On February 21, 1885, Mayor Weisbach called a mass meeting at the Alpha Opera House to discuss methods of expelling the Chinese population of Tacoma. Roughly 900 of Tacoma's 6,936 total citizens came to the meeting. The crowd was mostly male and white, and the crowd represented nearly half of the town's electorate. A former alderman, J. E. Burns, suggested passing sanitation laws to enable the city to evict Chinese residents and burn down Chinese homes. Reverend J. A. Ward suggested that white property owners cease selling and leasing property to the Chinese community. Weisbach roused the crowd with a closing speech, stating: "If the people are in earnest, if they are Free Americans in fact they will not yield up their homes and business to the filthy horde." The crowd adopted a resolution to exclude Chinese people from Tacoma and discourage citizens from employing any Chinese people. The resolution stipulated that any citizen who did not boycott Chinese employment would have their name published.