The Chinese in California, 1850-1925
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Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: Chinese Labor and Immigration Policy
In many ways, the American workers' campaign for better living conditions dominates the history of the late-nineteenth-century United States, and its west coast is no exception. From the earliest sizable immigration of Chinese during the gold rush, American sentiment towards Chinese immigrants was highly influenced by concerns over labor.
Two views of Chinese labor are represented in the papers of a Dutch observer, Helena Adrianna Knitscheer Daniels, and in the letter of Jacob Stillman to his son in February 1886. Daniels' papers reflect the anti-Chinese feelings of many San Franciscans in describing Chinese immigration as the Achilles heel of the American economy:
"The reason why Americans want to stop the Chinese is because the Chinese work more cheaply but only half as well as Americans. Moreover, the Chinese are extremely thrifty and import their food, clothes, etc. from China, so that their money is not being spent here . . ."
"Something About America and San Francisco": From Helena Adrianna Knitscheer Daniels Papers, page 1
- According to Daniels, what are the problems with the use of Chinese labor in the United States?
Contrast Daniels's account with Jacob Stillman's remarks to his son about the Chinese working in his vineyard:
"I feel some uneasiness about the war being waged against the employers of Chinese. I cannot dispense with them, they are the only reliable laborers to be had. They work like machines through rain, cold and heat and need no watching. . . . I never saw a Chinaman lean on his tools or pause in his labor until the time comes. I would prefer to employ my own countrymen but they will not work except when starved to it and as soon as they earn a little money they want to tramp . . ."
- Why does Stillman hire Chinese laborers for his vineyard?
- According to Stillman, why won't the supposed failure of Chinese laborers to spend their wages in the United States destroy the nation's economy, as Daniels argues?
In another selection of the Daniels papers, dated May 26, 1893, the writer discusses the Geary Law, enacted in 1892 to extend the Chinese Exclusion Act for an additional ten years. The law required all Chinese to register their names and places of residence by May 5, 1893, and to carry residency certificates with a photograph on penalty of deportation.
- What position would you expect Jacob Stillman to have taken on the legality of the Geary Law?
- Instead of the passage of the Geary Law, what alternative course of action might have been taken?