Speech #500105561

He does not want that sppken of at all. let bygones be bygones. he says. When the Republican party at Chicago are proclaiming themselves as the special friends and guardians of American labor. and denouncing the Democratic party as working in the interests of foreigners while they themselves are maintaining such a policy as will sustain the industries of the country. is it not proper to show that steadily and persistently their own candidate for the Presidency as long as he had power to do it exhibited his opposition to excluding those veryChinese laborers up to the last moment? And though the Senator from Nevada announced that a Senator from California had settled the question of naturalization years ago against the Chinese. the law partner of the Republican candidate is shown to have gone into a court at Indianapolis after that was done and had several Chinese men naturalized. and the candidate received their votes. In 1886 the Senator says we were all agreed that they must be kept out. The bill of that year was proposed and passed in the Senate after a Democratic administration had come into power. For twenty years the Republican organization. the special friends of American labor. had allowed them to come in. During the war they imposed taxes to the highest possible point. and when they had both Houses by nearly a unanimous vote. certainly more than twothirds in each. they passed a law providing that men should be brought here from all parts of the world by contract to labor for the great protected organizations that they had built up. The only law of that kind they ever did pass was "An act to encourage immigration. " and section 2 of it provided: That all contracts that shall be made by emigrants to the United States in foreign countries. in conformity to regulations that may be established by the said commissioner. whereby emigrants shall pledge the wages of their labor for a term not exceeding twelve months. to repay the expenses of their emigration.. shall be held to be valid in law. and may be enforced in the courts of the United States. or of the several States and Territories. and such advances. if so sti pulated in the contract. and the contract be recorded in the recorders office in the county where the emigrant shall settle. shall operate as a lien upon any land thereafter acquired by the emigrant. whether under the homestead law when the title is consummated. or on property otherwise acquired until liquidated by the emigrant. That act was approved July 4.1864. and was maintained on the statutebook unrepealed until after the election of Mr. Cleveland. repealed by a law passed February 26. 1885. when power was departing from those men by the election of a Democratic President. never repealed until the power had gone from them. and even the homestead was subjected to a lien here created.