Anti-Chinese Mob Drives Hop Pickers from Tampico
Armed vigilantes enforce local exclusionist sentiment, leaving hop crops to rot in the Yakima Valley.
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.
Harry Roberts, owning a ten-acre hop yard at Tampico, went to Yakima tonight to swear out a warrant against twenty or thirty men who today, with Winchesters, clubs, and force, drove a crew of sixteen Chinese pickers off Roberts' yards. The leader of the mob, Louis Jordan, is well known in the local justice courts. Roberts had tried to secure white pickers last week but could not get them, so he hired Chinese as the crop had to be attended to. The workers made no resistance, fleeing instantly and leaving behind their personal goods and blankets in a mad rush to escape. The Chinese are too scared to return, and the hop crop will likely be lost as no other labor is available.
“The Chinamen made no resistance to the mob, but fled instantly, leaving the poles down and the boxes half full of vines cut, etc.”
The 1880s and 90s saw intense anti-Chinese violence across the Pacific Northwest, with agricultural valleys becoming flashpoints for exclusionary labor politics. This incident highlights how 'Geary Law' sentiment—a reference to the 1892 federal act requiring registration of Chinese residents—was weaponized by local mobs to enforce segregation.
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