Speech #490083025

Mr. Chairman. I am glad that the gentleman from California has at last found an opportunity to utter the speech with which he has been so long laboring. and to give to this House the warnings which seem to burden his heart against the danger of additional Chinese immigration. I am sorry. sir. that he should have reflected upon the Committee on Foreign Affairs of this House. which has given more time to the consideration of this question than to any other that has come before it during the present Congress. and iwhich has reported unanimously a bill calculated to relieve as far as possible the difficulties which the gentleman from California has portrayed to this House. Let me say. sir. at the outset. this is not a question of the restriction of the immigration of Chinese laborers into this country. That immigration has been already fully and carefully guarded against by previous legislation. This House has given to the subject its most careful consideration. and twice. bygreat majorities. it has passed acts which since then have been operative. and efficiently operative. in regard to this matter. The gentleman portrays the dangers of Chinese immigration. Why. sir. during the less than three years in which the last act passed by Congress on this subject has been in operation. the Chinese laboring population on the Pacific coast has been reduced 21.000.