English: In 1902, machines called "Iron Chinks" started replacing the largely Chinese cannery workers who butchered and canned the fish. The use of a racial slur in the machine's name is one example of the discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants to the US. The name continued to be used into the mid-20th century. Today they are called butchering machines or iron butchers.

This machine slit the fish open, cut off the fins, and removed the guts. With the machine, workers could process fish 50 to 75 percent faster than they could by hand. At the same time, this invention put many Chinese laborers out of work.

In this photo, three Chinese men work at an "Iron Chink" salmon butchering machine at the Pacific American Fisheries cannery in the Fairhaven district of Bellingham. The photo was taken by Asahel Curtis in 1905.

Additional information included inside the large print enclosure: newspaper clipping with the caption "A Chinese cannery worker at the P.A.F. Cannery in Bellingham prepares to put a salmon onto the "Iron Chink," a machine that removed the head, fins, and tail of a fish and eviscerated the innards. The advent of the machine meant the eventual disappearance of Chinese workers in local canneries. This 1905 photo details just one of the industries that helped the Bellingham area grow.