Whereas in the recognition of this prin- | Hayes. The treaty of 1881 extorted from ciple this Government has freely received unwilling China her consent that we might emigrants from all nations, and invested regulate, limit, or suspend the coming of them with the rights of citizenship. Chinese laborers into this country- a consent of which it is proposed by this bill to take advantage. This is entitled "A bill to enforce treaty stipulations with China." "It seems necessary in discussing the statute briefly to review the history of the treaty. First let me say that the title of this bill is deceptive. There is no stipulation of the treaty which the bill enforces. (C This is a re-enactment, in part, of the statute of 1868, of which Mr. Conness, then a California Senator, of Irish birth, was, if not the author, the chief advocate. The California Senator called up the bill day after day. The bill originally provided that the President might order the arrest and detention in custody of any subject or citizen of such foreign government" as should arrest and detain The bill where it is not inconsistent with any naturalized citizen of the United the compact only avails itself of a priviStates under the claim that he still re-lege which that concedes. China only remained subject to his allegiance to his na-laxed the Burlingame treaty so far as to tive sovereign. This gave rise to debate. permit us to regulate, limit, or suspend But there was no controversy about the the coming or residence' of Chinese lapart of the bill which I have read. The borers, 'but not absolutely to prohibit it.' preamble is as follows: The treaty expressly declares such limitation or suspension shall be reasonable.' But here is proposed a statute which for twenty years, under the severest penalties, absolutely inhibits the coming of Chinese laborers to this country. The treaty pledges us not absolutely to prohibit it. The bill is intended absolutely to prohibit it. Whereas the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for the protection of which the Government of the United States was established; and whereas in the recognition of this principle this Government has freely received emigrants from all nations and vested them with the rights of citizenship, &c. G 'The second article of the treaty is this: "Chinese subjects, whether proceeding to the United States as traders, students, or merchants, or from curiosity, together with their body and household servants, and Mr. Howard declares that Mr. Morton says: The absolute right of expatriation is the Chinese laborers, who are now in the Unigreat leading American principle. ted States, shall be allowed to go and come of their own free will and accord, and shall be accorded all the rights, privileges, immunities, and exemptions which are accorded to the citizens and subjects of the most favored nations. 66 That a man's right to withdraw from his native country and make his home in another, and thus cut himself off from all connection with his native country, is a part of his natural liberty, and without 'Yet it is difficult to believe that the comthat his liberty is defective. We claim plex and cumbrous passport system prothat the right to liberty is a natural, in-vided in the last twelve sections of the bill herent, God-given right, and his liberty is was not intended as an evasion of this imperfect unless it carries with it the right agreement. Upon what other nation, faof expatriation. vored or not, is such a burden imposed? This is the execution of a promise that they may come and go of their own free will.' The bill containing the preamble above recited passed the Senate by a vote of 39 to 5. The United States of America and the Emperor of China cordially recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from the one country to the other for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents. "The bill which passed Congress two years ago and was vetoed by President Hayes, the treaty of 1881, and the bill now before the Senate, have the same origin and are parts of the same measure. Two years ago it was proposed to exclude Chinese laborers from our borders, in express Alabama.. disregard of our solemn treaty obligations. Alaska....... This measure was arrested by President Arizona. "What has happened within thirteen years that the great Republic should strike its flag? What change has come over us that we should eat the bravest and the truest words we ever spoke? From 1858 to 1880 there was added to the population of the country 42,000 Chinese. (6 'I give a table from the census of 1880 showing the Chinese population of each State : Statement showing the Chinese population in each State and Territory, according to the United States censuses of 1870 and of 1880. Indiana.... Iowa.... Kansas. Kentucky. Maine... Michigan.. Montana.. Nevada...... New Jersey... New Mexico.. New York........... Oregon.... Pennsylvania. Rhode Island.. South Carolina... Tennessee Texas. Utah... Vermont. Virginia.. 1871........ 1872.... 1873.... 98 49,310 7 2 3 1 4,274 1 3 1 71 1 Total....... 15,406 Grand Total......................... 123,745 9 5 "See also, Mr. President, how this class 237 of immigrants, diminishing in itself, di27 minishes still more in its proportion to the 53 rapidly increasing numbers who come 52 from other lands. Against 22,943 Asiatic 94 immigrants in 1876, there are but 5,802 in 1,764 1880. In 1878 there were 9,014 from Asia, 18 in a total of 153,207, or one in seventeen 5,420 of the entire immigration; and this in14 cludes all persons who entered the port of 176 San Francisco to go to any South American 55 country. In 1879 there were 9,604 from 924 China in a total of 250,565, or one in twenty-six. In 1880 there were 5,802 from 114 China in a total immigration of 593,359, or 9,513 one in one hundred and two. The whole 160 Chinese population, then, when the cen27 sus of 1880 was taken, was but one in five 9 hundred of our people. The whole Chinese 26 immigration was but one in one hundred 141 and two of the total immigration; while 501 the total annual immigration quadrupled from 1878 to 1880, the Chinese was in 6 1880 little more than one-half what it was 3,182 in 1878, and one-fourth what it was in 1876. 14 The number of immigrants of all 16 nations was 720,045 in 1881. Of these 914 20,711 were Chinese. There is no record in the Bureau of Statistics of the number who departed within the year. But a very high anti-Chinese authority places it above hostile legislation under the treaty would the that the not affect persons who entered before it Total...... 143 63,254 105,463 By the census of 1880 the number of Chinese in this country was 105,000-one five-hundredth part of the whole population. The Chinese are the most easily took effect stimulated somewhat their governed race in the world. Yet every coming. But the addition to the Chinese Chinaman in America has four hundred and ninety-nine Americans to control him. population was less than one seventyde-second of the whole immigration. All the population of its sixteenth city. All the Chinese in the country do not exceed the Chinese in California hardly surpass the number which is easily governed in Shanghai by a police of one hundred men. wandering about the country as there are There are as many pure blooded Gypsies. Chinese in California. What an insult to American intelligence to ask leave of 7.236 China to keep out her people, because 7,825 this little handful of almond-eyed Asiatics ..20,326 threaten to destroy our boasted civiliza The immigration was also constantly creasing for the last half of the decade. The Bureau of Statistics gives the numbers as follows, (for the first eight years the figures are those of the entire Asiatic immigration :) The number of immigrants from Asia, as reported by the United States Bureau of Statistics is as follows, namely: 2 97 2 16 3 1,949 3,152 15 29 1 3,330 1 25 415 134 | 1874..... 75,025 | 1875 610 1876.. 4 234 Total........ 108,339 And from China for the year ended .22,943 .10,640 9,014 tion. We go boasting of our democracy, | oracle, and through it, and in despite of it, and our superiority, and our strength. The for a time the master of Europe Forty years ago-not a longer period than the children of Israel were wandering. in the desert-the two most dishonored races in Europe were the Attic and the Hebrew. The world has probably by this. discovered that it is impossible to destroy flag bears the stars of hope to all nations. A hundred thousand Chinese land in California and everything is changed. God has not made of one blood all the nations any longer. The self-evident truth becomes a self-evident lie. The golden rule does not apply to the natives of the con- the Jews. The attempt to extirpate them tinent where it was first uttered. The has been made under the most favorable United Stites surrender to China, the Re- | auspices and on the largest scale; the most public to the despot, America to Asia, Jesus considerable means that man could comto Joss. mand have been pertinaciously applied to. this object for the longest period of recorded time. Egyptian Pharaohs, Assyrian. kings, Roman emperors, Scandinavian crusaders, Gothic princes, and holy inqui-. sitors, have alike devoted their energies to the fulfillment of this common purpose. Expatriation, exile, captivity, confiscation,. torture on the most ingenious and massacre on the most extensive scale, a curious. system of degrading customs and debasing laws which would have broken the heart of any other people, have been tried, and in vain. "There is another most remarkable example of this prejudice of race which has happily almost died out here, which has come down from the dark ages and which survives with unabated ferocity in Eastern Europe. I mean the hatred of the Jew. The persecution of the Hebrew has never, so far as I know, taken the form of an affront to labor. In every other particular the reproaches which for ten centuries have been leveled at him are reproduced to do service against the Chinese. The Hebrew, so it was said, was not a Christian. He did not affiliate or assimilate into the nations where he dwelt. He was an unclean thing, a dog, to whom the crime of the crucifixion of his Saviour was never to be forgiven. The Chinese quarter of San Francisco had its type in every city of Europe. If the Jew ventured from his hiding-place he was stoned. His wealth made him the prey of the rapacity of the noble, and his poverty and weakness the victim of the rabble. Yet how has this Oriental conquered Christendom by the sublimity of his patience? The great poet of New England, who sits by every American fireside a beloved and perpetual guest, in that masterpiece of his art, the Jewish Cemetery at Newport, has described the degradation and the triumph of these per-ple. secuted children of God. "Lord Beaconsfield admits that the Jews. contribute more than their proportion tɔ the aggregate of the vile; that the lowest. class of Jews are obdurate, malignant,. odious, and revolting. And yet this race: of dogs, as it has been often termed in scorn, furnishes Europe to-day its masters in finance and oratory and statesmanship. and art and music. Rachel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Disraeli, Rothschild, Benjamin, Heine, are but samples of the intellectual power of a race which to-day controls tho finance and the press of Europe. 66 I do not controvert the evidence which is relied upon to show that there are great. abuses, great dangers, great offenses, which have grown out of the coming of this peoMuch of the evil I believe might be cured by State and municipal authority. Congress may rightfully be called upon to. go to the limit of the just exercise of the powers of government in rendering its aid. "We should have capable and vigilant consular officers in the Asiatic ports from which these immigrants come, without whose certificate they should not be received on board ship, and who should see to it that no person except those of good character and no person whose labor is not his own property be allowed to come over. Especially should the trade in human labor under all disguises be suppressed. Filthy habits of living must surely be within the control of municipal regulation.. Every State may by legislation or by municipal ordinance in its towns and cities prescribe the dimension of dwellings and limit the number who may occupy the same tenement. "But it is urged-and this in my judg ment is the greatest argument for the bill 6. that the introduction of the labor of the | Senate by reading the abundant testimony, Chinese reduces the wages of the American of which this is but the sample, of the poslaborer. 'We are ruined by Chinese cheap session by the people of this race of the labor" is a cry not limited to the class to possibility of a development of every quawhose representative the brilliant humor- lity of intellect, art, character, which fits ist of California first ascribed it. I am not them for citizenship, for republicanism, for in favor of lowering any where the wages Christianity. of any American labor, skilled or unskilled. Humanity, capable of infinite depths On the contrary, I believe the maintenance of degradation, is capable also of infinite and the increase of the purchasing power heights of excellence. The Chinese, like of the wages of the American working man all other races, has given us its examples should be the one principal object of our of both. To rescue humanity from this legislation. The share in the product of degradation is, we are taught to believe, the agriculture or manufacture which goes to great object of God's moral government on labor should, and I believe will, steadily earth. It is not by injustice, exclusion, increase. For that, and for that only, ex- caste, but by reverence for the individual ists our protective system. The acquisition soul that we can aid in this consummation. of wealth, national or individual, is to be It is not by Chinese policies that China is desired only for that. The statement of to be civilized. I believe that the immorthe accomplished Senator from California tal truths of the Declaration of Indepenon this point meets my heartiest concur-dence came from the same source with the rence. I have no sympathy with any men, Golden Rule and the Sermon on the if such there be, who favor high protection Mount. We can trust Him who promuland cheap labor. gated these laws to keep the country safe But I believe that the Chinese, to whom that obeys them. The laws of the universe the terms of the California Senator attri- have their own sanction. They will not bute skill enough to displace the American fail. The power that causes the compass in every field requiring intellectual vigor, to point to the north, that dismisses the will learn very soon to insist on his full star on its pathway through the skies, proshare of the product of his work. But whe-mising that in a thousand years it shall rether that be true or not, the wealth he cre- turn again true to its hour and keep His ates will make better and not worse the con- word, will vindicate His own moral law. dition of every higher class of labor. There As surely as the path on which our fathers may be trouble or failure in adjusting new entered a hundred years ago led to safety, relations. But sooner or later every new to strength, to glory, so surely will the class of industrious and productive labor- path on which we now propose to enter ers elevates the class it displaces. The bring us to shame, to weakness, and to dread of an injury to our labor from the | peril." Chinese rests on the same fallacy that opOn the 3d of March the debate was reposed the introduction of labor-saving ma-newed. Senator Farley protested that unchinery, and which opposed the coming of less Chinese immigration is prohibited it the Irishman and the German and the will be impossible to protect the Chinese Swede. Within my memory in New Eng-on the Pacific coast. The feeling against land all the lower places in factories, all them now is such that restraint is difficult, places of domestic service, were filled by as the people, forced out of employment by the sons and daughters of American farm-them, and irritated by their constantly iners. The Irishmen came over to take their creasing numbers, are not in a condition to places; but the American farmer's son and submit to the deprivations they suffer by daughter did not suffer; they were only the presence of a Chinese population imelevated to a higher plane. In the in- ported as slaves and absorbing to their own creased wealth of the community their benefit the labor of the country. A remark share is much greater. The Irishman rose of Mr. Farley about the Chinese led Mr. from the bog or the hovel of his native land Hoar to ask if they were not the inventors to the comfort of a New England home, of the printing press and of gunpowder. and placed his children in a New England To this question Mr. Jones, of Nevada, school. The Yankee rises from the loom made a brief speech, which was considered and the spinning-jenny to be the teacher, remarkable, principally because it was one the skilled laborer in the machine shop, the of the very few speeches of any length that inventor, the merchant, or the opulent he has made since he became a Senator. landholder and farmer of the West. Instead of agreeing with Mr. Hoar that the Chinese had invented the printing press and gunpowder, he said that information he had received led him to believe that the Chinese were not entitled to the credit of either of these inventions. On the contrary, they had stolen them from Aryans or Caucasians who wandered into the king * * * * * * * A letter from F. A. Bee, Chinese Consul, approving the management of the estate, accompanied the report of the referee: "Mr. President, I will not detain the dom. Mr. Hoar smiled incredulously and made a remark to the effect that he had never heard of those Aryans or Caucasians before. Pairs were announced between Davis, of West Virginia, Saulsbury, Butler, Johnson, Kellogg, Jones, of Florida, and Grover, against the amendment, and Messrs. Windom, Ferry, Hawley, Platt, Pugh, Rollins and Van Wyck in the affirmative. Mr. Camden was also paired. Continuing his remarks, Mr. Farley ex- Nays--Messrs. Bayard, Beck, Call, Camepressed his belief that should the Mongo-ron of Wisconsin, Coke, Fair, Farley, Garlian population increase and the Chinese land, George, Hale, Hampton, Hill of come in contact with the Africans, the con- Colorado, Jonas, Jones of Nevada, Mctact would result in demoralization and Pherson, Marcy, Miller of California, Milbloodshed which the laws could not pre- ler of New York, Morgan, Ransom, Slater, vent. Pig-tailed Chinamen would take the Vest and Walker-23. place everywhere of the working girl unless Congress extended its protection to California and her white people, who had by their votes demanded a prohibition of Chinese immigration. Mr. Maxey, interpreting the Constitution in such a way as to bring out of it an argument against Chinese immigration, said he found nothing in it to justify the conclusion that the framers of it intended to bring into this country all nations and races. The only people the fathers had in view as citizens were those of the Caucasian race, and they contempla-ple who shall come into it belonged to a ted naturalization only for such, for they Government. This depended upon national had distinctly set forth that the heritage of polity and the fact as to most of the ancient freedom was to be for their posterity. No- republics that they did not possess homobody would pretend to express the opinion geneity was the cause of their fall. As to that it was expected that the American peo- the Swiss Republic, it was untrue that it ple should become mixed up with all sorts was not homogeneous. The difference of races and call the result "our posterity." there was not one of race but of different While the American people had, in conse- varieties of the same race, all of which are quence of their Anglo-Saxon origin, been analogous and consistent with each other. able to withstand the contact with the Af-lt would not be contended that it is an Mr. Edmunds, partially in reply to Mr. Hoar argued that the right to decide what constitutes the moral law was one inherent in the Government, and by analogy the right to regulate the character of the peo rican, the Africans would never stand before the Chinese. Mr. Maxey opposed the Chinese because they do not come here to be citizens, because the lower classes of Chinese alone are immigrants, and because by contact they poison the minds of the less intelligent. Dawes, Edmunds, Frye, Harris, Hoar, Ingalls, Jackson, Lapham, McDill, McMillan, Mitchell, Morrell, Saunders, Sewell, Sherman and Teller-23. Mr. Saulsbury had something to say in favor of the bill, and Mr. Garland, who voted against the last bill because the treaty had not been modified, expressed his belief that the Government could exercise properly all the powers proposed to be bestowed by this bill. Some time was consumed by Mr. Ingalls in advocacy of an amendment offered by him, proposing to limit the suspension of immigration to 10 instead of 20 years. Mr. Miller and Mr. Bayard opposed the amendment, Mr. Bayard taking the ground that Congress ought not to disregard the substantially unanimous wish of the people of California, as expressed at the polls, for absolute prohibition. The debate was interrupted by a motion for an executive session, and the bill went over until Monday, to be taken up then as the unfinished business. On March 6th a vote was ordered on advantage to a republic that its citizens should be made of diverse races, with diverse views and diverse obligations as to what the common prosperity of all required. Therefore there was no foundation for the charge of a violation of moral and public law in our making a distinction as to the foreigners we admit. He challenged Mr. Hoar to produce an authority on national law which denied the right of one nation to declare what people of other nations should come among them. John Hancock and Samuel Adams, not unworthy citizens of Massachusetts, joined in asserting in the Declaration of Independence the right of the colonies to establish for themselves, not for other peoples, a Government of their own, not the Government of some body else. The declaration asserted the family or consolidated right of a people within any Territory to determine the conditions upon which they would go on, anl this included the matter of receiving the people from other shores into their family. This idea was followed in the Constitution by requiring naturalization. The Chinaman may be with us, but he is not of us. One of the conditions of his naturalization is that he must be friendly to the institutions and intrinsic polity of our Government. Upon the theory of the Massachusetts Senators, that there is a universal oneness of one human being with every |