The Voice of the Anti-Chinese Movement
A local resident writes to the Post-Intelligencer arguing that Seattle must rid itself of Chinese labor to support the 'bone, sinew and wealth' of the white community.
I will respectfully submit the following: Throughout the history of the Pacific Slope, the anti-Chinese feeling has prevailed to intensify the present unrest. In this city and vicinity, against Chinese labor, a few feeble suggestions could well be in order. As a good citizen, and one who owns his home in Seattle and who has to support his family at daily toil, I wish to say that it is the voice of an overwhelming majority of this community that says the Chinese must go. The question is being asked: how can such a measure be accomplished? Our reply is, the good work has already commenced. We refer you to the action taken by McMillan & Frost, the Commercial Mill Company, the Railroad mill and others, in dispensing with Chinese and supplanting them with other men. Throw them out of employment, and they must go. I say to you, fellow citizens of Seattle, it is the duty of each and every one of us, rich or poor, to take the matter in hand as becomes good Americans, and rid ourselves of this scourge in a cool, business-like manner, and by all means without the sacrifice of a single human life.
“I say to you, fellow citizens of Seattle, it is the duty of each and every one of us, rich or poor, to take the matter in hand as becomes good Americans, and rid ourselves of this scourge.”
This letter, penned during the rising tide of anti-Chinese sentiment in 1885, captures the rhetoric that would eventually fuel the forced expulsion of Seattle’s Chinese population later that year. It highlights how labor anxieties and nativist economic arguments were weaponized to justify systemic exclusion.
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