The Chinese Must Go

by Beth Lew-Williams

  immigration was a great evil was so deep- seated and unan i mous that mob

  vio lence was openly threatened, and in many instances the arm of the law

  seemed powerless to protect.”103

  A sizable minority opposed the legislation, however, arguing that it was

  an “extreme . . . sweeping and oppressive” bill that breached the new An-

  gell Treaty with China.104 As Connecticut Republican Orville Platt reminded

  the Senate, “We made this contract which we call a treaty with the Chinese

  Government. . . . We must keep it or stand forever disgraced in the eyes of

  the world.”105 Some congressmen went further, questioning Congress’s right

  to unilaterally exclude Chinese mi grants. George F. Hoar, a Republican sen-

  THE CHINESE QUESTION

  49

  ator from Mas sa chu setts, pointed out that the United States had described

  immigration as an “inalienable right of man” in the Burlingame Treaty. “It

  has been asserted that we have the right to exclude any man for any length

  of time, or all men for all time, according to our own judgment,” said Con-

  necticut Republican Joseph Hawley. “Perhaps so; perhaps not. Perhaps we

  are confounding right and power.”106 Egalitarian impulses lay behind this

  bold opposition, but so did the economic interests of northeastern elites. They

  continued to envision Amer ica’s empire on a wide scale and held a large stake

  in the importation of Chinese tea and silk and exports of cotton textiles

  to China.107

  Although they did not defend the merits of Chinese migration, these

  Republican holdouts fought to amend the bill to make it less severe. They

  argued that the twenty- year period should be shortened and the passport

  section dropped, or that the restriction should apply only to certain undesir-

  ables: contract laborers, criminals, paupers, and the diseased. With this

  fight for amendments, East Coast Republicans indicated their willingness

  to support some form of Chinese restriction but also showed steadfast de-

  termination to avoid complete exclusion. In the end, Republicans failed to

  appreciably weaken the bill before it passed, with Senate Demo crats voting

  in favor (20 to 1) and Republicans divided (9 to 14). Soon after, the House

  also passed the bill, Demo crats again united in favor of the act and Repub-

  licans splitting their votes, with 60 in favor and 62 opposed.

  Whether President Chester Arthur would sign the bill was anyone’s guess.

  When he joined the winning Republican ticket as vice president in 1880, he

  had never held elected office or spoken publicly on the topic of Chinese mi-

  gration. The assassination of President James A. Garfield in the summer of

  1881 suddenly elevated Arthur to the presidency. When Senate Bill 71 passed

  Congress, Arthur held three cabinet meetings before he ultimately deci ded

  to veto it. Along with his veto, he sent a lengthy note to Congress explaining

  that the legislation was “a breach of our national faith” and threatened Amer-

  ican commercial interests in Asia. Arthur wrote to Congress: “Experience

  has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influ-

  ence. . . . It needs no argument to show that the policy which we now pro-

  pose to adopt must have a direct tendency to repel oriental nations from us

  and to drive their trade and commerce into more friendly lands.” He feared

  50 RESTRICTION

  the twenty- year ban violated the spirit of the Angell Treaty and he called

  the system of personal registration “undemo cratic and hostile to the spirit

  of our institutions.” Echoing the arguments of cosmopolitan elites, Arthur

  also maintained that Chinese workers had helped to develop Amer ica. “No

  one can say that the country has not profited by their work,” he wrote. “En-

  terprises profitable alike to the cap ital ist and to the laborer of Caucasian

  origin would have lain dormant but for them.”108 He deemed this bill un-

  reasonable, but encouraged Congress to consider “a shorter experiment.”

  Given the sizable number of Republican holdouts, Congress could not

  hope to pass the law over Arthur’s veto. The Republican opposition made it

  clear that they stood with the president and only favored, according to Re-

  publican representative Cyrus Prescott of New York, “a trial of restrictive

  legislation within such reasonable bounds as shall fully keep good faith with

  the treaties between our Government and China.” Ohio Republican senator

  John Sherman explained, “ There is but little dispute that some provision of

  law should be made to restrain the importation of the class of Chinese la-

  borers into this country,” but he opposed Bill 71 because “ under the pretense

  of regulating the importation of Chinese laborers Congress passed a bill

  which prohibits Chinese immigration for twenty years.” Sherman reminded

  the Senate: “We have now secured the right and consent of the Chinese Gov-

  ernment to regulate and limit immigration, but not to prohibit it.”109 Few

  congressmen stood in favor of Chinese immigration, but many urged legis-

  lative restraint and diplomatic caution. They used careful rhe toric to draw

  distinctions between the desire to “restrict” and to “exclude,” and between

  the right to “limit” or to “prohibit.” After so many years of migration unfet-

  tered by federal legislation, they argued that any turn toward gatekeeping

  should be on a “trial” or “experiment[al]” basis.110

  Republicans in Congress had to do something. Arthur’s veto provoked a

  national outcry and, not surprisingly, more threats of vio lence. Republican

  senator John F. Miller believed that the veto would “make it certain that

  [the Republican Party] cannot carry the Pacific coast for some time,” and

  Demo cratic senator James T. Farley described the veto as “the po liti cal ruin

  of Mr. Arthur.” The New York Tribune reported that “some [western con-

  gressmen] went so far as to say that the Republican Party had elected its last

  president.” In Philadelphia, the Knights of Labor, a national labor union op-

  posed to monopolies, or ga nized a mass meeting of 10,000 workers to pro-

  THE CHINESE QUESTION

  51

  test the veto. In several towns in California, President Arthur was burned

  or hanged in effigy.111 “My information from home is that there is very great

  excitement among the people,” California senator James Farley reported.

  “Vio lence may break out to- day in San Francisco.”112 John Sherman, for one,

  took offense at the implied threat “that fires may occur, that murders may

  be committed, or that outrages may be perpetrated in California,” urging

  Congress to avoid being “herded” by fears of vio lence.113 Still, the public

  backlash against Arthur’s veto made it clear that opposing Chinese restric-

  tion was po liti cally untenable.

  Only a few weeks after the veto, Congress considered a new Chinese bill

  that was a watered- down version of its pre de ces sor. The vetoed Senate Bill

  71 had already made significant efforts to avoid aggravating the Chinese gov-

  ernment, but the new bill went even further, placing diplomatic concerns

  above desires to
limit Chinese migration. Not only did Congress halve the

  term of restriction to ten years, it also eliminated the section that instituted

  an internal registration and passport system and one that made illegal im-

  migration a crime punishable by imprisonment and a fine.114 With additional

  Republican support, Congress passed the weakened bill, and on May 6, 1882,

  President Arthur signed it into law.115

  The name of the act is telling. Its lengthy formal title, “An Act to execute

  certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese,” acknowledged its diplomatic

  origins while its moniker in the press, “the Chinese Restriction Act,” reflected

  its limited intent. Tempered by Republican fears of violating Amer ica’s trea-

  ties with China, the Restriction Act was deliberately narrow in scope. Con-

  gress did not design the Restriction Act to “exclude” Chinese mi grants from

  Amer ica; many members even questioned whether they had the legal pre-

  rogative to do so against China’s wishes.116

  Instead, American lawmakers made an uneasy compromise between U.S.

  imperialism at home and abroad. On behalf of the colonial settlers of the

  U.S. West, Congress restricted Chinese entry and continued to bar Chinese

  naturalization, helping to guarantee that the heathen coolie would remain

  forever alien. For cosmopolitan elites who dreamed of imperialism on a wider

  scale, Congress carefully preserved the cooperative open door and kept the

  nation’s gates propped ajar. With no national consensus supporting Chinese

  exclusion, the Restriction Period (1882–1888) became a time of uncertainty,

  experimentation, and diplomacy.117 Even the law’s supporters acknowledged

  52 RESTRICTION

  its limitations and openly questioned if it would be enough to quell anti-

  Chinese vio lence. For example, Representative Willis, who had supported

  the more severe Senate bill, also backed the Restriction Act but did so under

  protest, describing the act as “insufficient, crude, weak, and imperfect.”

  Giving voice to the worries that pervaded Congress, he wondered aloud,

  “could such a bill as this bring back peace and order?”118

  2

  Experiments in Restriction

  THE CHINESE RESTRICTION ACT broke the river of legal Chinese mi grants

  to the United States into several illicit streams. One flowed into the country

  surreptitiously across the U.S.- Canadian border, a smaller branch covertly

  crossed the U.S.- Mexico border, and the main fork entered through San

  Francisco Bay, now under the cover of fraud. Tens of thousands of Chinese

  gained official admission to the United States between 1882 and 1888, when

  the Chinese Restriction Act was in place, and untold thousands more slipped

  into the country undetected.

  The situation in Washington Territory was particularly dire. Fraud plagued

  immigration control in San Francisco but there, at least, customs officials

  could see, count, and document mi grants as they disembarked at Amer i ca’s

  primary Pacific port. It was not so simple along the nation’s land borders,

  where hundreds of miles of desert and forest proved nearly impossible to

  patrol. While few Chinese lived in northern Mexico in the 1880s, there

  were thousands just across the northern U.S. border in British Columbia. “I

  believe they are coming to our side every day, by water and by land, and by

  boats and canoes,” Deputy Collector of Customs Arthur Blake wrote des-

  perately to his superiors in 1884, “between British Columbia, and this country,

  it seems to me the Restriction Act, is almost worthless.”1

  As local officers panicked in Washington Territory, federal bureaucrats

  in D.C. published rosy statistics boasting of restriction’s effectiveness. The

  Trea sury Department had recorded tens of thousands of Chinese mi grants

  in the de cade before restriction, but claimed that only forty Chinese immi-

  grated to the United States in 1886, ten in 1887, and twenty- six in 1888. Over

  53

  54 RESTRICTION

  a century later, historians continue to reprint these implausible numbers

  and use them as evidence that the 1882 law dramatically aggrandized the

  federal government.2 In truth, there is little to indicate that the law slowed

  Chinese migration or that it transformed federal power overnight.

  Given the century or so of permeable borders since, it will come as little

  surprise that the United States failed to seal its borders on its first federal

  attempt. What is more striking is that the law was never intended to close

  Amer ica’s gates. Chinese migration continued not just because the state was

  clumsy in its efforts at restriction, but also because these efforts were inten-

  tionally circumscribed. After de cades of conflict over the Chinese Question,

  Congress did not write the Restriction Act to massively expand the federal

  government and stop Chinese migration once and for all; rather Congress

  offered a temporary stopgap and began a halting first experiment in federal

  border control.

  To understand the nature of Chinese restriction we must comprehend the

  workings of the American state in the nineteenth century, and to compre-

  hend the American state we must understand this critical test. The Restric-

  tion Act realized American ideals of government checks and balances; it was

  the product of a split Congress recently cowed by presidential veto. But in-

  stead of solving the po liti cal divisions over the Chinese Question, the law

  simply reflected them, pairing bold declarations against Chinese migration

  with diplomatic concessions to China. The result was an ambiguous and

  porous act.

  The law’s implementation also reflected the government’s conflicted aims

  of Chinese restriction at home and commercial expansion in Asia.3 Top of-

  ficials in the Trea sury Department, assigned the task of enforcement, were

  highly invested in Amer ica’s transpacific commerce. Federal and state judges,

  charged with adjudicating challenges to the law, often held similar sympa-

  thies. Though scholars have lauded western judges for a progressive approach

  to racial equality and immigrant rights, in fact they were sometimes swayed

  by less altruistic concerns, including U.S. interests in China. Both arms of

  the U.S. state sought to enforce Chinese restriction without compromising

  an imperial vision of Amer ica’s Pacific future.

  While statesmen at the nation’s core continued to be divided over the

  Chinese Question, officials at its periphery showed few reservations about

  this border- making proj ect.4 Local authorities, immersed in local politics and

  EXPERIMENTS IN RESTRICTION

  55

  operating on a local scale, showed singular investment in ending Chinese

  migration. In Washington Territory, customs officers attempted to make

  the law stronger than was ever intended. When Deputy Blake, for example,

  realized that the Restriction Act was “almost worthless,” he and the other

  local officers along the U.S.- Canadian boundary went beyond the letter of

  the law. They developed a homegrown system of identifying, apprehending,

  and deporting Chinese mi grants without trial. These local arms of the fed-
/>   eral government, more determined to prevent Chinese migration than their

  superiors back in Washington, D.C., sought to close the border by blurring

  the distinction between public and private enforcement.

  This marriage of legal and extralegal efforts reenacted a time- honored tra-

  dition in U.S. statecraft. Chinese restriction is emblematic of the divided,

  diffuse, and often hidden nature of U.S. government at the time.5 The power

  of the nineteenth- century American state did not rest in centralization or

  despotic authority; it derived from the state’s ability to mobilize forces out-

  side formal state institutions and to permeate all levels of society.6 By shifting

  scales, we can see how Chinese restriction blurred the lines between local

  and federal governance, private and public persons, and legal and extralegal

  actions. Chinese restriction, like so many ele ments of U.S. state- building,

  became a community affair. The blending of public and private methods of

  enforcement may have aided local officials in the short term, but it also had

  unintended consequences. When they recruited community members to en-

  force the law, officers both encouraged a form of vigilantism and broadcast

  their own inability to control Chinese migration.

  Documented Migration at San Francisco’s Gates

  The Restriction Act did little to create the U.S. border control we know

  today. The law did not produce a corps of federal officials trained to mon-

  itor mi grants, a network of detention centers, a bureau of immigration, or a

  designated system for administrative review. All this came later. Congress

  simply charged the Department of Trea sury and its collection of customs

  houses with the job of enforcement. By doing so, the federal government,

  which had limited power during this period, handed Chinese restriction to

  one of its strongest and most centralized arms. But Congress offered Cus-

  toms few resources to further extend its reach, adding merely five thousand

  56 RESTRICTION

  dollars in annual funding to a bud get that was regularly mea sured in the

  millions.7

  Officially, the law took effect across the nation, at every land and sea

  border, but the real ity of transportation and migration networks meant that

  in practice Amer ica’s first broad attempt to stop unauthorized migration was