Opinion: 'Tacoma Method' reminder to avoid lies, exaggeration

Let’s go back. Way back, 138 years, to when Silver City citizens almost did something that most of us wouldn’t approve of today.

Here’s an announcement from the Southwest Sentinel of Nov. 24, 1885:

“There will be a meeting of citizens on Tuesday evening at Crown Hall for the purpose of taking into consideration the advisability of ordering the Chinese population to remove for the following reasons:

“First, they [do] work that our needy population desire; second they have paid but $12 into the treasury as city taxes during the year, and shipped through known sources during the past year $130,000 out of the county; third they are no benefit to our merchants, importing in the main their food and clothing from China; fourth, they breed pestilence by their filthy habits and their opium dens, and are a source of ruination to the young of both sexes and of all races; lastly, the work they do can be accomplished by our own people in a manner satisfactory to all interested.”

This account is full of lies and exaggerations, but it wasn’t unique at the time.

Expelling Chinese was called “The Tacoma Method” after a particularly brutal expulsion in Tacoma, Wash., only a few weeks before it was proposed in Silver City.

Chinese laborers came to the United States to work on the railroads. After the job, some stayed. When Anglo workers tried to organize for higher wages, the Chinese were willing to work for less. The movement to expel Chinese people was based on labor activism and bigotry.

The claim that the Chinese got their food from China is obvious nonsense. They got a lot of it — and provided more to the rest of the town — from the farm south of town along the San Vicente Trail now known as Old Chinese Gardens LLC.

Many Chinese laborers were single men who sent money back to their families in China (sort of like Mexican immigrants today). The claim that all the Chinese paid $12 in taxes and sent out $130,000 is suspiciously specific. Blaming your economic problems on people of a different skin color probably sounds familiar to Hispanics, who had a long period with little civic power but plenty of poverty, despite working hard.

What about opium dens?

This was a time when many fashionable ladies were legally addicted to laudanum — a solution of opium and alcohol. No doubt there were Chinese opium addicts, but they weren’t the people raising vegetables or running laundries.

An anti-Chinese resolution was passed, but sentiment was divided.

Ultimately, Silver City did not follow the lead of other Western towns and cities. No Chinese were expelled.

Does this mean our forefathers respected the law? Were they free of the prejudice common at the time? Or were they too incompetent and divided to be effective bigots?

The moral of the story: Don’t do anything your great-great-grandchildren wouldn’t approve of.

— Bruce McKinney

Silver City Daily Press