Speech #780122524

Hu Shih. former Chinese Ambassador to the United States. who concluded a. notable address with this sage admonition: "Those who differ with you and energetically oppose your point of view are not necessarily stupid or evilminded." And at the outset I want to make it emphatically clear that my position. and that of those who appear here in my behalf. does not imply in any degree inferiority of the Chinese race in those matters to which they give their attention. It is on the very ground of this superiority in what is known as squatting occupations that the Chinese demonstrate their superiority. It is well known. of course. that California has borne the brunt of the long struggle for effective Asiatic exclusion. The working people of California were the pioneers in urging legislation to exclude Asiatics. When California. as a State. had accepted this policy there still remained the task of converting the Nation. The vast majority of immigrants from Asia have landed and remained in California. This situation has had a tendency to prolong the struggle. If Californians had -been able to legislate on the subject. it would have been settled in 1858. when the State legislature passed a rigid Chinese Exclusion Act. Of course. that law and all other State laws of similar nature were unconstitutional. In considering early history of the antiAsiatic movement it is interesting to note that while our first treaty with China was signed in 1884 the antiChinese agitation was in full swing in California at the very time when Commodore Perry made his first visit to Japan and attempted to persuade that country to do business with the world at large. The demand for a Chinese exclusion law was based upon the first law of nature: Selfpreservation. The advance guard of Chinas 400.000.000 were beginning to move across the Pacific. to a land of milk and honey. largely undeveloped and sparsely settled. There are those who now maintain that Chinese immigrants never were a menace to our country but the record speaks for itself. Without restriction. the teeming population of China could have literally overwhelmed our western shores in an incredibly short period. The opposition to Chinese immigration was not a racial but wholly an economic issue. For three decades. the white residents of California and adjacent States tried out every conceivable method to discourage Chinese immigration. There was an unending series of discriminatory State laws and city ordinances. There were antiChinese demonstrations. riots. and persecutions without number.