The Looming Threat of Chinese Labor
As Chinese laborers migrate from British Columbia to Washington, voices in the Territory call for joint international action to stop the 'incoming tide.'
Mr. Shakespeare, who represents the ship of Victoria in the Dominion Parliament, has been interviewed in San Francisco in regard to the Chinese question. He speaks of the incoming stream of Chinese flowing from British Columbia to Washington Territory, and urges joint action by the Canadian and United States Governments as the only means of stopping this ceaseless immigration. Mr. Shakespeare believes that the people of the Eastern provinces are beginning to realize the necessity for checking Chinese immigration to the Dominion. They begin to fear that the Chinaman will follow the line of the Canadian Pacific to the East, and will gradually supplant white labor in the Canadian factories. It is to be hoped that Mr. Shakespeare is right. The sooner the Canadian Government realizes the necessity of absolutely prohibiting the immigration of Chinese, the better it will be for all concerned. With Canada and the United States united in this work, there will be some hope of successfully checking the march of the Chinese.
This 1885 editorial captures the virulent anti-Asian nativism that shaped Pacific Northwest policy for decades, including the infamous Seattle expulsion of 1886. Today, it serves as a stark artifact of how economic anxieties about labor competition were weaponized into systemic xenophobia—a history modern Seattle continues to grapple with as it addresses its own exclusionary past.
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