DCHP-2

iron chink iron "chink", Iron Chink DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — Ethnicities, derogatory, extremely offensive, historical

  a machine to gut and clean fish (see Image 1).

  Type: 5. Frequency — The first iron chink, also known as the Smith Butchering Machine, was invented in 1905 in the American Pacific Northwest, then sold to Canadian canneries along the Pacific Coast a year later (Newell 1989: 262). These factories canned salmon along the Canadian West Coast and the American Pacific Northwest. Edmund A. Smith, a Canadian living in Seattle, devised the plans for the machine to improve productivity at his cannery (see Washington State Historical Society reference). When fully implemented, the machine drastically multiplied output from the fisheries, eliminating the need for human labour in most aspects of fish processing. The iron chink acquired its nickname as a result of massive job losses, jobs which had been predominantly filled by Chinese immigrants (Newell 1989: 262). The term currently appears most frequently in Canada (see Chart 1).
  See also OED-3, s.v. "Iron Chink", which is marked "N. Amer.".

  See also: chink  

  • The term is included for reasons of historical accuracy and completeness. It is not intended, as clearly indicated in the usage labels "derogatory" and "extremely offensive", as a term for current use or a term, meaning or usage that is in any way condoned.

  • 1906  The hose is turned on to a mass of salmon reaching so high that they almost touch the thighs of a rubber-booted workman. Hard and cool from the salt water, they pass into the iron "chink," which kills them, strips the entrails, beheads them, removes the tail and fins and makes them all ready for the first bath in pure running water. 
  • 1911  Near by squats the Iron Chink like a bony goblin on his bent steel legs, with teeth of gears and universal joints and shafts and clutches and wires for elbows and arms and hands and tendons. This steel troglodyte achieves the labor of twenty flesh and blood "Chinks." A real rice-eating Chinaman feeds the Iron Chink with fish. The giant seizes the fish, guillotines it, slices off the fins, and eviscerates it, spraying it with water jets as he whirls it in his iron fingers. 
  • 1913  In the salmon canneries the introduction of a machine called the "Iron Chink", for cleaning and cutting the fish has made a great economy in the cost of labor.
  • 1926  . . . garnering the silver harvest of the sea for the insatiable maws of the "Iron Chinks" at the Sliam cannery.
  • 1957  We'll close up the mouth of the Harbour, and stock it with salmon, we could get them nice and fat in short order, as they would not be able to waste their energy chasing up and down the coast to conventions and such, and instead of netting them we would train them to swim to our cannery, right up to the Iron Chink. We could thus cut the cycle in half and get twice as many fish. 
  • 1963  [Advert] Fishing company requires qualified iron chink operator. Also filling machine operator. Apply to Box 1617, Sun, for interview.
  • 1986  At your feet you can see the 'iron chink', a piece of machinery used to gut salmon, which replaced many Chinese workers in the salmon canning industry. 
  • 1990  Whites generally held the management, accounting and technical positions at North Pacific and all other West Coast canneries. The Indians held cannery jobs and were fishermen. Japanese men built boats and fished while their wives worked in the plant. In the early years, Chinese men butchered fish and also cut and soldered cans by hand prior to the start of the season. When a machine eventually took over their butchering duties, it was nicknamed the Iron Chink. 
  • 2013  Harwood says the show itself is pretty spectacular, too. "We've got some really amazing stilt work. There's this amazing martial arts fight that happens with one character on stilts who represents the Iron Chink, which was a machine that was introduced that put a huge number of Chinese butchers out of work and it was called the Iron Chink. [...]"