The Chinese Must Go
Page 28
The Los Angeles Times reported that the president was in “full sympathy”
with the people of the Pacific Coast. “I am compelled to say in all fairness
that the Chinese are an undesirable people. Our ports are open to all people
of all climes who can assimilate,” Cleveland told the press. “We cannot as-
similate Chinese and consequently do not want them.” It was only one month
before the presidential election, and Cleveland was saying exactly what Pa-
cific Coast voters wanted to hear.56
The West Coast erupted in cele brations. In California, the Demo cratic
State Central Committee ordered a one- hundred- gun salute. An assistant
U.S. attorney in California exulted, “ Every bill that has thus far been framed
succumbed to the artifices of the slave- dealers and their lawyers. In the Scott
bill [ sic] we have a law that is invulnerable.” Across the country, newspapers
declared that “total exclusion” had fi nally been achieved. “At last, at last, the
East has discovered the truth from which many of us have suffered on this
190 EXCLUSION
coast,” declared a Seattle newspaper. “At last Congress has listened to the
cries of the Pacific coast against this curse.” Demo crats celebrated the law as
a victory for their administration, but Republicans claimed their control in
the Senate had played a pivotal role.57
Although most white Americans celebrated the passage of the Exclusion
Act, not every one lauded the manner in which Congress had fi nally ended
Chinese labor migration. The Republican- leaning Harper’s Weekly lamented
“hasty and discreditable” actions by Congress. Such a blatant abrogation of
treaty stipulations, wrote Harper’s editors, with any stronger nation than
China, “would lead prob ably to war.” The New York Times chided Congress
for its “unseemly haste” in passing the act, but recognized that the United
States had the “undoubted right . . . to exclude those of any class or race”
for the “well- being” of Amer ica’s people and institutions. These conservative-
leaning newspapers did not agree with Congress’s means, but did approve
its ends. Despite the near consensus supporting Chinese exclusion, the law
was not enough to tip the presidential race in Cleveland’s favor. In November,
he lost his bid for reelection, failing to carry any of the western states.58
The Closed Gate and the Open Door
Shock and dismay were foremost in Minister Zhang’s mind when Congress
passed the Exclusion Act in 1888 in violation of Sino- American treaties.
“I was not prepared to learn that there was a way recognized in [U.S. law],” he
wrote to Bayard, “whereby your country could release itself from treaty
obligations without consultation or consent of the other party.” Certainly,
the United States had violated the spirit of diplomatic agreements before,
but it had never blatantly and knowingly abrogated a treaty with China
through federal legislation. Watching this unlikely turn of events, other
Western powers openly wondered if the United States was trying to provoke
war with China to advance U.S. commercial ambitions. Chinese diplomats,
however, attributed the slight to U.S. domestic politics. In internal corre-
spondence, Zhang called the Exclusion Act a “scheme” brought on by the
“presidential election year,” and Cleveland’s desire to “appeal to the public
opinion.”59
While Chinese diplomats complained, in vain, about the Chinese Exclu-
sion Act, the people of Guangdong Province launched their own protests.
THE EXCLUSION CONSENSUS
191
Denby reported home that Chinese newspapers in Guangzhou teemed with
discussions of the law. The Kuang Pao, for example, urged the Chinese gov-
ernment to ban Americans from China and recall its subjects from Amer-
i ca.60 Others called for China to retaliate by halting commercial relations
between the two countries for ten years. In a pointed critique, Zhang Zhi-
dong, viceroy of Guangdong, suggested that China prohibit imports of ker-
osene, a lucrative American product. He likened American kerosene to
Chinese laborers; each could accidentally set society aflame. If Amer ica had
the right to ban the migration of Chinese laborers because they were “inju-
rious” to the nation, then China had an equal right to prohibit imports of
kerosene because it was a “menace” to the Chinese Empire. Some Chinese
merchants put calls for a boycott into practice, refusing to buy or sell U.S.
petroleum, calico, watches, firearms, flour, and ginseng. But the boycott
found few adherents among the merchant class. The Exclusion Act, as drastic
as it was, targeted Chinese workers, leaving Chinese elites relatively un-
scathed and thus often unmoved. For a time, U.S. officials worried that the
lower classes, unable to mount their own boycott, would resort to retalia-
tory vio lence in China. Denby readied five U.S. naval vessels to meet any
emergency, but vio lence did not ensue. In the end, Amer ica would suffer few
geopo liti cal consequences for its sudden abrogation of the treaty.61
This shift toward unilateral exclusion, in blatant violation of treaty stip-
ulations, cemented into law the imbalance of power between the United
States and China. China had tipped its hand with the Bayard- Zhang Treaty,
signaling for the first time its willingness to allow the exclusion of Chinese
workers. In this moment of po liti cal urgency and Chinese wavering, U.S.
statesmen gambled that they would be able to abrogate their treaty obliga-
tions with impunity. And they won.
Though the two nations regularized relations in 1894, they never returned
to the cooperative open door. No longer did U.S. leaders assume Chinese
“cooperation” to be a prerequisite for commercial expansion in China. It was
telling that, several years later, when Secretary of State John Hay sent mis-
sives, known as the Open Door Notes, he did not even bother to send China
a copy. Once Amer ica’s vision of the open door had required direct diplo-
macy, but now it hardly seemed necessary. Though the United States con-
tinued to advocate for other colonial powers to re spect China’s territorial
integrity, it participated in the erosion of Chinese sovereignty.62
192 EXCLUSION
Amer ica’s turn toward more coercive forms of diplomacy allowed for more
draconian immigration policies at home. Adversaries of Chinese exclusion
continued to argue that the law could undercut Amer ica’s imperial ambi-
tions, but their arguments had lost much of their force. The shift away from
the cooperative open door, and its façade of equality in U.S. relations with
China, freed the United States to erect a gate of its own choosing. The law’s
few remaining diplomatic concessions did little to negate the fundamental
alignment between Amer ica’s newly fashioned policies of exclusion and the
open door. From then on, American exclusion and imperialism flourished
in each other’s com pany: China’s geopo liti cal weakness allowed for Chinese
exclusion, and Chinese exclusion confirmed China’s inferiority.63
The Exclusion Act itself represente
d a severe tightening of border control
for Chinese mi grants. Like the Chinese Restriction Act, the Exclusion Act
declared that no new Chinese laborers could migrate to the United States.
But it went far beyond its pre de ces sor, forbidding the return of Chinese la-
borers who had previously resided in the United States, declaring null and
void approximately thirty thousand return certificates issued to Chinese la-
borers since 1882, and rendering thousands of men and women who had
temporarily left the United States unable to return. The law took effect im-
mediately, which meant that six hundred Chinese en route to the United
States were out of luck. They included a Chinese laborer named Chae Chan
Ping, who had resided in Amer ica from 1875 until 1887, when he made a
short trip to China. Arriving in San Francisco on October 7, 1888, only days
after the Exclusion Act went into effect, with a return certificate in hand, he
was prohibited from landing. The Chinese Six Companies raised over a hun-
dred thousand dollars to challenge the law on his behalf. The result was not
in his favor: in 1889, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled the Exclu-
sion Act constitutional and denied the petitioner’s right to land.64
This decision represented a major shift in American jurisprudence, in
which the court declared immigration a matter of inherent sovereignty. With
the Constitution silent on the topic of immigration, the court had often pre-
sumed that immigration law fell under the Commerce Clause. But in Chae
Chan Ping v. United States (1889), the Supreme Court held that “the power
of exclusion of foreigners” was an “incident of sovereignty belonging to the
government of the United States.” This right, explained the opinion, “cannot
be granted away or restrained on behalf of any one.” To justify this claim,
THE EXCLUSION CONSENSUS
193
the court relied on common understandings of international law, not any
specific provision in the U.S. Constitution. The ruling enshrined the “ple-
nary power doctrine,” which ensured the po liti cal branches of the govern-
ment complete power over matters of national security.65
Steeped in the racial beliefs of the day, the court deemed the “hordes” of
Chinese mi grants an urgent security risk and asserted the right of any sov-
ereign nation “to protect . . . against invasion and domestic vio lence.” The
plenary power doctrine recognized the po liti cal branches’ absolute power to
exclude aliens, affirmed their ability to do so on the basis of race, and ex-
empted immigration matters from judicial review. In the coming de cades,
the United States occasionally attempted to achieve border control through
diplomacy when it proved expedient, but for the most part Congress acted
unilaterally. Indeed, the power the federal government marshaled to exclude
the Chinese in 1888 would soon be used to sift, select, or bar all aliens at
Amer ica’s gates.66
For de cades, Americans had debated, sometimes violently, whether the
United States could erect strict racial bound aries at home while pursuing
unfettered expansion abroad. The Exclusion Act of 1888, and subsequent Su-
preme Court rulings, proffered the plenary power doctrine as one answer to
this enduring question. With it, the United States could continue to expand
into new lands without extending the privileges of citizenship to the resulting
mass of racial outsiders. After defining the plenary power doctrine to cur-
tail the rights of the Chinese, the court used it to strip power from Native
Americans and, following the Spanish American War, to deny U.S. nationals
many constitutional guarantees.67 Thus the doctrine, which fueled the ex-
pansion of a racially based immigration regime in the twentieth century, also
became a cornerstone of U.S. imperialism. Americans had once feared that
commercial and territorial expansion at home and abroad would lead to ra-
cial contamination of the citizenry. But the plenary power doctrine offered
added legal protections against outsiders within American territory, whether
they were alien, native, or colonial. With these new safeguards in place, ra-
cial anxiety no longer held the same power to check American expansion.
7
Afterlives under Exclusion
AS CAPTAIN JOHN RINDER prepared for the maiden voyage of the steam-
ship Mongolia in February 1904, he received last- minute instructions from
R. P. Scherwin, vice president and general man ag er of the Pacific Mail Steam-
ship Com pany. The instructions seemed straightforward: he was to sail
Amer ica’s largest steamship from Norfolk, Virginia, around Cape Horn to
San Francisco, where he would prepare the vessel for a transpacific journey
to China and Japan. In a sealed envelope, Rinder found additional instruc-
tions, which Scherwin warned were “not to be opened until you have been
at least twenty- four hours at sea.” He dutifully waited until he had been at
sea for two days before he opened the letter 1 and learned that he would be
smuggling Chinese mi grants into the United States.
The carefully worded orders from Scherwin did not explic itly refer to
smuggling. Instead, Rinder was supposed to stop off the shores of Manza-
nillo, Mexico, to meet the steamer Chin Wo arriving from Hong Kong and
receive 189 Chinese “to make up the Deck, Engine and Commissary De-
partments of your ship.” Once Rinder was “in waters beyond the jurisdiction
of the Mexican Government,” he was to write up employment contracts for
the Chinese “crew” listing the day they left Hong Kong as the start of a
one- year term. Scherwin explained that the Chinese crew was “not to per-
form any labor aboard ship.” Though Rinder was supposed to tell U.S. offi-
cials that the Chinese were crewmembers, he was to tell Mexican officials
that they were “transits” bound for China again. In addition, Scherwin ad-
vised Rinder to keep the transfer as quiet as pos si ble “to avoid any opportu-
nity for the sea lawyers that may be in the crew to make trou ble.”2
194
AFTERLIVES UNDER EXCLUSION
195
The SS Mongolia arrived with great fanfare in the port of San Francisco
on April 19, 1904. News reports boasted that Amer ica’s largest ship was 615
feet and 8 inches long, could travel as fast as 16 knots, and could hold 15,000
tons of cargo, which was the capacity “of a freight train five miles long.” The
ship received additional press because aboard was third assistant secretary
of state Herbert Pierce on a diplomatic trip to Asia. San Francisco customs
officials landed the ship without comment about the Chinese “crew.” For
de cades, it had been commonplace to see Chinese employed on government-
subsidized Pacific Mail Steamships so this was a familiar scene. There is no
rec ord of how the unauthorized mi grants landed without a trace, but it is
likely that after docking they were exchanged for other Chinese mi grants
who wished to return to China.3
It took another eleven years for the U.S. customs ser vice to fi nally catch
unauthorized Chinese aboard the SS Mongolia. When the ste
amship re-
turned from its final transpacific journey in October 1915, Customs received
an anonymous tip written in Chinese alleging that the Mongolia had “stow-
aways on board,” each of whom had paid a hundred dollars in gold to enter
the United States. When U.S. officials searched the ship, they found eighty-
six unauthorized mi grants. Some were dressed as crewmembers while others
“ were found hidden under an enormous steel bucket which had been buried
under the coal in the bunkers.” These gripping details made for the largest
smuggling scandal to date. The well- publicized case resulted in the deporta-
tion of eighty Chinese mi grants and the indictment, but not conviction, of
U.S. officials and the Mongolia’s officers. While San Francisco newspapers
questioned whether the “Mongolia Affair” was part of an or ga nized, ongoing,
and effective conspiracy to evade border control, American officials dismissed
such speculation as “almost unbelievable.” 4
Chinese exclusion failed to end Chinese migration, although U.S. officials
were loath to admit it at the time. American steamship companies, in a race
for profits, continued to ferry thousands of Chinese mi grants across the Pa-
cific. U.S. officials rarely discovered these trafficking plots, and when they
did, they only managed to implicate shipboard crews, not their illustrious
employers. Captain Rinder’s instructions, which he saved and passed down
to his children, offer an unusual glimpse of traders’ brazen smuggling
196 EXCLUSION
schemes. He arrived in San Francisco Bay during the heyday of Chinese ex-
clusion, when policies were at their strictest and deportation rates hit a
rec ord high. But the more extensive the state apparatus of border control
became, the more elaborate the schemes smugglers and mi grants developed
to evade it.
The Chinese community contested Amer ica’s policy of exclusion through
actions both large and small. To protest exclusion, imperialism, and vio lence,
they launched national and transnational movements, using coordinated acts
of civil disobedience and boycott. At the same time, unauthorized mi grants
continually outwitted immigration control by charting new territorial and
legal routes into the United States. On the surface, these two tactics— open