Speech #560021871

We whip them in our penitentiary. and you whip them in yours. and you whip them when they are imprisoned for crime and will not obey orders. The crime here is that the laborer comes from Japan or from China under contract. and he gets tired after a while and wants to get away and get into tile United Statesthe glorious and blessed country where the thirteenth. fourteenth. and fifteenth amendments are supposed to protect the colored manwith the result I have indicated. Then. since we annexed those islands they have imported 25.000 more of these contract laborers. and the committee propose to allow them to be made to carry out their contracts. Another phase of this question I do not understand. but which perhaps the Senator from Alabama or the Senator from Illinois will enlighten me upon. is that there is some mention made in some of the documents I have read of the obligation on the part of the Hawaiian government to the Japanese Government to pay the contract price of those laborers before they are brought away. and there is in obligation on the part of the Hawaiian government to see that the obligation made by the contract laborer in Japan is carried out. and that he receives his compensation. I do not know whether any such provision of law as that exists or not. but if it does. it simply means that tho republic of Hawaii originally. and the Territory of Hawaii now. unless we by legislation prevent itI can not get any consecutive idea about this bill. and it would take seventeen Philadelphia lawyers to tell what it means in the way we have fixed it and what its effect will bebut. as I have said. unless we prevent the judicial tribunal to so interpret the law. and unless we prohibit such contracts. and unless we emancipate those contract laborers. they will be forced to carry out their contracts. and there is no hope for them outside of this Capitol. I asked the Senator from Massachusetts this morning. a man who I know abhors this whole scheme. as I do. to have this bill reprinted with all the amendments in it before a vote is taken. and then Senators should take it and study it carefully. I fear some way will be found. some loophole through the judiciary to be appointed by that governor. by which they could enforce those contracts by some annulment of the provisions which have been put in here.