The Iron Foundry vs. The Anti-Chinese Movement
A vigilante mob of Seattle ironworkers forces the departure of Chinese laborers on a steamer to San Francisco.
The account following of the late anti-Chinese trouble in this city is taken from a paper in the iron district of Kirkland: There are some industrious and enterprising people in Seattle. They are not going to be heated by a band of the off-scourings of Chinamen. A crowd of iron founders, not around a hundred Celestials, told them to 'slope.' They marched them to a steamer and paid their fares right through to San Francisco. They didn't turn back. If they had done so, they would have been 'retreated.' That's all. The ironworkers here are not without a touch of humor. They said in effect: 'Frisco is quite far enough east for a Chinaman, for although you have existed since before the Flood, we don't want another deluge—not in Seattle.'
“They marched them to a steamer and paid their fares right through to San Francisco. They didn't turn back.”
This reflects the volatile climate of the 1885-86 anti-Chinese expulsion era in Washington, where economic anxiety was weaponized into state-sanctioned racial violence. It serves as a stark reminder that Seattle's growth was deeply entangled with the violent exclusion of its immigrant laborers.
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