Chinese Exclusion Documents

DOCUMENT A: ANTI-CHINESE PLAY, 1879 (Modified)

What is the perspective of this document on the Chinese Exclusion Act?        

How do they try to convince others of their perspective?

“THE CHINESE MUST GO.”

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ACT 1

SCENE – A kitchen; Sam gin is washing dishes; Ah Coy is smoking his opium pipe

Ah Coy: I telly you, white man big fools; eaty too muchee, drinky too muchee, and talkee too muchee.

Sam Gin: White man catchee plenty mone; Chinaman catchee little money

Ah Coy: By and by white man catchee no money. Chinaman catchee heap money. Chinaman workee cheap, plenty work.

      White man fools. Keep whifee and children – cost plenty money. Chinaman no wife, no children, slave plenty money. By and by, no more white workingman in California, it’s all Chinaman.

Source: The page above comes from a play called “The Chinese Must Go:” A Farce in Four Acts by Henry Grimm, published in San Francisco, 1879. In just the first page, you will be able to see many of the common stereotypes of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.

DOCUMENT B: POLITICAL CARTOON, 1871

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How do they try to convince others of their perspective?

Source: The cartoon was drawn by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly, a Northern magazine. In this cartoon, we see Columbia, the feminine symbol of the United States, protecting a Chinese man against a gang of Irish and German thugs. At the bottom it says "Hands off-Gentlemen! America means fair play for all men."

DOCUMENT C:

WORKINGMEN OF SAN FRANCISCO (MODIFIED)

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How do they try to convince others of their perspective?

We have met here in San Francisco tonight to raise our voice to you in warning of a great danger that seems to us imminent, and threatens our almost utter destruction as a prosperous community.

Today, every avenue to labor, of every sort, is crowded with Chinese slave labor worse than it was eight years ago. The boot, shoe and cigar industries are almost entirely in their hands. In the manufacture of men’s overalls and women’s and children’s underwear they run over three thousand sewing machines night and day. They monopolize nearly all the farming... This state of things brings about a terrible competition between our own people, who must live as civilized Americans, and the Chinese, who live like degraded slaves. We should all understand that this state of things cannot be much longer endured.

Vocabulary

Imminent: about to happen

Source: The document above is a speech to the workingmen of San Francisco on August 16, 1888.

DOCUMENT D:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHINESE IMMIGRANT (MODIFIED)

What is the perspective of this document on the Chinese Exclusion Act?        

How do they try to convince others of their perspective?

The treatment of the Chinese in this country is all wrong and mean. . .

There is no reason for the prejudice against the Chinese. The cheap labor cry was always a falsehood…the trouble is that the Chinese are such excellent and faithful workers that bosses will have no others when they can get them. If you look at men working on the street you will find a supervisor for every four or five of them. That watching is not necessary for Chinese. They work as well when left to themselves as they do when some one is looking at them.

More than half the Chinese in this country would become citizens if allowed to do so, and would be patriotic Americans. But how can they make this country their home as matters now are! They are not allowed to bring wives here from China, and if they marry American women there is a great outcry.

VOCABULARY:

Autobiography - a written account of the life of a person written by that person.

Source: The passage above is from Lee Chew, “The Biography of a Chinaman,” Independent, 15 (19 February 1903), 417–423.