The Chinese Must Go
Page 7
buke, but this rhe toric targeting white employers landed Kearney in jail on
charges of incendiary language.
His arrest did not silence him and neither did mockery of his character
and tactics by East Coast newspapers. While in jail, Kearney wrote to the
local newspapers and to President Rutherford Hayes demanding the expul-
sion of all Chinese. When Kearney was acquitted, he helped lead a Thanks-
giving Day anti- Chinese parade with over ten thousand men through the
streets of San Francisco. Not satisfied with local agitation, Kearney traveled
to Chicago, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.78 Touring the country
with an antimonopolist and anti- Chinese message, Kearney made famous
the rallying cry, “The Chinese Must Go!”79
East Coast newspapers attempted to dismiss Kearney and his followers
as uneducated Irish rabble, but Kearney decried this underestimation of the
movement. “We don’t meet here as Irish, En glish, Scotch, nor Dutch, nor
are we Catholics, Protestants, Atheists, or Infidels,” he proclaimed to a crowd
in Boston, “Let there be no sect. But we meet here as honest workingmen,
and let your issues be pooled.”80 While the Workingmen’s Party often spoke
in a language of white supremacy, they attempted to knit together all U.S.
citizens (and aspiring citizens) using claims of common nationalism, freedom,
THE CHINESE QUESTION
43
and belonging. Kearney, for example, rallied African American workers in
California to the anti- Chinese cause, helping them form their own (that is,
segregated) anticoolie club.81
In the Pacific Northwest, the anti- Chinese movement paled in compar-
ison to California’s. This was in part because in Oregon and Washington
Territory, white workers had less to fear from Chinese labor competition. In
the 1870s, few Chinese mi grants had found their way north, and the area’s
rapidly developing economy created a surplus of jobs until a national down-
turn in 1883.82 Still, Oregon and Washington Territory newspapers echoed
the anti- Chinese rhe toric pop u lar ized elsewhere and diligently reported on
events in California, including moments of local anti- Chinese agitation
and racial vio lence. At times, Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest,
viewing the Chinese as labor competition or foreign invaders, also struck out
against them.83
West Coast politicians, inspired by state- level regulation of (mostly Irish)
paupers and criminals on the Eastern Seaboard, passed state statutes designed
to curb Chinese migration between 1852 and 1879. To take a single example,
in 1863 Washington Territory passed “An Act to protect free White labor
against competition with Chinese coolie labor, and to discourage the immi-
gration of the Chinese into this territory,” which instituted a quarterly tax
of six dollars on every male and female “Mongolian” in the territory. The
title of the act left little room for doubt about the legislature’s intent. Though
there were only a few hundred Chinese recorded in the territory, the leaders
of Washington still believed the Chinese posed a threat to free white
workers.84 While California, Oregon, and Washington Territory successfully
curtailed Chinese rights and implemented discriminatory taxes, more severe
mea sures often faced judicial scrutiny.85 When drafting a new state consti-
tution in 1879, California delegates passed mea sures to prohibit the employ-
ment of Chinese by corporations, to require that all incorporated cities and
towns move all Chinese outside of their bound aries, to bar aliens ineligible
for citizenship from acquiring business licenses, and to deny those aliens the
right to fish. Quickly found to be in violation of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment, these discriminatory state statutes were struck down.86 As courts de-
lineated the limits of state power, it became clear that federal action would
be necessary to halt Chinese migration.
44 RESTRICTION
Vio lence and the Politics of Restriction
Federal lawmakers, struggling to reconcile visions of the cooperative open
door for China with dreams of a free white republic, found no simple an-
swers to the Chinese Question. Twenty- five years after Chinese mi grants first
arrived on the West Coast, and the cry from anti- Chinese advocates grew,
Congress had yet to act. Historians have shown that an escalating need to
appease the western electorate eventually produced federal legislation re-
garding Chinese in Amer ica. But they have paid little attention to how the
threat of racial vio lence infused these national politics.87 During the 1870s,
anti- Chinese vio lence was local and erratic, but in po liti cal discourse the
threat of vio lence was national and recurrent. The threat of white vio lence
was not the only or even the central argument anti- Chinese advocates used
to press their case. Nevertheless, these warnings, made credible by incidents
of local vigilantism, proved a potent ele ment in congressional debates.
“Do you want to have the Chinese slaughtered on the Pacific Coast?” Re-
publican senator William Morris Stewart of Nevada bellowed on the Senate
floor in 1870. “Do you want their extermination?” The question at hand was
whether to allow Chinese immigrants to obtain U.S. citizenship. Since 1790,
the United States had only extended the right of naturalization to “ free white
persons,” but in the wake of black emancipation and enfranchisement, the
Senate was considering a bill that would have struck the word “white.” West
Coast statesmen, however, opposed racially neutral citizenship by evoking
the threat of white vio lence alongside images of the heathen coolie. If Con-
gress eliminated the racial prerequisite for naturalization, Stewart claimed
that the U.S. West would be “overpowered by the mob ele ment that seeks to
exterminate the Chinese” and “they will be slaughtered before any one of
them can be naturalized under your bill.” Such rhe toric commanded atten-
tion given the “extermination” campaign waged against Native Americans
in California in previous de cades. Cowed by talk of a Chinese invasion and
a looming race war, Congress extended the right of naturalization only to
people of African descent.88
Republican representative Horace Page of California took a diff er ent tack
when he presented a law to restrict involuntary “importation” of “any
subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country” to the United States in 1875.
He emphasized how peaceable the anti- Chinese movement had been to date,
THE CHINESE QUESTION
45
but implied that this commitment to nonviolence could soon end.89 His pro-
posed solution, which became the Page Act, barred Americans from trans-
porting Chinese “without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose
of holding them to a term of ser vice.” In addition to excluding indentured
Asian laborers, the Page Act also targeted another form of involuntary mi-
gration, the importation of Asian prostitutes. While the act did little to slow
Chinese labor migration, it drastically reduced female emigration from
; China. The Chinese sex ratio in Amer ica had always been imbalanced, but
now accusations of immorality tipped the scales further. The 1880 U.S. census
counted only 4,779 Chinese women, or a mere 4.5 percent of the Chinese
population.90
As the first law to explic itly restrict Chinese migration to the United
States, the Page Act was landmark legislation. Its effects, however, were lim-
ited and largely hidden from view. The narrow law intended to prohibit
specific undesirable mi grants, not to exclude the Chinese. And it was im-
plemented through remote control, enforced by U.S. consuls stationed in
faraway Hong Kong or Guangzhou, instead of officials in San Francisco or
Seattle.91 The act failed to provide any vis ible relief to the West Coast.
The first hotly contested federal election since the Civil War took place in
1876, and with it came a new desperation to court western voters. The na-
tional platforms of Republicans and Demo crats, who both vied for the
anti- Chinese vote, included promises of restriction.92 Acting on assurances
made on the campaign trail, Congress introduced a dozen bills to restrict
Chinese migration in the months that followed and launched a series of in-
vestigations over the next few years. The investigations and subsequent de-
bates in Congress returned to the threat of white vio lence and working- class
revolution. “Treason is better than to labor beside a Chinese slave” was the
open declaration of the Workingmen’s Party of California. “The people are
about to take their own affairs into their own hands and they will not
be stayed either by ‘Citizen Vigilantes,’ state militia, nor United States Troops.”
While some congressmen dismissed this incendiary language as abhorrent,
California senator Aaron Sargent urged them to listen. “The unreasonable-
ness, or even vio lence, of discontented people does not,” Sargent told Con-
gress in 1876, “make the cause of their discontent any the less impor tant.”
A joint congressional committee in 1877 confirmed there was already “abuse
of individual Chinamen” and “sporadic cases of mob vio lence” in the U.S.
46 RESTRICTION
West. But the committee predicted that “as long as there is a reasonable hope
that Congress will apply a remedy for what is considered a great and growing
evil, violent mea sures against the Chinese can be restrained.”93 The promise
of federal intervention kept the vio lence in check, at least temporarily.
For a short time, anti- Chinese advocates saw their salvation in the Fif-
teen Passenger Bill, considered by Congress in January 1879. The bill pro-
posed limiting the number of Chinese passengers on any vessel bound for
the United States to fifteen and to punish any captain who transported more
with a hundred dollar per- head fine and six months’ imprisonment. Re-
sponding to the “almost unan i mous sentiment of the people of the Pacific
slope,” proponents of the bill argued that a racially based quota was impera-
tive. In debates, Demo crats and western Republicans faulted the Chinese
for their many “sordid, selfish, immoral, and non- amalgamating habits.”94
They also made clear that Chinese competition meant the threat of white
unrest and the disruption of American businesses. Without Chinese restric-
tion, California Republican Newton Booth warned the Senate, “the discon-
tent of labor will take the form of violent anger or sullen despair” and
“become an ele ment of revolution.” Talk of rebellion was power ful in a na-
tion still nursing the wounds of Southern secession.95
While Demo crats unified behind the Fifteen Passenger Bill, the Repub-
lican Party was divided between those who feared Dooner’s dystopia in the
U.S. West and others who subscribed to Seward’s imperial vision of China.
The latter maintained that Chinese migration was needed to develop both
the U.S. West and the China Trade, that racially discriminatory laws would
undo the racial liberalism of Reconstruction, and that honoring U.S. treaty
agreements was imperative above all else. The bill, which would unilaterally
abrogate stipulations in the Burlingame Treaty, risked a commercial back-
lash from China and the very idea of the cooperative open door. Thus, while
the Fifteen Passenger Bill passed Congress, it did so with only limited Re-
publican support. In the House, Demo crats voted in favor 104 to 16, but
Republicans split 51 to 56; in the Senate, Demo crats voted in favor 36 to 27,
but Republicans split 18 to 17.96 Despite the bipartisan anti- Chinese rhe toric
of the previous campaign cycle, Congress remained divided on the issue.97
The Fifteen Passenger Bill arrived on the desk of Republican president
Rutherford B. Hayes. Before publicly announcing his opinion, President
Hayes wrestled with the bill and the two competing visions of U.S. imperi-
THE CHINESE QUESTION
47
alism in his diary. He agreed with citizens of the U.S. West that Chinese
migration endangered the future of the free white republic. He wrote, “I am
satisfied the pres ent Chinese labor invasion—(it is not in any proper sense
immigration— women and children do not come)—is pernicious and should
be discouraged.” The “invasion” not only posed an economic threat, in
Hayes’s opinion, it also threatened the morals of American citizens. “Our
experience in dealing with the weaker races— the negroes and Indians, for
example—is not encouraging.” Hayes concluded, “We shall oppress the
Chinamen, and their presence will make hoodlums and vagabonds of their
oppressors.” The president, like his Congress, feared white cruelty was an
inevitable result of Chinese migration. Despite these concerns, Hayes be-
lieved his hands were tied. In his diary, he noted, “Our treaty with China
forbids me to give [the bill] my approval,” and “impor tant interests have
grown up under the treaty, and rest upon faith in its observance.”98 Hayes
held Amer ica’s diplomatic promises as sacrosanct and maintained faith in
the cooperative open door. In his public veto message, the president acknowl-
edged the “grave discontents of the people of the Pacific States,” but urged
that “more careful methods” be used to stop the Chinese menace. He could
not sign a bill that would so clearly threaten merchants and missionaries in
China and “endanger . . . the growing commerce and prosperity” of the
China Trade.99
Invested in the cooperative open door, the Hayes administration sought
China’s approval for immigration restriction. In the summer of 1880, with
another presidential election looming, Hayes sent James Angell, president
of the University of Michigan, to negotiate a new treaty. Chinese diplomats
initially resisted American efforts to modify the Burlingame Treaty, but were
preoccupied with other potential crises, including threats of attack by Rus sia
and Japa nese encroachment. Viceroy Li Hongzhang (Lin Hung- chang), who
oversaw foreign affairs, believed that the United States would prove an es-
sential ally. To maintain U.S. support, the Chinese Imperial Court eventu-
ally agreed to most of the Angell Comm
ission’s demands.100 The Angell
Treaty of November 17, 1880, reversed the language of the Burlingame Treaty,
granting the United States the right to “regulate, limit, or suspend” Chinese
migration. But the treaty still curbed Amer i ca’s ability to legislate, explic-
itly denying Congress the right to “absolutely prohibit” Chinese migration
and further stipulating that any “limitation or suspension shall be reasonable
48 RESTRICTION
and shall apply only to . . . laborers.”101 Ratified in May of 1881, the Angell
Treaty made Chinese restriction pos si ble, but also defined its limits.
More than a dozen anti- Chinese bills were introduced when Congress
reconvened the following winter, but it was California Republican John
Miller’s bill that got the attention of the Senate.102 Senate Bill 71 suspended
the migration of Chinese laborers for the next twenty years. But to avoid
violating treaty stipulations, it made exceptions for any Chinese laborer
currently residing in the United States or any Chinese who was pres ent in
the country the day that the Angell Treaty was signed in 1880. All Chinese
mi grants, whether laborers or not, would be required to secure a passport
from the Chinese government and approval from a U.S. diplomat before em-
barking on the journey from China. Any Chinese found forging such pass-
ports could be fined a thousand dollars and imprisoned for up to five years.
In addition to specifying fines for any person aiding a Chinese to illegally
enter the country, the bill also made unauthorized immigration a misde-
meanor, punishable by a fine of a hundred dollars, plus one year in prison,
followed by “removal” by the U.S. government. Two impor tant amendments
were eventually added to the bill, one explic itly prohibiting Chinese mi grants
from obtaining citizenship and another that defined Chinese “laborers”
broadly as skilled workers, unskilled workers, and miners.
The co ali tion of Demo crats and western Republicans in favor of the Fif-
teen Passenger Bill supported this new mea sure in the name of American
labor. Citing an Education and Labor Committee report on the floor of the
House, Demo crat Albert Shelby Willis of Kentucky argued that “the ques-
tion had assumed dangerous proportions. The conviction that Chinese