

CONGRESS. (CHINESE EXCLUSION.) 



187 



sail on the great seas are not going to get into 

 this country. We have made stringent provi- 

 sions that they shall not come in. But the bill 

 as drawn, as submitted to the committee, con- 

 tains this provision, that no ship carrying the 

 American flag, no ship admitted to American 

 registry, shall employ on it any Chinese. We 

 struck out this provision, because, as the com- 

 mittee can see, it was no more needed for the 

 protection of American laboring men living in 

 America, and it has no more to do with them 

 than it has with British laboring men living in 

 England, not one bit." 



Mr. Clark, of Missouri, advocated the more 

 stringent policy. He said: 



" When we annexed the Sandwich Islands we 

 took twenty-odd thousand Chinese. When we 

 acquired the Philippines we took in a number of 

 Chinese variously stated at from 200,000 to 

 1,750,000. Consequently, for the first time, the 

 Congress is confronted with the exceedingly diffi- 

 cult proposition of holding our newly acquired 

 provinces, colonies, or insular possessions 

 whichever or whatever you please to call them 

 and at the same time excluding from our main- 

 land the denizens of those same provinces, col- 

 onies, or insular possessions. 



" Verily, verily, we have troubles of our own 

 lots of them. Not having enough on hand prior 

 to the Spanish War to suit our taste, like the 

 Knight of La Mancha, we went forth in quest 

 of ventures to the uttermost ends of the earth, 

 even to far Cathay, and we accumulated troubles 

 enough, not only to last us during our natural 

 lives, but to harass our posterity to the remotest 

 generation, unless we possess the courage, the 

 resolution, the wisdom, and the patriotism to 

 unload them and thereby end them. Without 

 being a prophet, or the son of a prophet, I make 

 bold to predict that should the Supreme Court 

 of the United States decide as many think it 

 will decide that the citizens or subjects of 

 Spain, resident in the islands we annexed, became 

 when annexed ipso facto citizens of the United 

 States, the people of this country will speedily 

 find a way to rid themselves of that huge in- 

 cubus; because it can not be that in their sober 

 senses Americans will deliberately determine to 

 subject American laborers to death-dealing com- 

 petition with the cheap labor of the Orient. 



" The truth is that it is high time the laborers 

 of this country were waking up to the fact that 

 their one escape, not only from competition with 

 European cheap labor, but from unrestricted com- 

 petition with the cheaper labor of Asia, is for 

 us to at once and forever cut loose from the 

 Philippine Islands. It is their only salvation. 

 Suppose the Supreme Court of the United States 

 decides that the subjects of Spain residing in the 

 islands we annexed became American citizens by 

 the act of annexation, then what? The probabil- 

 ities in the case are that the Supreme Court will 

 decide that Congress has no power to restrict the 

 Iree locomotion of an American citizen into any 

 iart of the territory over which the Stars and 

 Stripes float, and the laborers of the country, for 

 t-hose benefit this bill is made, might just as well 

 rake up now as later on to the realization of the 

 fact that the whole tendency of this latter-day 

 annexation is to bring them into ruinous compe- 

 tition with the cheap labor of Europe and the 

 "leaper labor of Asia. There is no sense in lock- 

 ag the barn after the horse is gone. The quicker 

 re get rid of the Philippines the better off the 

 iborers will be; the better off we will all be. 

 " If we do not speedily unload these accursed 

 lands, the day is not far distant when all of us, 



especially the laborers of the land, will in agony 

 of soul exclaim : ' Who will deliver us from th'e 

 body of this death?' Should it be decided that 

 the free locomotion of the inhabitants of the 

 Philippines can not be restrained, the yellow flood 

 will pour in and utterly submerge the laborers of 

 America. Our retention of the Philippines means 

 a reduction of wages to the Asiatic level. That 

 is one of the main reasons why I was opposed to 

 acquiring them and why I am dead against keep- 

 ing them. 



" That the longer we keep them the harder it 

 will be to get rid of them is a proposition too 

 plain to be argued. 



" Let no man hug to his breast the delusion 

 that Asiatics can work only as unskilled labor- 

 ers, for the evidence in the case flatly contradicts 

 that theory. They have the imitative faculty 

 largely developed and soon learn to do anything 

 they see done. Consequently they will not only 

 compete with unskilled laborers but also with 

 those of all degrees of skill, even unto the 

 highest. 



" The cry once rang along the Pacific coast, 

 ' The Chinese must go ! ' Some day the laborers 

 of America in self-defense w T ill raise the cry, 

 ' The Philippines must go ! ' 



" The Committee on Foreign Affairs has been 

 wrestling with these brain-racking problems for 

 two months. 



" We have listened patiently to a vast array 

 of witnesses ex-Cabinet ministers, ex-ambassa- 

 dors, ex-governors, ex-Senators, great lawyers, 

 great editors, congressmen, the head of the Feder- 

 ation of Labor and the heads of other labor or- 

 ganizations, representatives of our sailors, the 

 commissioners of the State of California, repre- 

 sentatives of great commercial bodies and of 

 great lines of transportation, ministers of the 

 Gospel, the Commissioner-General of Immigra- 

 tion and other Treasury officials male and fe- 

 male, great and small until their evidence con- 

 stitutes a large, instructive, and decidedly inter- 

 esting volume. 



" To no question was there ever given a more 

 patient, a more thorough, or a more conscien- 

 tious investigation. I say this gladly as to the 

 entire committee. 



" We agree that Chinese laborers on land 

 should be excluded; we differ somewhat as to 

 how best to accomplish that end. 



" The majority refuse to apply the exclusion 

 principle to Chinese seamen, while the Demo- 

 cratic minority desire to make the exclusion 

 apply both by land and sea. 



" Upon these differences we ask the judgment 

 of the House. 



" The report of the minority, among other 

 things, says: 



" ' The question of Chinese exclusion is largely 

 a racial question and largely a labor question. 



" ' Because our Pacific coast is the chief place 

 of entrance of Chinese into our country, because 

 a vast majority of Chinese immigrants settle on 

 the Pacific coast, and because American citizens 

 resident on the Pacific coast having had more 

 experience with Chinese than the rest of our 

 people, they understand the Chinese character 

 better and are better fitted to know what legis- 

 lation is necessary to solve the numerous and 

 difficult problems connected with Chinese immi- 

 gration.' 



" Individually, I go further and say that the 

 Chinese question is the race question of the Pa- 

 cific coast. There is no use dodging it. The 

 Chinese problem is to the Pacific coast what the 

 negro problem is to the Southern States, except 



