The Battle for Seattle’s Soul
Tensions boil over between labor organizers and the property-owning elite over the presence of Chinese workers, as the city teeters on the edge of mob rule.
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.
All distinctions asserted or attempted to be maintained that one kind of labor is honorable and other kinds dishonorable are false in fact and false in theory. In America, this is emphatically true. With us, in all the thousand departments of life, intelligent labor is the conqueror. Nobility of character comes not by descent, but is the grand development of human endeavor and heroic action.
We have learned by bitter experience that the highest good of the laboring people is promoted by excluding from us, as laborers in any department of basic industry, those who cannot be assimilated by us. It is better for us and better for them to live apart. The Christian races have won their wonderful triumphs by subordination to law. We cannot imagine the scenes of violence and blood which would result from the overthrow of the majesty of law.
To the people, we must speak: The incendiary sentiments uttered by the two principal speakers at Yesler’s Hall on Saturday evening last are awful. Violence threatened darkly looms with indescribable horrors. If such is the expression of your sentiments and mine, let me ask if I have not shown in our acts to our own witnesses, far away? We need no United States soldiers here to preserve order in our city. We can do it and we will do it. We do not love the Chinese, but we love order and lawful methods for the redress of grievances. We are loyal to the constitution, the laws of Congress and the treaties of the United States, and we mean to show it.
“The hands cannot say to the feet, because they tread in the dust, I am more honorable than you.”
This 1885 editorial captures the fever pitch of the anti-Chinese movement in Seattle, a dark chapter of labor-led xenophobia that eventually culminated in the expulsion of the city's Chinese population. It serves as a reminder that the 'law and order' rhetoric used today is a historical echo often deployed to protect property interests while simultaneously weaponizing racial division among the working class.
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