The Tacoma Method

THE TACOMA METHOD.

Seattle Chronicle.

The Tacoma Ledger, in commenting upon an editorial in the Chronicle, says:

We say that there are not brains enough in the whole of Seattle, much less in the editor of the Chronicle, to draw a distinction between the Seattle method and the Tacoma method. There is no difference between them and a distinction cannot be drawn.

Let us see about that. At Tacoma the Chinamen were surrounded by a mob of 500 men; the doors of their houses were broken in; their goods were rudely tossed about; they were formed in line and marched under guard some eight miles through a rain storm; two of their number, who were sick, died from the exposure; they were kept under guard all night at Lake View; as a fitting climax to this orderly procedure, the houses of the Chinamen were burned to the ground in both wards of the city. This was the ‘Tacoma method,’ without coloring or exaggeration. In Seattle there has been no other force employed than moral suasion, and this was directed to the employers of Chinese, not the Chinese. What might have occurred but for the vigorous action of the authorities is a matter of conjecture, but what really did occur is so widely separated from the ‘Tacoma method’ that it is astounding that the Ledger can muster the cool effrontery to make the comparison we quote. The Seattle method has thus far borne good fruit. Chinamen have been discharged from all the hives of industry. If to-day a few of the little yellow men are washing clothes and doing housework, it is because that species of white labor is not at hand to replace the coolies. Here, then, is the difference between the Seattle and Tacoma methods.

Mayor Weisbach and his Tacoma compatriots went up to Seattle with lies in their mouths. They made patriotic speeches (with reservations) and asserted by all the gods of peace that they of Tacoma contemplated no act of violence. They returned to their homes to commit one of the greatest crimes known to the statutes of the United States.

The people and papers of that town must be mad to believe and talk as they do of having done nothing unlawful. Is it not unlawful to do that which the law says you shall not do? Is it not unlawful to cover the nation’s pledged honor with ignominy and shame? Have the Tacoma papers ever read Art. 3 of the Chinese treaty? Here it is:

‘If Chinese laborers, or Chinese of any other class, now either permanently or temporarily residing in the territory of the United States, meet with ill-treatment at the hands of any other persons, the government of the United States will exert all its power to devise measures for their protection, and to secure to them the same rights, privileges, immunities and exemptions as may be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation, and to which they are entitled by treaty.’

By what manner of reasoning can these papers bring themselves to believe that the acts committed against the Chinamen were not outrageously stultifying of this article of the treaty? The constitution says that treaties made by the United States shall be the highest law of the land, and can any reasonable person reconcile the assault upon the Chinamen at Tacoma with the clearly expressed provision of this Art. 3 of the highest law of the land? But the papers say, ‘We killed no one; the Chinamen marched out of their own accord; we only “invited” them to leave.’ The infinite fallacy—the pyramidal rottenness—of such a defense is too obvious for comment. We can acquit any highway robber who did not kill his victim, upon the same grounds.