Book Read Free

The Chinese Must Go

Page 40

by Beth Lew-Williams


  (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2006). See also Cecilia Tsu,

  Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in

  California’s Santa Clara Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013),

  40–46; Sylvia Sun Minnick, Samflow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy

  (Fresno, CA: Pa norama, 1988); Adrian Praetzellis, Uncovering Sacramento’s

  Chinese Pioneers (Washington, DC: U.S. General Ser vices Administration,

  1999); Zhengde Wen, “Breaking Racial Barriers: Wo Kee Com pany:

  276

  NOTES TO PAGE 38

  A Collaboration between a Chinese Immigrant and White American in

  Nineteenth- Century Amer ica,” Chinese Amer i ca: History and Perspectives

  2005, ed. Laurene Wu McClain (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society

  of Amer ica, 2005), 13–17. For Chinese laundries, see Bottoms, The

  Aristocracy of Color, 140; for vegetable peddlers, see Chan, This Bitter- sweet Soil, 87–89; for Chinese domestic servants, see Andrew Urban, “An

  Intimate World: Race, Migration, and Chinese and Irish Domestic

  Servants in the United States, 1850–1920” (Ph.D. diss. University of

  Minnesota, 2009); for selling alcohol to Indians, see SPI, September 30,

  1878; SPI, May, 1879; for intermarriage with Indians, see SPI, February 1,

  1880; Daniel Liestman, “Inter- Ethnic Relations: Chinese and American

  Indians in the Nineteenth Century West,” Western Historical Quarterly 30,

  no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 327–349; for Chinese in white congregations, see SPI,

  August 28, 1879; SPI, November, 22, 1879; on “ imagined communities,” see

  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and

  Spread of Nationalism (New York and London: Verso, 1991).

  68. For examples of interracial intimacy, see Beth Lew- Williams, “ ‘Chinamen’

  and ‘Delinquent Girls’: Intimacy, Exclusion and a Search for California’s

  Color Line,” Journal of American History 104, no. 3 (December 2017):

  632–655; Mary Ting Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Miscegenation,

  and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn- of- the- Century New York City

  (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 2007); Mae Ngai, The Lucky

  Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese Amer i ca (Boston:

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010); Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The

  Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New

  York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Nayan Shah, Stranger Intimacy:

  Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West

  (Berkeley: University of California, 2012); SPI, June 19, 1881; SPI, April 16, 1882.

  69. USC / WT, 1880.

  70. Calculations by Trevon Logan in collaboration with John Parman and

  the author on Steven Ruggles, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Josiah

  Grover, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series:

  Version 6.0 [Machine- readable database], Minneapolis: University of

  Minnesota, 2015. For segregation mea sure ment by house hold heads, see

  Trevon D. Logan and John M. Parman, “The National Rise in Residential

  Segregation,” The Journal of Economic History 77 no. 1 (March 2017):

  127–170.

  NOTES TO PAGES 38–43

  277

  71. “Principal Chinese Business Firms: San Francisco, Sacramento, Stockton,

  Marysville, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, Portland, Virginia City, Nev.,

  Victoria, B.C.” (Wells Fargo and Com pany, 1882). To compare Chinese in

  New York, see Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, 58.

  72. Dooner, Last Days of the Republic, 127, 171 180–181.

  73. “Investigation by a Select Committee of the House of Representatives

  relative to the Causes of General Depression in Labor and Business; and as

  to Chinese Immigration” 46th Congress 2d. Sess. Misc. Doc. No. 5

  (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, December 10, 1879), 283.

  74. White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own,” 102, 320–323; for local

  examples, see SDC, October 27, 1885; SDC, October 24, 1885.

  75. SDC, October 27, 1885; see also Tacoma Daily News, January 5, 1886.

  76. Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Po liti cal

  Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

  University Press, 1986), 86.

  77. SFCH, November 10, 1877.

  78. Daily Morning Call, November 26, 1877; SFCH, November 30, 1877;

  Speeches of Dennis Kearney, Labor Champion (New York: Jesse Haney &

  Co., 1878).

  79. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 183; For anti- Chinese movements outside the

  United States, see Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global

  Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial

  Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 15–48; Chang,

  “Circulating Race and Empire,” 678–701; Peter W. Ward, White Canada

  Forever: Popu lar Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British

  Columbia, 3rd edition (Montreal and London: McGill- Queen’s University

  Press, 2002); John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White

  Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007).

  80. Speeches of Dennis Kearney, 13.

  81. Pacific Appeal, November 24, 1877, January 19, 1878; SFCA, November 10, 1877; Daily Morning Call, July 22, 1877.

  82. Wynne, Reaction to the Chinese in the Pacific Northwest, 76, 83, 492.

  83. SPI, October 2, 9, 10, 1876; SPI, January 24, 1877; SPI , March 19, 1877, July 26, 1877; SPI, December 1, 15, 24, 1877; SPI, January 12, 31 1878; SPI, June 7, 1878; SPI, May 1, 1880; SPI, May 29, 1882. Unfortunately, there is little scholarship on Chinese– Native American relations in the nineteenth

  century. It is clear that vari ous Native American individuals and tribes

  participated in anti- Chinese vio lence, but there has been no systematic

  278

  NOTES TO PAGES 43–45

  study to explain this pattern. See Daniel Liestman, “Inter- Ethnic

  Relations: Chinese and American Indians in the Nineteenth Century

  West,” Western Historical Quarterly 30, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 327–349;

  Jordan Hua, “ ‘They Looked Askance’: American Indians and Chinese in

  the Nineteenth Century U.S. West” (honors thesis, Rutgers University,

  2012); Cari M. Carpenter and K. Hyoejin Yoon, “Rethinking Alternative

  Contact in Native American and Chinese Encounters: Juxtaposition in

  Nineteenth- Century U.S. Newspapers,” College Lit er a ture 41, no. 1

  (Winter 2014): 7–42. For Canada, see Renisa Mawani, Colonial

  Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia,

  1871–1921 (Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press,

  20019). For theoretical approaches to this nascent study, see Jody A. Byrd,

  “Arriving on a Diff er ent Shore: U.S. Empire at Its Horizons,” College

  Lit er a ture 41, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 174–181.

  84. Wynne, Reaction to the Chinese in the Pacific Northwest, 47–53.

  85. On the judicial invalidation of California statutes, see Hirota, Expelling the

  Poor, 88–91; Kurashige, Two Faces of Exclusion, 22.

  86. Miller, Unwelcome Immigrant, 71–74. For Oregon, see Margaret Holden,

  “The Rise and Fall of Oregon Pop u lism: legal theory, po liti cal culture and

  public pol
icy, 1868–1895” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1993),

  202–218.

  87. For variations of the “California thesis,” see Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia

  Guide to Asian American History (New York: Columbia University Press,

  2001), 73–99.

  88. 41st Cong. 2nd sess. Congressional Globe 5125 (1870). See also 41st Cong.

  2nd Sess. Congressional Globe, 5156 (1870).

  89. 43rd Cong. 2nd sess. Congressional Rec ord, appendix 44 (1875).

  90. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 71; Hing, Making and Remaking Asian Amer i ca

  Through Immigration Policy, 23; “An Act supplementary to the acts in

  relation to immigration,” (The Page Act) chap. 141, 18 Stat. 477

  (March 3, 1875); Sucheng Chan, “The Exclusion of Chinese Women,

  1870–1924,” Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in

  Amer i ca, 1882–1943, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University

  Press, 1991), 94–146.

  91. For the workings of the Page Law, see Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing:

  California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong

  Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 248–249.

  92. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 90.

  NOTES TO PAGES 46–50

  279

  93. RJSCCI, 309, 364; Chinese Immigration. The social, moral, and po liti cal

  efect of Chinese immigration. Testimony taken before a committee of the

  Senate of the state of California, appointed April 3d, 1876 (Sacramento: State

  Printing Office, 1876), 8; Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 48, 109.

  94. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 138–141.

  95. Ibid., 141; 46th Cong. 2d Sess. Misc. Doc. No. 5 Investigation by a Select

  Committee of the House of Representatives relative to the Causes of General

  Depression in Labor and Business; and as to Chinese Immigration. Dec 10,

  1879 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879), 257; DAC,

  February 14, 1879.

  96. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 140, 156, 161.

  97. The division was largely regional: northeastern and Atlantic politicians,

  who represented regions deeply invested in the China Trade, often sided

  against restriction. Kurashige, Two Faces of Exclusion, 48–51.

  98. Rutherford B. Hayes, Hayes: The Diary of a President, 1875–1881, Covering

  the Disputed Election, the End of Reconstruction, and the Beginning of Civil

  Ser vice, ed. T. Harry Williams (New York: D. McKay, 1964), 187–189.

  99. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 244–245; Hune, “The Politics of Exclusion,” 14–15.

  100. Haiming Liu, “Chinese Exclusion Laws and the U.S.- China Relationship,”

  Cal Poly Pomona Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 16 (Fall 2003): 153.

  101. The Statutes at Large of the United States of Amer i ca, from December, 1881, to

  March, 1883, and Recent Treaties, Postal Conventions, and Executive

  Proclamations (Washington, DC, 1883), 22: 826–827.

  102. Miller, Unwelcome Immigrant, 92.

  103. 13 Cong. Rec., 1974 (1882). See also 13 Cong. Rec., 1672, 1674, 1985 (1882).

  104. Nathaniel Deering (R- Iowa) as cited by Gyory, Closing the Gate, 236.

  105. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 223–225; Louis A. Coo lidge, An Old- fashioned

  Senator: Orville H. Platt of Connecticut (New York: Putnam, 1910), 154–156;

  Martin B. Gold, Forbidden Citizens: Chinese Exclusion and the U.S. Congress:

  A Legislative History (Alexandria, VA: TheCapitol.Net , 2012), 85–216.

  106. 13 Cong. Rec., 1517, 1640, 1670, 1702, 1705, 1707, 1739, 2041, 2171 (1882).

  107. Kurashige, Two Faces of Exclusion, 48–51.

  108. 13 Cong. Rec., 2551–2552 (1882); Gyory, Closing the Gate, 242–243.

  109. 13 Cong. Rec., appendix 127, 2608 (1882).

  110. Ibid.; 13 Cong. Rec., 2551–2552 (1882); The Oxford En glish Dictionary defines

  “restriction” as “a limitation on action” or a “limiting condition or

  regulation,” and dates this meaning back to the fifteenth century. Starting

  in the sixteenth century, “exclusion” was understood to mean “shutting

  280

  NOTES TO PAGES 51–52

  from a place, a society, etc.” “restriction, n.” OED Online. Oxford

  University Press, accessed September 2012, http:// www.oed .com / view

  / Entry / 164022 ? redirectedFrom=restriction “exclusion, n. ” OED Online.

  Oxford University Press, accessed September 2012, http:// www.oed .com

  / view / Entry / 65828 ? redirectedFrom=exclusion. Nineteenth- century Americans also used the contrasting terms “restriction” and “exclusion”

  when discussing liquor laws. For example, the Congregational Churches of

  Connecticut clarified, “Prohibition is restriction with totality added, or

  restriction carried to a point of exclusion.” Minutes of the General

  Conference of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut at the . . . Annual

  Meeting (Hartford, CT, 1886), 4:773–774.

  111. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 245; New York Tribune, April 5, 1882.

  112. 13 Cong. Rec., 2606 (1882).

  113. Ibid., 2609.

  114. Historians have overlooked the significant difference between these two

  bills, calling them “virtually identical.” Gyory, Closing the Gate, 250; The

  Statutes at Large of the United States of Amer i ca, from December, 1881 to

  March, 1883, and Recent Treaties, Postal Conventions, and Executive

  Proclamations (Washington, DC, 1883), 22, 58–61. For diplomatic

  concessions for students, see Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How

  the Yellow Peril became the Model Minority (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton

  University Press, 2015), 23–54.

  115. In the House, ninety Republicans supported the bill and thirty- four

  opposed it. In the Senate, eleven Republicans supported the bill and fifteen

  opposed. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 251, 253; “An Act to execute certain treaty

  stipulations relating to Chinese,” (the Chinese Restriction Act) chap. 126,

  22 Stat. 58 (May 6, 1882).

  116. 13 Cong. Rec., 1517–1516, 1640, 1670, 1702, 1705, 1707, 1739, 2041, 2171

  (1882).

  117. Beth Lew- Williams, “Before Restriction Became Exclusion: Amer ica’s

  Experiment in Diplomatic Immigration Control,” Pacific Historical Review

  83, no. 1 (February 2014): 24–56. In 1882, there was no national consensus

  supporting Chinese exclusion, which is why previous scholars have

  strug gled to explain how one emerged. See Okihiro, Columbia Guide to

  Asian American History, 73–99; Gyory, Closing the Gate, 6–16.

  118. 13 Cong. Rec., 2968 (1882); Chinese Immigration to accompany bill H.R.

  5804, 47th Cong., H.R. Rep. No. 1017, pt. 2 (1882).

  NOTES TO PAGES 53–55

  281

  .

  2 EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION

  1. In the years immediately following 1882, Vancouver Island, which was just

  across the border in British Columbia, saw a rec ord influx of Chinese

  mi grants. Kornel Chang, Pacific Connections: The Making of the

  U.S.- Canadian Borderland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012),

  39. For the much more limited migration from Mexico during this period,

  see Patrick Ettinger, Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of

  Undocumented Immigration, 1882–1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press,

  2009), 55. For later periods, see Elliott Young, Alien Nation: Chinese

  Migration in the Amer i ca
s from the Coolie Era through World War II (Chapel

  Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 176–179; Julia Maria

  Schiavone Camocho, Chinese Mexicans: Transpacific Migration and the

  Search for a Homeland, 1910–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North

  Carolina Press, 2012); Grace Pena Delgado, Making the Chinese Mexican:

  Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands

  (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash,

  September 24, 1884, box 110, folder 2, USCS / RDC.

  2. For the use of these federal statistics, see Erika Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates:

  Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill:

  University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 44; Bill Ong Hing, Making and

  Remaking Asian Amer i ca through Immigration Policy, 1850–1990 (Stanford,

  CA: Stanford University Press, 1993) , 24, 47. For federal aggrandizement

  under “exclusion,” see Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of

  Immigration Control in Amer i ca (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press,

  2002), 87–113.

  3. Paul Kramer, “Imperial Openings: Civilization, Exemption, and the

  Geopolitics of Mobility in the History of Chinese Exclusion, 1868–1910,”

  Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14, no. 3 (2015): 317–347.

  Chang, Pacific Connections.

  4. For border- making at the periphery, see Peter Sahlins, “The Nation in the

  Village: State- Building and Communal Strug gles in the Catalan

  Borderland during the Eigh teenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of

  Modern History 60, no. 2 (June 1988): 234–263.

  5. Nicholas R. Parrillo, Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in

  American Government, 1780–1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

  2013), 360–362; William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American

  State,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (June 2008): 752–772.

  282

  NOTES TO PAGES 55–57

  6. Desmond King and Robert C. Lieberman, “Ironies of State Building:

  A Comparative Perspective on the American State,” World Politics 61, no. 3

  (July 2009): 561–562. This phenomenon in immigration control has been

  observed more recently in the Minuteman Proj ect along the U.S.- Mexican

  border. Leo R. Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants,

  Citizens, and the Nation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008),

 

‹ Prev