The Chinese Exclusion Act / Report and Resolutions Adopted by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York

by New York Chamber of Commerce

President Hayes in his veto massage of Mar. 1, 1879, says: "The principal feature on the Burlingame Treaty was its attention to and its treatment of the Chinese immigration, and the Chinese, forming, or as they should form, a part of our population." "Up to this time our uncovenanted hospitality, our fearless liberality of citizenship, our equal and comprehensive justice to all inhabitants, whether they abjured their foreign nationality or not, our civil freedom, and our religious toleration, had made all comers welcome, and, under these protections, the Chinese, in considerable numbers, had made their lodgment on our soil." "The Burlingame Treaty undertakes to deal with this situation, and its Vth and VIth articles embrace its most important provisions in this regard, and the main stipulations in which the Chinese government has secured an obligatory protection of its subjects within our territory."

In other words, the United States in consideration of certain obligations assumed by China, entered into a solemn contract to treat the Chinese coming to this country, as they always had been treated, and as immigrants from all other countries had always been treated.

What had always been our custom became a treaty obligation in return for certain covenants on the part of China, the chief of which was that all involuntary emigration was to be forbidden and penalties imposed to prevent it, and punish those who should in violation of the law engage in it.

Senator Morton of Indiana, said, "that this treaty was regarded by the whole nation as a grand triumph of American diplomacy and principles, and Mr. Burlingame as a benefactor of his country."

It is essential to observe that at the time of the approval of this treaty, and its recognition as a beneficial act for this country, the Chinese had been here in great numbers for more than twenty years. The record of their arrival as found in the Report of the Joint Special Committee of Congress, in 1876, shows that the whole number of Chinese in the United States at that time was about 114,000, and in California about 94,000. Another witness makes it about 4,000 less. It also appears that the largest arrivals were in the years 1848 to 1854. In that period the arrivals were over 50,000 and the departures about 8,000, leaving in the country at the beginning of 1855 about 42,000—or nearly half the whole number in California in 1876, twenty years later. In 1869, the number had reached about 70,000, or three-fourths the number found in California in 1876. It is therefore obvious that the people of California and of the whole United States had had prior to the approval of the Burlingame Treaty, ample opportunity to become familiar with the character of the Chinese. Nevertheless the treaty was welcomed which protected them in this country and encouraged their immigration.

This reflection brings us to one of the most remarkable changes of public sentiment on the Pacific coast, which has probably ever characterized a people, a change as sudden as it was remarkable, and as universal as it was sudden. Almost immediately after the confirmation of the Burlingame Treaty, in 1869, murmurs began to be heard in California, hostile to the Chinese. As early as December 22, 1869, an appeal was made to Congress for legislation to restrict Chinese immigration. Each successive Congress was appealed to but without effect until the 44th Congress, in 1876, appointed a joint committee to take testimony, and in 1877 passed a resolution calling on the President to "open negotiations with the Chinese government for the purpose of modifying the provisions between the two countries and restricting the same to commercial purposes." At the same time the Legislature of California appointed a special committee to investigate the subject and prepare a memorial to Congress. It was issued August, 1877, as an "Address to the people of the United States, upon the social, moral and political effect of Chinese immigration." This address contains evidence to prove that "the Chinaman is a factor hostile to the prosperity, the progress and the civilization of the American people."

The report of the Joint Committee of Congress, February, 1877, which fills a large volume of nearly 1,300 pages, contains similar evidence in greater detail, showing the unfitness of the Chinese, by their social and moral characteristics, by their religion and by their peculiar and apparently ineradicable desire to return to their native country, dead or alive—to form part of our population, to amalgamate with or be absorbed into it, as other races have been. It points out the fact that they come here, as a rule, without wives or children, live apart from other races, form no attachments to the soil or to our people, and by their lack of family relations and children present no facilities for association with our people, and no opportunities for growing into conditions or habits, which would tend to make them ultimately homogeneous with us. Furthermore, it was claimed by many witnesses, that the Chinese were a festering mass of corruption in the body politic, threatening to destroy the moral and physical health of the people, and that there were no other means of preventing this result than for the government to intervene, and by some modification of the treaty with China, check Chinese immigration.

The evidence on the other side was no less complete, showing the virtue, integrity, cleanliness, industry, skill, peaceableness, and, in general, the desirableness of the Chinese as an industrial element of our population.

It must be acknowledged that the witnesses on this side of the case were, as a rule, of the highest personal character, men of great intelligence, familiar, by practical relations, with the Chinese in various capacities, and many of them men who had learned the character of the Chinese by long residence in China.

It is also apparent that the conduct of the examination was in a spirit of bitter hostility to the Chinese and with a determination rather to prove the case against them than to ascertain the truth. The report as presented to Congress by Senator Sargent, of California, representing a majority of the joint committee, is adverse to the Chinese and recommends immediate steps to restrict the privileges granted by the treaty. On the other hand Senator Oliver P. Morton, the chairman of the committee, who heard patiently all the testimony, in a fragmentary paper, intended as the basis for a minority report, which was printed by order of the Senate after Mr. Morton's death, took strong grounds in favor of maintaining the treaty. He says: "The testimony shows that the intellectual capacity of the Chinese is fully equal that of white people. Their ability to acquire the mechanic arts and to imitate every process and form of workmanship, ranks very high, and was declared by many witnesses to be above that of white people, and their general intellectual power to understand and master any subject presented to the human understanding, to be quite equal to that of any other race" His conclusions are briefly embodied in the following sentences: "As Americans, charged with the administration of the laws by which equal rights and protection shall be extended to all races and conditions, we cannot now safely take a new departure which, in another form, shall resurrect and re-establish those odious distinctions of race which brought upon us the late civil war, and from which we fondly hoped that God in his providence had delivered us forever." "If the Chinese in California were white people, being in all other respects what they are, I do not believe that the complaints and warfare against them would have existed to any considerable extent." "Their difference in color, dress, manners and religion have, in my judgment, more to do with this hostility than their alleged vices, or any actual injury to the white people of California." He further adds, by way of suggestion of a remedy for their persecution: "Complete protection can be given them only by allowing them to become citizens and acquire the rights of suffrage when their votes would become important in elections and their persecutions in great part converted into kindly solicitation."