"The Wyoming Anti-Chinese Riot," Again [pp. 54-60]

"The WVyoming Anti-Chinese Riot."
Protestants or Catholics, not to Christians
or Jews, or to unbelievers, not to pagans or
to Yankees, but to Meen." We are, therefore,
mere transitory tenants of this land, without
right in nature or religion to maintain our
ground, or guard one of the most enlightened spots of the great footstool from being
plunged into the darkness and degradation
of the worst. So far goes "J.'s" logic; and it
matters not to the question of its correctness,
whether the foreboding that this may occur
is well or ill founded. The pagans have a
right to occupy this country whether we
will or no, and we are impiously disregardful of God's decrees, if we seek by law to
keep them out. And it matters not how
much our own people may suffer; how deep
the poverty entailed on the workers of our
own land; how contagious the vices spread
in our society; how rapidly the heathen
may come here; how their arrogance may
increase, even until they shall have seized
upon all the avenues of labor, and by strikes
ruin employers, unless all white workmen
are discharged; all this and more we are to
suffer; all this we are powerless to avert
by a restrictive law; because it is the will of
God that the worst of mankind shall have
free course on the earth, to trample down
the prosperity and blight the hopes of the
best. If the above are fair elements in the
consideration of this great question in "J.'s"
mind, why does he ignore them? One
would be happy to find, in all his article, a
line which shows the sympathy of its able
author for the white workers of our own
country; a response to their desire to retain
the means to maintain the humble, happy
homes of the artisan and laborer which are
a distinctive feature of this country; and an
appreciation of the pressing fact that cheap
labor means Poverty, zinorance, and vice. If
his allusions in that regard are correctly
understood, his sympathies are rather with
the capitalist who "wants labor"; and he
sees or states no objection to the coolie fur nishing it at rates that would starve a white
man.
This view of the relation of capital and
labor is not new. Gibbon said of the Ro
mans: "It was more for the interest of the
merchant or manufacturer to purchase than
to hire his workman; and in the country
slaves were employed as the cheapest and
most laborious instruments of agriculture."
Our institutions are founded on a higher
view of labor, and we expelled slavery
because inconsistent with their spirit. But
the old idea of cheapening labor still exists
in human selfishness, and ever the fight goes
on between the worker who seeks to keep
his head above the tide of want, and those
who are indifferent to his fate. The most
specious means yet found in this country to
depress the laborer is in this Chinese immigration, for it furnishes most of the conditions of a cheap and servile class; while
objections to its influx are met with suggestions of inhumanity and irreligion. The
solution of a problem long held impossible
is thus furnished, and the way is discovered
to serve both God and Mammon.
But "J." asks: "Have we a right to exclude by law?" Yes; we have the right of
self-defense. It was believed by our forefathers that we had such right as a nation.
Jefferson expressly taught it in the Federal ist. If necessary to our own happiness and
comfort, we have the same right to exclude
any immigration that "J." has to exclude a
drunkard or adulterer from his home. How
contemptible would be the condition of a
people, which could not shield itself from
the vices or diseases of other people by an
effective quarantine! We derive the right
of exclusion from the same source that we
do that to imprison lunatics, or execute
criminals. There is the same natural and
divine right for every man to roam over the
country that there is to roam over the earth.
Yet if the defense of society requires that he
be shut up or killed, who quotes this nat ural right for his exemption? Every man
has a right to live in the bosom of his family.
If, from an infectious disease, the preserva tion of society requires it, he is shut up in
a pest-house. If the moral and physical
health of a community require it, can it not
rightfully take analogous measures for its
security?
1886.1
55