The Torchlight Mob at Frye's Opera House
In 1885, Seattle laborers and anti-Chinese activists gathered for a massive, torch-lit demonstration to demand the removal of the city's Chinese population, marking a dark chapter of exclusionary labor violence in the Pacific Northwest.
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.
On the evening of October 24, 1885, a massive crowd gathered in Seattle for a demonstration against the presence of Chinese laborers. The procession formed on Commercial Street, marching through the city with torches, transparencies, and illuminated mottoes. One display depicted a ship bound for San Francisco with an American eagle dropping a Chinaman in its talons; another showed a Chinese laborer carrying rats, bearing the slogan, 'Me worky cheap.' The marchers eventually descended on Frye's Opera House, where an estimated 1,500 people packed the building to hear speeches and pass resolutions. Speaker O.W. Taylor stated, 'I am here to lift my voice for white men, white labor and a white country,' while others warned that Chinese immigration was an 'ancient, infectious and incurable malady.' The crowd formally resolved to use 'public sentiment' and social influence to force the Chinese population out of the territory, setting a deadline of November 1st for their departure, and publicly threatening those who would oppose their movement.
“I am here to lift my voice for white men, white labor and a white country, now and forever.”
This event captures the volatile atmosphere in 1880s Seattle, where labor movements were inextricably tied to the virulent anti-Chinese exclusionary policies of the time. The aggressive, nativist rhetoric found in the 1885 resolutions serves as a stark reminder that Seattle’s labor history is deeply intertwined with systemic racism and the exclusionary impulses that often resurface during periods of economic anxiety.
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