Tacoma's Labor Council Pledges to Keep Chinese Out For Good
Invoking the same 'Committee of Fifteen' that drove the city's Chinese residents out in 1885, the Tacoma Trades Council passes resolutions to block any return and calls an anti-Chinese mass meeting.
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.
TACOMA, July 23. — [Special.] — The Trades Council resolutions relative to the Chinese, which were adopted Thursday night, were as follows:
WHEREAS, There is a movement on foot having for its object the introduction in this city of that much dreaded vile element, the deadly and pestilential Chinese; and whereas, we view with alarm the attempts that are being made to manufacture public sentiment in favor of their return, and the fact that the most earnest advocates of the return of the Chinese to this city are the men who most strenuously opposed their expulsion ten years ago; therefore, be it
Resolved, By the Tacoma Trades Council, that the return of the Chinese to this city is a calamity that should be averted if possible, and we pledge ourselves to assist the Committee of Fifteen in its efforts to prevent their return, and arouse the public to the danger that lies in the presence of the Mongolian pest.
The council has appointed a committee to act with the Committee of Fifteen in arranging for an anti-Chinese mass-meeting.
The clergymen of the city will be requested to preach on the labor question Sunday, September 4.
Owing to the probability of not securing any funds from the city, the trades carnival feature of Labor Day will very likely be dispensed with.
“The return of the Chinese to this city is a calamity that should be averted if possible, and we pledge ourselves to assist the Committee of Fifteen in its efforts to prevent their return.”
Only seven years after Tacoma's notorious 1885 mob drove the city's entire Chinese community out of town, organized labor here was still invoking the 'Committee of Fifteen' — the very body that led the expulsion — and pledging to keep the Chinese from ever returning. The dehumanizing language ('Mongolian pest') is the paper's own record of how xenophobia was laundered into a labor grievance. It is the same playbook that recurs whenever immigration and jobs collide, and it is a reminder that exclusion was not a single riot but a sustained, organized campaign.
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