Protecting the Timber Frontier
Seattle business leaders lobby to maintain trade protections against foreign competition.
The Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, appointed to prepare a protest against the reduction of the duties on coal and lumber as proposed in the Morrison Bill, unanimously adopted a report. We earnestly and most emphatically protest against the abolition of the duties on coal and lumber, as detrimental to the leading industries of Western Washington, and as subjecting the development of the great coal and lumber interests of the Pacific Coast to a ruinous competition. The duty on coal under the tariff of 1883 provided a large and liberal protection to this developing industry. There are extensive fields of coal in British Columbia, immediately north of this Territory, lying contiguous to navigable waters, easily opened and cheaply mined. There are no laws in British Columbia prohibiting the importation and employment of cheap Chinese labor and the putting of said labor in competition with the labor of white men, who are employed in our mines. Abolish this duty, and the coal owners and miners of British Columbia will be offered equal advantages in American markets with American mines and millers.
“We earnestly and most emphatically protest against the abolition of the duties on coal and lumber, as detrimental to the leading industries of Western Washington.”
This report captures the era's protectionist economic anxiety, heavily intertwined with the racialized labor politics of the 1880s. The 'Morrison Bill' debate highlights how Seattle’s early growth was tied to both regional resource extraction and explicit exclusionary practices toward Chinese laborers.
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