I speak for the other Senators by saying that their history upon that matter is as clean and pure as that of the Senator from Massachusetts. Neither upon this question are we liable to misconstruction. We object to a system of importation of contract labor. We endeavor to break up the importation of these masses of people who are held in peonage or semislavery. We do not want California and the Pacific coast to be overrun by slaves or by men who are bound by contract to slavery. It is not free immigration in any sense of the word. The argument used by our great landholders. with their broad acres covering half a county. ten and twenty thousand acres in a body. is that they cannot carry on farming unless they have this cheap Chinese labor. Better that such farming should stop. better break up those great ranches and farms. and let the people have homes. Let there be free laborers there. and not men consigned by one of the six companies to work month after month and month after month serving out contracts made in China which run on for years. We object to this system of contract labor. and we object to Chinese immigration for this reason. We might invoke in our behalf all the declarations made in the Declaration of Independence. We rmight well in behalf of this cause ask for our own people all the protection which the principles enunciated by the fathers of the Republic will afford.
Keywords matched
immigration contract labor