Speech #470034234

I want to go slowly. What is the evil to be guarded against? The people of California and the Pacific coast say that they are fearful of being inundated by a vast horde of hungry coolies or contract laborersI call them cooliesignorant. vicious. debased. who come here without wives and children. who come here to degrade our society. an immigration of the lowest and worst classes of the oldest nation of Asia. It seems to me we might guard against the evils of this dangerous immigration without going to the extreme of excluding all laborers from China. We may limit. restrain. suspend. but we must not prohibit immigration. Here is a prohibition for twenty years. longer than the lift of any Senator on this floor. for in twenty years time all of us will have disappeared from the stage in all human probability. It seems to me that this measure might be just as effective to accomplish the purpose desired by limiting the time to five years. and by making other exceptions that might be proposed. not to extend it to the whole mass of Chinese laborers. not to extend it to every person in China except a few favored. selected classes. The power which we asked China yielded to us. We. by the terms of the former treaty that existed between China and the United States. had no power to pass such a law as this. we had no power to prohibit this immigration. but when our difficulties were stated to China she yielded to us certain rights. the right to limit. restrain. or suspend. provided it should be done in a reasonable way. not to prohibit. not to discriminate against the Chinese more than is absolutely necessary to meet the threatened evil in California. It seems to me we have in this bill gone too far. and this bill has been framed not with the spirit of guarding the people of the Pacific coast against a threatened inundation of a pagan horde of contract laborers. but in the spirit of reversing the whole policy of this Governmenty of excluding all foreigners under a hue and cry againstthe Chinese race. however skilled. however useful however meritorious they may be. It seems to me. sir. it is only the entering wedge of another policy which may be in a short time proposed to exclude European laborers as well. It may open other doors of danger.