Speech #470034196

It is invading one industry after another and driving our own people out. and has already taken possession of the vine. of the figtree. of the wheatfield. and of every avenue of manufacture. I make this earnest appeal not because the white man has not the physical and intellectual power to compete with the Chinaman. but because with the qualities which the white man possesses. with his civilization. with his lineage. with the blood that flows in his veins. he disdains to abandon his present condition of life and to descend to the degrading level of Chinese labor and Chinese wages. and to the unrelieved and barbarous penury of Chinese daily life. We appeal to Senators to stand by the judgment of 154.000 of their fellowcitizens. spoken without passion. spoken without vindictiveness. 154.000 people. as against only 1.100 votes that could be obtained in favor of this immigration on a secret ballot. Why such universal concurrence of opinion on a question likethis ? Thepeopleof the Pacific coast are not a provincial people. they do not speak the prejudices of a section. they are made up of emigrants from every city and State of this Union and fromthe leading countries of Europe. so that they are in a very marked degree a cosmopolitan people. At first they had no objection to Chinese immigration. because they had no experience with it. They now see what it will inevitably result in. They are not so unreasonable as to say that the interests of the Pacific coast are destroyed now by the 105.000 Chinese there. but they see that the industries of that coast will. if this immigration be continued. be inevitably destroyed for our own people . and they ask Congress to check this evil while it is within moderate and controllable limits. for if the rest of the United States should contain as reat a proportion of Chinese as are now in California the evil would e too large to be peacefully dealt with and it might occasion another civil war which. unlike the last. would carry the horrors of an intestine struggle into every part of the country. I trust. Mr.