The Treaty With China, its Provisions Explained

ARTICLE 5

The United States of America and the Emperor of China cordially recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and his allegiance, and also the mutual advantages of the free migration and immigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from the one country to the other for purposes of curiosity, trade, or as permanent residents. The high contracting parties, therefore, join in reprobating any other than an entirely voluntary immigration for these purposes. They consequently agree to pass laws making it a penal offense for a citizen of the United States or a Chinese subject to take Chinese subjects either to the United States or to any other foreign country, or for a Chinese subject or a citizen of the United States to take citizens of the United States to China or any other foreign country without their free and voluntary consent respectively.

Article 5 aims at two objects, viz.: The spreading of the naturalization doctrine (Mr. Seward could not give his assent to a treaty which did not have that in it) and the breaking up of the infamous Coolie trade. It is popularly believed that the Emperor of China sells Coolies himself, by the shipload, and even at retail, but such is not the case. He is known to be exceedingly anxious to destroy the Coolie trade. The “voluntary” emigration of Chinamen to California already amounts to a thousand a month, and this treaty will greatly increase it. It will not only increase it, but will bring over a better class of Chinamen-men of means, character, and standing in their own country. The present Chinese immigration, however, is the best class of people – in some respects, though not in all – that comes to us from foreign lands. They are the best railroad hands we have by far. They are the most faithful, the most temperate, the most peaceable, the most industrious. The Pacific Railroad Company employs them almost exclusively, and by thousands. When a chicken roost or a sluice-box is robbed in California, some Chinaman is almost sure to suffer for it – yet these dreadful people are trusted in the most reckless manner by the railroad people. The Chinese railroad hands go down in numbers to Sacramento and often spend their last cent. Then they simply go to the Superintendent, state their case, write their names on a card, together with a promise to refund out of the first wages coming to them, and with no other security than this, railroad tickets are sold to them on credit. Mr. Crocker and his subordinates have done this time and again, and have yet to lose the first cent by it. In the towns and cities the Chinamen are cooks, chambermaids, washerwomen, nurses, merchants, butchers, gardeners, interpreters in banks and business houses, etc. They are willing to do anything that will afford them a living.

ARTICLE 6

Citizens of the United States visiting or residing in China shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, or exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation; and, reciprocally, Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities and exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation; but nothing herein contained shall be held to confer naturalization upon the citizens of the United States in China, nor upon the subjects of China in the United States.

There will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth on the Pacific coast when Article 6 is read. For, at one sweep, all the crippling, intolerant, and unconstitutional laws framed by California against Chinamen pass away, and discover (in stage parlance) 20,000 prospective Hong Kong and Suchow voters and office-holders! Tableau. I am not fond of Chinamen, but I am still less fond of seeing them wronged and abused. If the reader has not lived in San Francisco, he can have only a very faint conception of the tremendous significance of this mild-looking, unpretentious Article 6. It lifts a degraded, snubbed, vilified, and hated race of men out of the mud and invests them with the purple of American sovereignty. It makes men out of beasts of burden. The first iniquity it strikes at is that same revolutionary one of taxation without representation. In California the law imposes a burdensome mining tax upon Chinamen – a tax which is peculiar in its nature and is not imposed upon any other miners, either native or foreign – and the legislature that created this rascality knew the law was in flagrant violation of the constitution when they passed it. Mr. Cushing, a great lawyer, and formerly minister to China, says that nearly all the Pacific coast laws relating to Chinamen are unconstitutional and could not stand in a court at all. The Chinese mining tax has been collected with merciless faithfulness for many years – often two or three times, instead of once – but its collection will have to be discontinued now. Treaties of the United States override the handiwork of even the most gifted of State legislatures. In San Francisco if a Chinaman enters a street car to ride with the Negroes and the Indians and the other gentlemen and ladies, the magnificent conductor instantly ejects him, with all the insolence that $75 a month and official importance of microscopic dimensions confer upon small people. The Chinaman may ride on the front platform, but not elsewhere. Hereafter, under the ample shadow of Article 6, he may ride where he pleases. Chinamen, the best gardeners in America, own no gardens. The laws of California do not allow them to acquire property in real estate. Article 6 does, though. Formerly, in the police court, they swore Chinamen according to the usual form, and sometimes, where the magistrate was particularly anxious to come at the truth, a chicken was beheaded in open court and some yellow paper burned with awful solemnity while the oath was administered – but the Chinaman testified only against his own countrymen. Things are changed now, however, and he may testify against whom he pleases. No one ever saw a Chinaman on a jury on the Pacific coast. Hereafter they will be seen on juries, sitting in judgment upon the crimes of men of all nationalities. Chinamen have taken no part in elections, heretofore, further than to sweep out the balloting stations, but the time is near at hand when they will vote themselves; when they will be clerks and judges of election, and receive and account for the votes of white men; when they will be eligible to office and may run for Congress, if such be the will of God. We have seen caricatures in San Francisco representing a white man asking a Chinaman for his vote. It was fine irony then, but in a very little while the same old lithograph, resurrected, will have as much point as it ever had, only the subject of it will have become a solemn reality instead of an ingenious flight of fancy. In that day, candidates will have to possess other accomplishments besides being able to drink lager beer and twirl a shillalah. They will have to smoke opium and eat with chop-sticks. Influential additions will have to be made to election tickets and transparencies, thus: “THE COUNTRY’S HOPE, THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE – DONNERWETTER, O’SHAUGHNESSY, AND CHING-FOO” The children of Chinese citizens will have the entry of the public schools on the same footing as white children. Any one who is not blind, can see that the first ninety words of Article 6 work a miracle which shames the most dazzling achievements of him of the wonderful lamp. I am speaking as if I believed the Chinamen would hasten to take out naturalization papers under this treaty and become citizens. I do believe it. They are shrewd and smart, and quick to see an advantage; that is one argument. If they have any scruples about becoming citizens, the politicians who need their votes will soon change their opinions. Article 6 does not confer citizenship upon Chinamen – we have other laws which regulate that matter. It simply gives them the privileges and immunities pertaining to “residence,” in the same degree as they are enjoyed by the “subjects of the most favored nation.” One of the chief privileges pertaining to “residence” among us is that of taking the oath and becoming full citizens after that residence has been extended to the legal and customary period. Mr. Cushing says the Chinamen had a right to become citizens before Article 6 was framed. They certainly have it now. Prominent senators refused to touch the treaty or have anything to do with it unless it threw the doors of citizenship open as freely to Chinamen as to other foreigners. The entire Senate knew the broadest meaning of Article 6 – and voted for it. The closing sentence of it was added to please a certain Senator, and then he was satisfied and supported the treaty with all his might. It was a gratification to him to have that sentence added; and inasmuch as the sentence could do no harm, since it don’t mean anything whatever under the sun, it was gratefully and cheerfully added. It could not have been added to please a worthier man. It sets off the treaty, too, because it is so gracefully worded and is so essentially and particularly ornamental. It embellishes and supports the grand edifice of the Chinese treaty, even as a wealth of stucco embellishes and supports a stately temple. It would hardly be worth while for a treaty to confer naturalization in the last clause of an article wherein it had already provided for the acquirement of naturalization by the proper and usual course. The idea of making negroes citizens of the United States was startling and disagreeable to me, but I have become reconciled to it; and being reconciled to it, and the ice being broken and the principle established, I am now ready for all comers. The idea of seeing a Chinaman a citizen of the United States would have been almost appalling to me a few years ago, but I suppose I can live through it now. Maybe it will be well to say what sort of people these prospective voters are. There are 50,000 of them on the Pacific coast at large, and 15,000 or 20,000 in San Francisco. They occupy a quarter just out of the business center of the city. They worship a hideous idol in a gorgeous temple. They have a theater, where the orchestra sit on the stage (drinking tea occasionally,) and deafening the public with a ceaseless din of gongs, cymbals, and fiddles with two strings, whose harmonies are capable of inflicting exquisite torture. Their theatrical dresses are much finer and more costly than those in the Black Crook, and the immorality of their plays is fully up to the Black Crook standard. Consequently they are ruined people. Their prominent instinct being just like ours, let us extend the right-hand of fellowship to them across the sea. Some of the men gamble, and the standing of the women is not good. The Chinese streets of San Francisco are crowded with shops and stalls mostly, but there are many Chinese merchant princes who do business on a large scale. The remittances of coin to China amount to half a million a month. Chinamen work hard and with tireless perseverance; other foreigners get out of work, and labor exchanges must look out for them. Chinamen look out for themselves, and are never idle a week at a time; they make excellent cooks, washers, ironers, and house servants; they are never seen drunk; they are quiet, orderly, and peaceable, by nature; they possess the rare and probably peculiarly barbarous faculty of minding their own business. They are as thrifty as Holland Dutch. They permit nothing to go to waste. When they kill an animal for food, they find use for its hoofs, hide, bones, entrails – everything. When other people throw away fruit cans they pick them up, heat them, and secure the melted tin and solder. They do not scorn refuse rags, paper, and broken glass. They can make a blooming garden out of a sand-pile, for they seem to know how to make manure out of everything which other people waste. As I have said before, they are remarkably quick and intelligent, and they can all read, write, and cipher. They are of an exceedingly observant and inquiring disposition. I have been describing the lowest class of Chinamen. Do not they compare favorably with the mass of other immigrants? Will they not make good citizens? Are they not able to confer a sound and solid prosperity upon a State? What makes a sounder prosperity or invites and unshackles capital more surely than good, cheap, reliable labor? California and Oregon are vast, uncultivated grain fields. I am enabled to state this in the face of the fact that California yields twenty million bushels of wheat this year! California and Oregon will fill up with Chinamen, and these grain fields will be cultivated up to their highest capacity. In time, some of them will be owned by Chinamen, inasmuch as the treaty gives them the right to own real estate. The very men on the Pacific coast who will be loudest in their abuse of the treaty will be among those most benefited by it – the day-laborers. The Chinamen, able to work for half wages, will take their rough manual labor off the hands of these white men, and then the whites will rise to the worthier and more lucrative employment of superintending the Chinamen, and doing various other kinds of brain-work demanded of them by the new order of things. Through the operation of this notable Article 6, America becomes at once as liberal and as free a country as England – therefore let me rejoice. Singapore is a British colony. There are 16,00 °Chinese there, and they are all British subjects – British citizens in the widest meaning of the term. They have all the rights and privileges enjoyed by Englishmen. They hold office. One Chinaman there is a magistrate, and administers British law for British subjects. A Chinaman resident for three or four years in England, and possessing a certain amount of property, can become naturalized and vote, hold office, and exercise all the functions and enjoy all the privileges of citizens by birth.