Olympia’s Paper Cheers a Harsher Chinese Exclusion Act — and Calls for Expulsion
The Olympia Tribune backs a federal bill barring Chinese merchants and artisans, then goes further: deport every Chinese resident to “give work to better people.”
THE NEW EXCLUSION ACT.
There are 1,002 Americans in China, 28 of whom are in trade and the rest are missionaries, seamen and stragglers. There are 130,000 Chinese in this country according to the last census, and they send more than a million dollars annually back to China, which they earn here. Of the 30,000 Chinese in San Francisco an average of 2,500 are before the courts each year on charges extending from murder downward. The California state prison has 143 Chinese in it now.
The new exclusion law keeps out merchants as well as all artisans. Under the present law merchants are allowed to come in, but when a Chinaman wants to go back to his native land he buys an interest in some business for a small amount and is then entitled to a certificate as a merchant. On the other side he sells his certificate and the new owner comes in under it. It is very difficult to detect the fraud and the privilege has been so abused that it should be stopped. The new law gives the secretary of the treasury the discretion to allow certain Chinamen to enter. Even this is objected to on the Pacific slope, but it was done so that if the secretary makes any rules he can annul them as rapidly as he made them should they be abused. This promptness would be impossible in the case of a statute enacted by congress. The new law has passed the house of representatives and will probably pass the senate. A law ought then be passed to ship all the Chinese that are here back to China. It would give work to better people.
“A law ought then be passed to ship all the Chinese that are here back to China. It would give work to better people.”
This editorial shows that Chinese exclusion was not fringe in 1890s Washington — it was mainstream newspaper opinion, delivered in dehumanizing terms. The paper’s call to expel an entire community echoes the racial logic behind later anti-Asian laws and remains a caution for how immigration debates can turn people into policy targets.
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