Speech #580059876

There was no avenue they did not invade. Their low wage and servile toil gave them such preference over the white competitor that the question was soon fairly up to the white working men and vomen whether they would toil for starvation wages or abandon their State and homes to the yellow invader or eliminate him from the life struggle through the union and boycott and by closing our ports to his further admission. The struggle along the latter line was commenced. and so overwhelming was the sentiment it created that in 1880 the Government coerced China into the treaty upon which rests our first legislative prohibition of Chinese immigration. China assented to that treaty after the United States convinced it that. treaty or no treaty. the legislation would be enacted and that the prohibition was likely to be less sweeping if Congress should frame a law within the terms of a moderate exclusion treaty. If there were no treaty. then the sentiment of the country would force Congress to exclude all. even the classes given entrance under that treaty and that have ever since been admitted and protected.