The Price of White Labor in the Sound's Salmon Canneries
Prominent cannery man George T. Myers threatens to abandon Puget Sound if local sentiment forces him to abandon Chinese labor for white workers.
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.
George T. Myers, the well-known cannery man who owns the salmon packing establishment on Milton Point, was in Seattle yesterday looking over the ground with a view to determining whether he would attempt to run the cannery on the Sound this season or move his machinery and stock over on the Columbia and pack salmon there. In speaking of the situation, Mr. Myers said: 'In view of existing circumstances, there is a lot of talking about running the establishment altogether with white labor. There are certain portions of the work that a white man will not do if he can possibly get out of it, and just such work as a Chinaman is adapted to. Aside from all this, it would cost from 30 to 40 percent more to run the cannery with white labor than it would with Chinese, and hence you will readily see that while the packers of British Columbia, Oregon and California employ Chinese, I could not employ white labor altogether and compete with them. I have talked with a number of business men here, who are my friends, in regard to the situation, and they, with one exception, told me I would not be permitted to employ Chinamen in the cannery this season. If they are correct in their judgment I shall move my machinery and stock on hand to Portland. I prefer doing business on the Sound, but if I cannot be permitted to do so without a loss, I must go elsewhere where I can... I am no Chinaman lover, and would not employ them at all if there was any way to get around it without a loss, but when packers all over the coast in my line are employing cheap labor, I cannot employ higher priced men and compete with them.'
This reflects the volatile labor and racial tensions of the 1880s, when anti-Chinese movements—which would lead to the expulsion of Seattle's Chinese population months later—collided with the economic realities of a resource-extraction industry. Today, debates over the cost of labor and imported versus local workforces persist in our maritime and agricultural sectors, though the racial framing of that era remains a painful historical marker.
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