The Siege of Seattle's Anti-Chinese Agitators
As a community split over the exclusionary movement, labor activists gathered at the Standard Theater to defend their peers against legal indictment and internal unrest.
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.
Pursuant to a call published by the committee in the Post-Intelligencer, a large crowd assembled at the Standard Theater to listen to the discussion of the Chinese question. B.F. Day was chosen as chairman and Lyman Wood as secretary. J.L. McClellan stated that the objective of the meeting was to raise funds to defray the expenses of defending the suits brought against those who had been most active in the anti-Chinese movement.
General George W. Cutts took the floor: 'My heart is in the cause and my soul in the work of ridding the country of this Chinese curse. My experience with the laboring classes, and I am a laborer myself, is that the producers of this land are the law-abiding element. In the dark days of the Rebellion they came forth like patriots... yet right here in Seattle, free speech has been throttled. Our fellow citizens who labored to rid the country of Chinese have been indicted under a law gotten up to punish the Ku Klux Klan. This Chinese competition is sending your sons to fill our jails, and your daughters to perdition. The man who gives his washing to a Chinaman because he can get it done 10 or 20 cents less than a white man will do it is doing the same as the capitalist of whom he complains.'
Mary Kenworthy, also indicted, spoke to the crowd: 'I have been indicted by a Grand Jury of my neighbors among whom I have lived for eighteen years, but I do not know what I have done that was wrong. I know I have worked for the good of my people and my country. They call me a dynamiter, but I never advocated violence. I shall thank you for what you do for my brothers who are out of work. I am proud to be indicted for doing your work.' The assembly adopted a resolution to organize permanently and boycott any future meetings held at Yesler's Hall.
“I am proud to be indicted for doing your work.”
This 1885 meeting captures the volatile intersection of labor rights, exclusionary nativism, and the legal criminalization of protest in Seattle. It echoes modern tensions where Seattle’s economic shifts and housing affordability struggles once again prompt heated debates over who belongs and who is entitled to the city's future.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.