Legal Strategies Against the Geary Act

The Chinese Six Companies expect, with the aid of Joseph H. Choate and other prominent Eastern lawyers, to attempt to defeat the Chinese Exclusion Act by appeal to the supreme court. The method will be to have a Chinese individual in New York arrested on May 6 and taken before a Federal Judge, who will be asked to deport him at once. The order will be made and then a writ of habeas corpus will be sued out, the prisoner will be remanded, and an appeal taken to the United States supreme court. The Chinese Masonic Society of California, 15,000 strong, however, under the advice of their attorney, Lyman L. Morry, has decided to register and has declined to pay the assessment of the Six Companies levied to contest the law. Attorney Morry advises the Chinese Masonic Society that the act is constitutional and that the Chinese must obey it or be deported. 'Some have said,' he added, 'that the act is unconstitutional, because it is a violation of certain provisions of the treaty now existing between this government and China, but that is not so. A treaty and an act of congress are of the same force and effect, and as the Geary act was passed since the treaty was signed, it is in force, and provisions in the treaty contrary to it are now null and void.'