RESTRICTING CHINESE IMMIGRATION.

All Legislation to that end has been Secured by the Democratic Party.

Not only the Pacific coast, but our entire country is vitally interested in the subject of Chinese immigration, and the most casual examination of the Congressionai Record will show that our toilers owe all the beneficial legislation that has been had upon this subject to the Democratic party, and while many Republican converts have been made of late years, their change of heart is due to the persistent work accomplished under Democratic leadership.

The efforts to restrict Chinese immigration as far as Congress is concerned began December 6, 1869. Upon that date Senator Williams of Oregon introduced a bill to regulate immigration and to prevent importation of coolie labor. This bill was indefinitely postponed upon motion of Senator Zach. Chandler, a Republican.

In January, 1870, Representative Johnson (California) introduced a joint resolution to restrict this immigration, but the Republican committee refused to report it.

On June 6, 1870, Senator Stewart of Neva a introduced a bill to prohibit contracts for servile labor. Also defeated.

On June 7, Representative Sargent (California) introduced a similar bill in the House. No report was made.

On July 7, 1870, Representative Mungen (Ohio) introduced a resolution for the protection of American labor against Chinese. This was killed in committee.

On July 9, 1870, Representative Cake (Pennsylvania) introduced a resolution against the importation of Chinese coolies and directing an investigation. This bill also failed in committee.

On December 18, 1871, Representative Coughlan (California) introduced a bill to prohibit contracts for servile labor, which was referred to the Judiciary Committee. This committee was discharged from further consideration and the bill referred to another committee, which reported a substitute never considered.

On April 30, 1872, Senator Casserly (California) introduced a bill to prohibit contracts for servile labor, which also died in committee.

In 1879, Mr. Willis, our present Minister to the Hawaiian Islands, reported to the House a restriction bill. He took strong grounds against Chinese immigration. He concluded his statement in these words: "No self-governing country can afford to diminish or destroy the dignity, welfare and independence of its citizens. Justice to the people of the Pacific coast, the dictates of common humanity and benevolence, as well as the plainest suggestions of practical statesmanship, all demand that the problem of Chinese immigration shall be solved while it is yet within the legislative control. Governed by these views, your committee present and recommend the passage of the bill accompanying this report."

When this measure was adopted, Mr. Garfield (afterwards President) proposed an amendment to prevent the bill from going into effect until the Chinese Empire was apprised of the termination of the then treaty. The amendment being declared out of order, the bill was ordered to engrossment and a third reading. On its passage under a call from the yeas and nays, Mr. Garfield failed to vote, and the measure was passed by 155 yeas to 72 nays. (Record, Forty-fifth Congress, third session, p. 801.) Of the affirmative votes 104 were Democratic and 51 Republican. Those voting in the negative were 56 Republicans and 16 Democrats.

The Senate considered and passed the bill on the 15th of February. In that body 22 Democrats and 19 Republicans and 1 Independent voted in the affirmative, and 20 Republicans and 8 Democrats in the negative.

The Senate made certain amendments, and when the bill was reported back to the House, Mr. Willis moved that the bill be taken up and that the House concur in the Senate amendments.

Mr. Garfield called for separate votes on each amendment. The motion was made to lay the bill and amendments on the table. This vote was lost by 95 yeas to 140 nays, Mr. Garfield voting yea.

The measure was vetoed by President Hayes, and failed to pass over the vetothe House vote being, yeas, 110, nays, 96. As prominent a Republican as General Garfield lead the negatives. (Record, Forty-fifth Congress, third session, p. 2277.) Of the 110 members who voted to pass the measure over the veto were 88 Democrats and 22 Republicans. The negative vote was composed thus: Republicans 81, Democrats 15.

In September, 1880, a new treaty was negotiated by which the United States were given the right to restrict immigration, and in 1882 a bill su pending immigration of Chinese laborers for the period of twenty years passed the House by a vote of 167 to 66. This vote was divided as follows: Yeas, Democrats 98; Greenbackers 8; Republicans 61. Nays, Republicans 62; Democrats 4; total, 66. In the Senate: Yeas, Democrats 31; Republicans 6; total, 37. Nays, Democrats none; Republicans 28; Independent 1; total, 29. This bill was vetoed by a Republican President, and upon the question of passing it over his veto the Senators voted just as they did upon the original question. This, of course, defeated it. Thereupon a new bill in which the term of exclusion was limited to ten years and which was really the first positive exclusion act, was passed. Upon this measure the vote in the House was, yeas: Democrats, 103; Republicans, 91; Greenbackers, 7; total, 201. Nays: Republicans, 34; Democrats, 3; total, 37. In the Senate, yeas: Democrats, 31; Republicans, 9; total, 40. Nays: Republicans, 24; Democrats, none; Independent, 1; total, 25.

This measure is known as the act of May 6, 1882.

Afterwards the Federal judges in California held that Chinamen who were subjects of countries other than China were not within the restrictions of this law, and thereupon another act of July 5, 1884, was passed, for the purpose of remedying the defect. The vote upon the act of 1884 in the House was as follows: Yeas, 184; nays, 13. The nays were all Republican.

The bill was reported favorably by the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the House by a strict party vote, and the record show that every voice raised against it, as well as every vote, was Republican. Its fate in the Senate was exceedingly dubious until the pressure of campaign necessities forced it through.

When the act of 1884 was under consideration, ex-President Harrison, who was

then a member of the Senate, failed to record himself, but he voted against the act of 1882 and also voted to strike out the section which prohibited naturalization of the Chinese. (See record of the Senate of April 28th, 1882.)

It will thus be seen that three Republ can Presidents, viz: Hayes, Garfield, and Harrison, did not sympathize with the efforts made by the Democratic party to exclude Chinese coolie competition, and the same was true of President Arthur. The following declaration of two very eminent Republicans tend clearly in the same direction.

Senator Oliver P. Morton, who investigated the Chinese question by persona inspection in California, presented a report to the body of which he was a member, entitled: Senate Mi. Doc. No. 20, 2d session, 44th Congress. Among other things he said: "But before entering upon the discussion of any other principle, I may be permitted to observe that in my judgment the Chinese cannot be protected in the Pacific States while remaining in their alien condition. Without representation in the legislature or Congress, without a voice in the selection of officers, and surrounded by fierce, and in many respects, unscrupulous enemies, the law will be found insufficient to screen them from persecution. Complete protection can be given them only by allowing them to become citizens and acquire the right of suffrage, when their votes would become important in elections and their persecutions in great part converted into kindly solicitation."

Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, in a speech delivered in the Senate March 1, 1882, c'eclared that the Chinamen who obey the law was entitled "to go every where on the surface of the earth that his welfare may require." He further asserted that "this privilege is beyond the rightful control of government." His Demo ratic colleagues ably and completely refuted this argument.

The following views of the leading San Francisco Republican papers further illustrate this position :

(San Francisco Call, April 10, 1882.)

Notwithstanding that most of the Republican Senators, except those who represent the States of the Pacific, opposed the passage of the anti-Chinese bill, which President Arthur vetoed, there is a studied effort to deceive our people by saying that Democratic Congressmen are trying to defeat the passage of another anti-Chinese bill. We have reason to believe there is not a word of truth in it, for did not nearly all the Democratic Senators and Representatives in Congress do their utmost to pass the bill which the President, instigated by his stalwart friends, vetoed?

(Sant Francisco Call, April 5, 1882.)

The recent exercise of the veto power by President Arthur in reference to the Chinese bill, is, perhaps, the most arbitrary act an American President has ever performed. The message is worse for the President and his party than if he had based it on an excessive term of prohibition. It is a flat contradiction of the platform on which he was elected, and raises the question whether the anti-Chinese plank in the Republican platform was not a deliberate deceit practiced on the people of this Coast.

(San Francisco Bulletin, April 3, 1882.)

The opposition exhibited to the Chinese by these facts has been extending instead of decreasing. It is, in short, the development of a great labor question,

which no public man can face and continue in or enter public life. It has already been formulated as pro tection to American labor, which is just as necessary as protection to American manufactures.

(San Francisco Bulletin, March 30, 1882.)

This state is to be saved by wise limits to Chinese immigration or it is to be hopelessly cursed by immigration which is irredeemable and outside of all future improvement. The journals and the politicians who prefer the latter alternative are not the friends of this country, and no argument of their assumed philanthropy can make them such. The forces and the influences which are at work to-day in favor of unrestricted Chinese immigration are hostile to the Pacific Coast and to the best interests of the whole country. He who is not with us is against us. Hostility to the proposed measure is hostility to the prosperity of the Pacific States.

(San Francisco Call, February 9, 1882.)

We fear that it is not quite so certain that a bill restricting Chinese immigration will be passed during the present session of Congress, as some of our contemporaries seem to anticipate. Certain it is that Republicans alone cannot pass it, for they have not a majority in both houses of Congress, and it is also known that some Republicans will oppose any and all bills. No bill can possibly pass Congress unless it be approved by a majority of the Democratic members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Of this our citizens may be assured; but as the Democratic party is proverbially the friend of labor, there cannot be any doubt that they will favor the passage of such a bill as will relieve this coast of its present troubles.

(San Francisco Bulletin, April 29, 1882.)

The bill for the exclusion of the Chinese passed the Senate yesterday by a vote of 32 to 15-22 Democrats, 9 Republicans, and David Davis, president pro tem., voting for it. All the Democratic Senators from the West and those from the South voted for the bill. Ingalls, of Kansas, was inclined to assist us, but the missi ɔnary sniveling was probably too much for him, and he voted against the bill. Of the 15 votes in the negative 11 were furnished by New England-all its Senators but This indicates that the area of Chinamania is confined principally to that section, with a queer extension in the direction of Georgia. This area is also that which is devoted to the manufacture of cottons for the Chinese trades. The other

one.

four negatives were:

Harrison, of Indiana;

Ingalls, of Kansas;
Lapham, of New York;

Sherman, of Ohio.

The bill which went through the Senate, was passed by the House by the enormous vote of 201 to 37, 6 more than two-thirds of the whole body. Of the 201, 107 were Democrats and 94 Republicans. We will have the law on our side to stop the yellow tide, and the people of California will see that the law is executed. No technicalities, evasions, or loop-holes will be tolerated on this coast.

(San Francisco Bulletin, March 10, 1882.)

The bill suspending Chinese immigration passed the Senate yesterday.

The great body of the negatives were Republicans. It is proper to state that two of them-Edmunds and Ingalls—would have voted for the bill if the term of suspen

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gion had been reduced to ten years. The only real Democratic vote in the negative— for Davis, of Illinois, is an unknown political quantity-was Brown, of Georgia. It is quite apparent from the above vote that if the Republicans in the House cannot be rallied to the support of the measure more generally than in the higher chamber, there is some danger of the failure of the bill. Only a fifth of the Republican Senators voted against it. If these proportions are maintained in the House, the shave by which the bill is likely to pass will be very slight, unless, indeed, broader views are more generally accepted there.

(San Francisco Call, March 10, 1882.)

The anti-Chinese bill has passed the Senate by a majority of nearly two to one of the Senators voting-29 to 15. It is a matter for congratulation that but fifteen Senators were willing to place themselves on recorl in opposition to the right of government to regulate immigration. The position taken by the opponents of the bill would have required us to sit quietly down and let foreign hordes crowd into our country without regard to their fitness to share with us the responsibilities of government.

On March 16th, 1888, President Cleveland sent to the Senate for consideration a treaty by the terms of which Chinese laborers were to be excluded for a term of twenty years. The Senate made two amendments of an immaterial character, but the Chinese Government refused to ratify the treaty as amended. Thereupon the act of October 1, 1888, was passed. This statute was known as the Scott exclusion act, and excluded all Chinese laborers not then in the United States. Mr. Cleveland, in approving this statute, sent a very clear and succinct statement to Congress demonstrating that the cause of the conduct of the Chinese government in refusing to act upon the treaty submitted it was neces ary to affirmatively legislate to the end that this country might be protected from Mongolian competition. Mr. Cleveland thus demonstrated that he cordially sympathized with the efforts of the people of the Pacific coast to protect themselves from the threatened danger. The act of 1888 was essentially a Democratic measure.

On May 5, 1892, the Geary law was approved. This also proceeded from a Democratic source and was pushed by Democratic effort. Under its provisions all Chinese laborers within the United States and entitled to remain, are required to register and procure a certificate of registration from the proper officer of the United States. This act was designed to make it practically impossible for Chinese laborers who unlawfully entered the United States after the expiration of the time for registration to remain therein. Not having a certificate their identification is easy. The Chinese in California contested the validity of this statute, but the Supreme Court of the United States, by a divided bench, declared it valid. The time for registration having expired the act of November 3, 1893, was passed, extending the registration privilege six months. This statute contains a valuable though stringent addition to earlier legislation. It requires that the certificates of residence to be issued thereunder must contain the photograph of the applicant, together with his name, local residence and occupation, and that a copy of such certificate with a duplicate of the photograph must be filed in the office of the local collector of internal revenue, and that such photographs and duplicate shall be furnished by each applicant in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury. This statute was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President.