Speech #470047611

There is but little dispute that sme provision of law should be made to restrain the importation of the class of Chinese laborers into this country which has been flowing into it for the last fifteen or twenty years. We are told that these Chinamen come here without wife. without children. without desire for a home. without any expectation to stay here. but to return again. dead or alive. to the laud of their birth. They are not a desirable population. they are not the kind of immigrants which have been useful to our country heretofore. who have been invited and received with welcome from the foundation of the Government. The Chinese are peculiar in every respect. It is fomd that these people. immigrating mainly to the Pacific coast. have created discontent among laboring men. and they are not good citizens in any sense except that they are industrious and frugIl nde1r these circumstances some wise limitation upon the immigration of Chinese to this country would be voted for heartily by members of all political parties. of both Houses. with scarcely any distinction. But under pretense of regulating the importation of Chinese laborers Congress passed a bill which prohibits Chinese immigration for twenty years. If such a bill had been proposed in eithor House of Congress twenty years ago it would have been the death warrant of the man who offered it. In order to cure an evil which we admuit we passed a Chinese bill. a bill based upon a policy peculiar to China. that of the exclusion of all the world from the Chinese soil.