pire out of the wilderness. The covered wagons, however, brought with them also a number of mechanics and artisans driven from their homes by chaotic industrial conditions in the East. In Europe the great period of unrest following the Napoleonic Wars set in motion a wave of emigration that flooded America's Atlantic seaboard with thousands of indigent workers. Wage scales toppled and standards of living fell as the Europeans entered every field of labor.
American workers, faced with the specters of unemployment and poverty, chose westward migration. By the middle of the century the trek to the Northwest was under way. in the wagon trains were Oregon's first printers. These men carried pamphlets of craft unionism among their gear, and became the pioneers of the Oregon labor movement. From Oregon and Washington territories they came in 1853 to Portland, then a town of about i,OOO inhabitants, and organized a Typographical Society along the lines of the successful National Typographical Union formed in the East in 1850. Portland soon became an important shipping point, and in 1868 the longshoremen set up their Portland Protective Union. This was Oregon's second labor association.
Meanwhile there had arisen the problem of competitive Chinese labor which was to harry the white workers of Oregon for many years. Driven out of California by anti-Chinese feeling, the Orientals flocked north as far as Portland. The Burlingame Treaty, ratified in 1867, which opened the country to coolies recruited for railroad construction, greatly increased the number of yellow laborers. A crowded labor market resulted, followed by decreased wages, at a time of rising living costs.
White laborers, threatened with the loss of their jobs, responded by boycotting those who employed the Asiatics. Feeling ran high and for the first time in Oregon a line was sharply drawn between those for and against Orientals. Political destinies were shaped by the conflict, which was fought out in the decades following, industry as a whole staunchly favoring the low-wage coolie labor, and the white workers forming organizations to effect its exclusion. In 1886 the anti-Chinese agitation was at its height. Mayor Gates of Portland called a meeting of protest in favor of the Chinese, but Sylvester Pennoyer took over the meeting and declared that the Chinese must go. Partly because of his stand on this question he was elected governor of the state at the following election. Heroic attempts were made to organize a central labor body which might better handle the issue, but a confusion of economic ftnd political aims prevented united action.
Finally, however, labor did draw itself together within a framework
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