Speech #570039334

Secretary of State. said: The application of the settled principles of international law to the Chinese in the United States. is to be modified by the fact that the Chinese decline to accept these principles. leading an isolated life in the communities in which they are settled. always expecting to return to China and never. therefore. becoming domiciled among us. and that they maintain the sani system of isolation toward Americans in China. regarding them always ae strangers more or less outside the protection of law. In June. 1896. many merchants and manufacturers in the Philippines sent an antiChinese report to the government of Spain in which they said: There is no room to doubt that the Chinese merchant corrodes and sterilizes the most valuable germs of the national wealth everywhere. being the personification of the ignorant man in the fable who killed the goose that laid the golden egg. * * * a race which corrupts and dries up every place through which it passes. whose enumeration has always been a fraud to the Administration. for by fraud only about 25 or 0 per cent of them are calculated. a race which is excessively stubborn in persisting in maintaining their own peculiar customs and manner of life. which is stubborn in resisting ever ything pertaining to good government. public hygiene. and the police. w* * which altogether is a permanent menace to all the principles of the economic vitality of the country. (Report of the Philippine Commission. p. 153.) The Philippine Commission. in their report to the President. say: There was testimony before us to the point that the Chinese take out of the country everything they can. that they spend little in the country becausethey live on little. that they iiiteimarry with the Filipinowmen. and that they roduce a race which does not furnish good citizens: that many of the Freat troubles on the islands are caused by Chinese and their descendants. * * Some years ago nearly all the artisans such as carpenters. stonemasons. builders. and bricklayers were natives: now they are nearly all Chinese. you can hardly find a native carpenter or bricklayer. The idea of the Chinese immigrating to a foreign country is simply to gain a livelihood. They only seck their own advantage. and do not consider that they should even indirectly advance the commerce and the industries of the country which is their second home. * * * They have a great love for their native land. where they hope to live when they obtain a fortune. that they may not be separated from the remainsof their ancestors. * * * All of the Chinese who have obtained importance in the Philippines have been Christians. Their baptism was their initiation into power.