History of the Pacific Northwest

¶ … History of the Pacific Northwest [...] how representative the lives of Mary Arkwright Hutton, Annie Pike Greenwood, and Teiko Tomita were considering the racial and class tensions of the twentieth century. Race and class have been important influences throughout the Pacific Northwest's long history. In fact, some of the most racist laws in America were in effect in the Pacific Northwest at the beginning of the twentieth century. Race and class created dissent in the population, but ultimately forged a stronger sense of area and belonging to the diverse cultural minorities that make up the area today.

Mary Arkwright Hutton was a union supporter and organizer early in the history of the area. She worked in the mining towns of Idaho, and became an avid union supporter and organizer of the men who labored in the mines. Many politicians and mine owners found her abrasive and difficult, but the men loved her, and listened to her impassioned words about fairness and justness for the mineworkers. After their small mine, The Hercules, made them wealthy, she and her husband moved to a mansion in Spokane, where she continued to work for social causes such as women's suffrage, orphanages, and day-care centers (Schwantes 324). Her social status may have changed from boarding house matron to society matron, but her work continued to champion the disadvantaged and poor. More importantly, her work crossed political boundaries. Historian Schwantes notes, "In 1912 she became the first woman ever elected to the Democratic National Convention" (Schwantes 324). Mary Arkwright Hutton worked for the betterment of all the lower classes, from women to workers, and her life is inductive of the class tensions between worker and owner that plagued the mines and caused unions to grow and prosper at a time when most owners subjugated their employee and took advantage of them whenever they could. The miners retaliated with hatred and violence, and people like Hutton hoped to bridge the gap between the two groups by instituting laws that would protect the workers while ensuring the mines would still be profitable.

If Mary Arkwright Hutton was a champion for women and miners, Annie Pike Greenwood was a champion for the farmers of the Pacific Northwest. She wrote about the hardships the farmers faced as they attempted to farm the arid valleys of the area, and she was particularly concerned with the hardships women faced as they worked non-stop on these small family farms. She wrote in her book "We Sagebrush Folk," "We do not talk, we two women. We must rush, rush, RUSH! T. here is no such pressure on the men out-of-doors as there is on the women in the kitchen" (Schwantes 208). The farmers worked tirelessly, but the Great Depression and other factors combined to make farming far less profitable than many other professions. As the population left the rural farming communities and moved to the cities of the Pacific Northwest, an entire rural class was lost. It blended to form city society, but it also left its' rural roots behind. Even more important politically to the farming community was water, and the scarcity of this precious resource. Wars could break out between farmers who felt their neighbors had overstepped their water boundaries, because water was the lifeblood of the farming community, and even with the massive irrigation projects that built up throughout the region, the water situation was precarious. Historian Schwantes writes, "The social and economic well-being of dwellers on reclaimed lands depended to a large degree on federal money, power, bureaucracy, the technological expertise of the few, and occasionally the caprice of nature. Such was irrigation's dark underside" (Schwantes 298-300). Politically, the farmers were quite powerful in their local communities, which sometimes translated to state levels. However, as time passed, many of these farmers were Japanese immigrants, and this caused tension between the races, especially after World War II broke out.

Teiko Tomika was a Japanese poet and farmer's wife, who wrote of the hardships faced by the Japanese on the farms and in the internment camps during the war. One women's historian notes, "Farming in the desert land of the Yakima Valley was hot and arduous, as she [Tomika] described: As we busily pick beans / Even the Breeze stirring / The weeds at our feet / Feels hot" (Amott and Matthaei 223). The Japanese faced special scrutiny after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and as early as the 1920s, laws had been passed in the area that prohibited Japanese from owning lands. In addition, up until 1926, Blacks had actually been banned from Oregon, and there were also restrictions on black and Chinese voters throughout the area (Schwantes 377). Clearly, these laws would create racial and social tension throughout the area, and made for resistance from blacks and Asians, especially. During World War II, a large influx of blacks came to the area looking for jobs, while the Japanese were removed to internment camps for almost the entire duration of the war. Schwantes notes, "By early 1945, nearly 7,000-8,000 blacks lived in Seattle where, a reporter noted, 'the feeling against them is high. In Portland, where there are 15,000 it is much higher'" (Schwantes 419). Those who were not removed faced discrimination and hardship. Historian Schwantes continues, "When, for instance, Idaho firms hired Japanese workers, the Pocatello Central Labor Union protested: 'We request all members of organized labor to refrain from patronizing any and all business establishments employing Japs'" (Schwantes 418). Clearly, tensions between races were even higher in the Pacific Northwest, whose separatist politics had largely kept the area free of ethnic minorities, and so sheltered much of the population from different cultures and perspectives. After the war, many localities tried to ban the Japanese from returning, and this added more stress to relationships between the races.