a system which places servile labor—for convict labor is nothing else—in competition with that of freemen, cannot see that exactly the same argument applies to the presence and competition of Chinese on this coast with our own citizens. The competition of these coolies is as unjust and destructive to free labor and remunerative prices for white working men as contract convict labor is or can be. We expect to see this coming winter the walls raised higher and every loophole closed against further invasion from the vast hive across the water.
“It makes a vast difference whose ox is gored.”
This text captures the virulent anti-Chinese sentiment that permeated Seattle's political discourse in the early 1880s, which eventually culminated in the 1886 expulsion of the Chinese community. It serves as a stark artifact of the exclusionary policies that shaped the city's early labor and racial landscape.
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