National Republican., 1880-12-27


The reason why we should not give the
Chinaman an equal chance" with our
own countryman is that we ought to care
more for our own. Charity begins at
home. We havejust achieved great vic
tory by the aid of American workingmen
on the ground that our tariff policy was
not giving other laborers an equal chance
with them. AS General Garfield has
said: ave legislate for the United States,
and not for the world" We so arrange
the tariff demanded by our revenue re-
quirement as to lessen the importation of
such goods as our laborers manufacture ut
home. This we do in order that home
fabrics, manufactured under liberal rates
of wages, may be sold cheaperin in our mar
ket than similar fabrics made by I'M
der-paid labor abroad. If it is hu-
name and just to thus c.ose our mar
kets to certain foreign fabrics in
order that our wofkingmen may have
employment and fair wages, it follows
that it is right to close our doors to an in
flux of Asiatics who come to work at less
than European wages. If it is not cruel
and unchristian to stop buying English
cotton fabrics, thereby dcpriving thou
sands of English operatives of employ
ment, it is because we have right to pre-
fer that our own people should work in
our own factories and live by the work
thus lost to others. And if we may prop
erly protect the American laborer by pol
icy which excludes the products of foreign
labor, why do we hesitate to exclude the
paupcr labor of Asia, which comes i'm
porting with il the starvation wages we
SO much dcprecate.
The Hart t-Ilcwitt-Morcy letter, which
did such mischief in the recent campaign,
played upon this chord. Its poison was
all contained in the thought that our
leader was willing TO favor high tariff
for the benefit of the manufacturer, but
was also willing to maintain unchanged
the Chinese treaty until the operatives
couldall be supplied from the mart which
"sells labor cheapest" The Republican
party, through its candidates, its speakers,
and its press-writcrs, are all committed
against this miserable and wicked policy
| No workingmen are to have an equal
chance with our own under our flag.
And no scrvile or contract laborers are to
be imported under the name of immi-
grafton.
Our land is not an asylum for the scum
of all nations. That we have claimed it
to be an asylum for the oppressed of all
nations" never meant anything more
than that those who fled the old worlds
tyranny, that they might enjoy civil and
religious liberty in the new, would not
exclude from the Republic they founded
any others similarly oppressed and seek
ing refuge among us. We would wei
come to the blessings of liberty all itS
devotecs from other countries. What has
this TO do with the Chinaman, saturated
with five thousand years Of imperialism
and with no vocabulary in which to speak
or think of liberty or of sclfgoyernment'
He is not here 10 quench his thirst fol
liberty. He is here TO work three ol
four years, and, having no family to sup
port, to be able, at whatever rate he IL
paid, to return TO China with little
money. lie has no wants beyond pipe
of opium, handful of rice, and one o
half dozen hunks in Il room ten feet
square, No family, no civilized wants
well may he be able to underworld tn,
humblest of our own, who has wife anC
children to feed andclothe. No tradition
of our nation pledges us to the asylum
, business in any such sense, or on any sucl
destructive and debasing scale.
As to the right of expatriation, it is tru
% that was embraced in the Burlingam
S treaty, 1t had no relevancy there Tn
= right of expatriation was the America
0 dogma which pitted against the Euro
a pean doctrine of perpetual allegiance
p England and other nations had insisted o
s the allegiance oftheir former subjects VIII
/ had become naturali2ed American citi2en
In 1872 our citizens We're taken from on
1 own merchant vessels at sea and i'm
pressed into the British service o.