Speech #570040830

The Chinaman in Alnerica is forever and always an alien. For the most part he does not attempt to be or to appear to be anything else. and when ihe does the veneer of Americanism is so thin as to disclose the Tartar at the slightest touch. It is safe to say that no Chinaman ever landed on our shores who fulfilled the conditions I have suggested as requisite in a useful immigrant. None ever landed. in my opinion. nor would there be likely to any land if allowed so to do. with any other purpose than to accumulate a competency with which to return to his native country to pass the evening of his day. Now. this may be praiseworthy in him from a Chinee standpoint. but from an American standpoint it stamps him as a class highly undesirable. Not only does the Chinaman land on our shores without the slightest thought or expectation of adopting our views or of conforming to our methods. but he comes with habits fixed and inflexible. with racial characteristics and racial vices which renderhim unfit for American citizenship even if he desired it. His extreme frugality and untiring industry. his selfdenial of many of those things which we consider necessities. while in the abstract they. might not be considered in the nature of serious faults. render him such a dangerous rival of our citizens in the lines of industry which he undertakes as to disturb our entire industrial system where he is present in any considerable numbers. with an inevitable tendency toward breaking down and lowering American standards of living and our ideals of the duties. responsibilities. and possibilities of life outside. beyond. and above the mere drudgery of existence. So it seems to me. whatever view you take of the Chinese as an immigrant. his presence must be considered undesirable and a menace to our institutions. He does not wish or desire to come here to become an American. to adopt our ideas. to learn of our institutions. and to assist in upholding and developing them. therefore he should be denied admittance. and if by chance he should so desire lie should still be excluded. for his racial instincts. tendencies. and disposition are such that he must of necessity be forever a disturbing element in our social and industrial economy. I congratulate the committee upon the result of its labors. for I believe they have drafted a bill which will more effectually exclude the Chinese than the piesent law. and this is a consummation greatly to be desired. Not only should American labor be protected from a general inroad of these people. but no additions whatever should be allowed to their numbers. No American workingman should be compelled to seek employment in competition with them. for he can not successfully compete with them without adopting their methods of life. and God forbid that any American should be brought to the low standards of living of the Chinese cooly. I am heartily in favor of those provisions of the bill which provide for the exclusion of Chinese coolies from the Philippines and Hawaii. Hawaii already has a most serious problem in her large Asiatic population. and it should not be added to by a single individual by immigration. In the Philippines the people of those islands should be left to work out their own salvation under our guidance without the competition of hordes of Chinese. It is true that their presence there in large numbers might assist in the rapid development of some classes of projects. but we might better run the risk of less rapid development than invite the danger of further complication by large Chinese immigration. I am thankful. Mr. Chairman. that our portals are to be still more safely guarded against the coming of the yellow peril. I have no fear that continued exclusion will affect in any way our trade with China. but if it should. it were infinitely better that we never sold China a dollars worth of merchandise or prodnce than that we should degrade our people by compelling them to compete with coolie labor or endanger our institutions by an influx of hordes of the heathen Chinee.