Prohibition

1886 · réf. 56938 — Olympia W.T.: Thomas H. Cavanaugh Public Printer 1886. 8vo. 555 5 xxvii 1 xv 1 ix 1 pp. Contemporary full calf red black & gilt morocco spine labels minor uniform toning some edgewear minor bumping to corners still VG copy from the library of Bates & Burnett law firm with William Charles Bates 1885-1973 and Milton L. Burnett 1887-1972 who operated for decades in Vancouver WA from before World War I and moved their firm into the Charles Brown historic house in 1945 beginning a local trend of using older homes for professional buildings and George W. Yocum 1827-1890 longtime Portland attorney. First edition of this rare Washington Territory lawbook including the January 29 1886 Alien Land Ownership law which was the only anti-Chinese measure to pass the legislature as well as two laws related to Prohibition advocated by newly empowered women’s suffrage voters. The Alien Land laws emerged out of the anti-Chinese riots in Tacoma WA in November 1885 when labor organizations such as the Knights of Labor with the aid of the Pierce County Sheriff succeeded in forcing all of the Chinese residents out of town as well as torching their homes. Building on the 1882 Federal Chinese Exclusion Acts the Territorial Legislature specifically excluded any “Alien” who were “incapable of becoming citizens of the United States” could neither own land or convey title of properties to heirs. Unfortunately for the Chinese in Seattle this failed to placate socialist firebrands suffragettes & Knights of Labor advocates Laura Hall Peters and Mary Kenworthy or the equally charismatic Knights of Labor organizer Daniel Cronin. In February 1886 hundreds of working-class white men and women on the pretense of enforcing local health regulations condemned buildings in Seattle’s Chinatown and herded over 350 Chinese residents down to the Seattle docks and demanded they ship out. About 200 Chinese embarked for San Francisco and another had to wait six days for another ship setting off a riot and declaration by Washington Territory Governor Squire and President Grover Cleveland. The “Local Option” law passed by the Territorial Legislature in 1886 garnered huge opposition from saloon owners and cases brought resulted in the 1888 ruling against “Local Option” by the Territorial Supreme Court returning the power back to city councils and county commissioners. See: John Putnam Racism and Temperance: The Politics of Class and Gender in Late 19th-Century Seattle The Pacific Northwest Quarterly Vol. 95 No. 2 Spring 2004 pp. 70-81; Mark Lazarus III An Historical Analysis of Alien Land Law: Washington Territory & State 1853-1889 University of Puget Sound Law Review Vol. XII 1989 pp. 197-246. Thomas H. Cavanaugh, Public Printer, unknown