The Mob at Yesler's Hall: Seattle's 1885 Campaign of Exclusion
As anti-Chinese sentiment boiled over in Seattle, local laborers and activists held a packed rally to formalize plans for the forced expulsion of the city's Chinese population.
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.
At Yesler's Hall last night, a crowd of men, with a few ladies in the audience, gathered for a meeting of the anti-Chinese movement. Previous to the meeting, the band played in front of the hall, and a number of transparencies were carried over the heads of the crowd, bearing such mottos as: 'Property Shall Be Protected,' 'Restriction a Failure,' 'The Heathen Must Go,' and 'Free Labor, the Foundation of Our Prosperity.' At 8 p.m., George Venable Smith called the meeting to order. The principal business was to elect a committee of fifteen citizens to inform the Chinese of this city of the day on which they must take their departure. George Venable Smith addressed the crowd, stating, 'There is an irresistible, irrepressible conflict here, the result of which will be that the Chinese must leave this country, and before very long. This feeling is deep-seated. It is the same as the slavery question.' Speakers echoed calls for the removal of the Chinese, citing the competition against 'white labor' and declaring that the 'corporations' who protected Chinese workers were the true enemies of the people. The meeting concluded with the appointment of a committee of fifteen to notify the Chinese residents that their presence in the city was no longer welcomed, setting a deadline for their departure.
“There is an irresistible, irrepressible conflict here, the result of which will be that the Chinese must leave this country, and before very long.”
This 1885 rally captures the dark origins of Seattle's exclusionary history, revealing how economic anxiety was channeled into state-sanctioned racism. Today, the rhetoric of 'protecting' the local workforce at the expense of immigrants remains a recurring, albeit reconfigured, ghost in Pacific Northwest civic discourse.
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