The Push to Replace Chinese Laborers in Seattle
Employers move to fire Chinese workers in favor of white laborers, as the city faces a rise in unemployed white men looking for work.
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.
A pressure is being brought to bear on all hands to displace Chinese with white labor, and from the appearance of things, the abolition of all Chinese labor in this locality is near at hand. The Black Diamond Coal Company has given notice that all the Chinamen employed at the mines will be superseded by white men, and the Seattle Lumber and Commercial Company has discharged the Chinamen employed in its mill. There are a great many unemployed white men looking for work, and it is to the interest of employers to give them employment, where such a thing is possible. If a little good judgment and common sense is used, the labor question can be adjusted without further resort to violence, disorder and the destruction of valuable property.
“A pressure is being brought to bear on all hands to displace Chinese with white labor.”
This article reflects the volatile atmosphere of 1885, when anti-Chinese expulsion movements gripped the Pacific Northwest. Today, it serves as a stark reminder of the organized, state-sanctioned exclusion campaigns that shaped the region’s demographics and history.
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