Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-03-08
THE CHINESE QUESTI9N.
THE LAW PROHIBITING EMPLOYMENT OF
CHINESE BY CORPORATIONS.
A Test case-The Points Made by the At
torneys-The Iecisicn of the
Court Foreshadowed.
ESPECIAL BIZ TELEGRAPH TO TUE nr0onD-usros.l

SAN FRANCISCO. March 7th-In the United
States Circuit Court Saturday, before Judges
SAWYER and Hoffman, the hearing of the
habeas corpus case of I'iburcio. Parrott be-
gun. Parrptt is held for having violated
the law prohibiting the emplovmentof Chinese
by corporations. AlcAllister & Bergin APP
peared for petitioner, Delos Lake for the
Chinese Consul, and Attorney General Hart,
District Attorney Smoot, Assistant District
Attorney Levy, Davis Louderback and Rob-
ert Ash for the people. The seats in the
Courtroom were early filed Had the room
offered greater facilities doubtless very
large crowd would have been in attendance,
but the doors had to be closed when the room
was filed, and many were denied admission.
ARGUMENT OF MR. M'ALLIsTRR.
Mr.. McAllister read the writ and the law.
He made these points:
l. The question substantially involves the
maintenance Of intercourse between Califor-
MIA and China.
g The law leaves it to the people to de-
eide what class Of aliens are detrimental to
the State.
8. The charge constitutes no crime known
to law.
4. An alien gets the right of protection
from his obedience, irrespective OF treaties
and Constitutions.
5. The encouragement of immigration has
always been cherished policy of the country.
Our own Courts have sustained the right of
immigration and residence of an alien. The
Supreme Court Of California held in the Chi
nese tax case that tax could be levied on
working mines. but not fer the privilege of
living in the State.
6. The new law IL in contravention of the
Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights
bill, which prohibit exactiens and penalties.
The State law cuts off the Chinese from all
public employment of every kind, as all great
industries are carried on by corporations.
z This exclusion is an exaction and PEN
atty which the Civil Rights bill prohibits.
Section 2l64 Revised Statutes, United States,
places all foreigners on the same basis, but
the California law discriminates against
Chinese.
6, The treaties provide that Chinese immi
grants shall be protected by local authorities
from insult and injury1(the Reed treaty..
The BurliDgame treaty provides for Chinese
Consuls in the United States and that Chinese
here and Americans in China shall enjoy the
right of religious worship, be permitted to
travel to and fro between the countries the same
as other subjects of the most favored nations.
The right OF the Chinese to immigrate to the
United States and TO have rights and immu-
mites are under the treaty secured to them
as to those of the most favored nation.
These treaties are the supreme law Of the
land.
.. When the treaty guaranteed the right
OF immigration and residence to Chinese it
guaranteed all the fundamental rights of
person, and the right of residence carries with
it the right to make use of mind and body,
the right to trade, labor, etc.
10. The Chinese under the treaty are guar
anteed all the privileges and immunities of
natiye-born citizens. The Supreme Court of
the United States has held that privileges
and immunities include the sacred right of
labor. Judge Deadly has held that the right
of the Chinese to work mines in Oregon is
under the right of control of mineral lands,
which belongs to the General Government,
and that under the treaty the Oregon law
prohibiting Chinese from working mines was
void, and subsequently he held that the right
of residence and labor to the Chinese is Sc
cured by the treaty.
IL. The question of limitation Of the treaty
making power was next considered, and cases
and treaties read, and the points made that
the treaty-maldng power having guaranteed
the Chinese the right TO l,bor, the State can
not take it away. There is nothing unusual
in our treaties with China, as comparison
shows.
H. The Chinese here are detrimental to
our interests, but the law under consideration
does not point out the proper mode of reIne-
dying the evil.
ARGUMENT OF JUDGE LAKE.
Delos Lake, at 5he afternoon session, made
these points on the same side:
]. The recent decisions of the Supreme
Court of the United States are decisive of
5his case. One is case in West Virginia,
which, il We substitute the term Chinaman
Or the woI6. colored mar, is substantially the
same as tbis case. he case involved the
constituti1nality, under the Fourteenth
Amendment, of the provisions of the Civil
Rights bill, in view of a statute Of the stats
of West Virginia which excluded colored
persons from serving juries. A County
Judge, under the State statute, selected
jarors, and, in obeyance to the State law, ex-
Guided negroes from the jury list The Su-
preme Court held that the State Court could
not thus discriminate against the colored race
without incurring the Penalties of the Civil
Right I'LL
2. Tn ECaEfornia claw aims not to reeu-
late corporations, but to exclude Chinese
from the State by taking away their means
of earning livelihood. The law is no more
constitutionalas confined to corporations than
it would be if applied to natural persons.
and the Legislature has no more power, in
carrying out this purpose of getting rid of
this class OF persons, toenacs that corporations
shall not employ them than it has the power
to enact that no natural person shall employ
them, because, if il has any ministerial or
supreme Federal power in the one case, it
has In the other, thus preventing them from
living by labor, for labor is the only mode in
which any human being has ever been known
to get living.
4. The chief object of the Fourteenth
Amendment was to protect the negro, who, at
the close of the was weak, ignorant and
liable to be imposed upon. Ii was resolved
to place him on a political equality with the
white. While the negro is thus the main
object in view, the amendment extends pro-
lection to all classes Of persons within the
jurisdiction of the United States.
.. Corporations are persons. They have
been SO held by the Supreme Court of the
United States in q certain class of cases.
They are persons in regard to the jurisdiction
of the Ed raj Courts, and there is no reason
why they should not be classed as persons in
Those civil rights given under the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution. 1t is but
an aggregation of several persons into one
fictitious person. Aud. therefore, whether
they aretreated as persons or not under this
provision, the persons who are injured by this
provision are natural persons, and are as such
protected. The great object of this clause
was to put all persons within the several
States on the same broad footing in respect to
gaining an honest livelihood, whether native
born or foreign, white or black.
q. The law which violates the spirit of the
Constitution is as much unconstitutional as
the one that violates its letter. 1t is impos-
sib.e to conceive of the complete ownership
of property disassociated with its untram-
meled use, and man is deprived of his prop
ertY when he is deprived of the power of using
it in the same way in which other persons are
permitted 10 use the same species of property,
or when he is forbidden to uss the ssme agen-
cies i'll the employment of his property which
are permitted to others. This Act allows all
natural persons to avail themselves of the
services of Chinese. bu. denies it to corpora
tons. To deprive one of the use of his prop
erty is equivalent to depriyiDg him of the
property itself. This Act deprives corpora
tions of employing the cheapest means of
using their property. aud hence OF the means of
making profit ont of il and Of competi
with all other natural persons engaged in the
same kind of business, and to that extent
they are deprived of their property.
z. TIE right Of labor Is property and the
night to labor is property, 1t Is said in 18th
Wallace Reports Labor ought to have the
means whereby to live. This law is barbar-
Gus. 1t turns out human beings to steal and