may soon be able to
afford them [workers] the increased compensation their industry so well
deserves."12 Mill owners thus expressed a desire to overcome the economic
hard times
with the existing
workforce. By now they had clearly decided against the idea of resorting
to Chinese immigrants as "cheap labor source,"
the method tried by
Calvin Sampson in North Adams in 1870. As one scholar who studied Sampson's
experiment with Chinese workers concluded, by 1876 capitalists had found
"the competition of Chinese manufacturing firms
as unpleasant as the
competition of coolie
labor had become to
the American working-
men." Both the Republican
and Democratic parties cried for Chinese exclusion in the 1876 presidential
election. 13
When the Chinese Exclusion bill was
being voted on in
the U.S. Congress in March 1882, several Lowell newspapers voiced their
opinions. The Republican Lowell Daily Courier noted, "If China were
a little country, with the chance of only a few thousand of her people
coming here, and they only for a temporary purpose, we might be as lofty
about `the open hospitality of our shores' as we pleased ....
Self preservation
is a law precedent to hospi-
tality . . . . When
we are ready to allow the Chinaman equal privileges of citizenship with
others, and can say that we are willing to abide the chances of having
him come over and out-
vote us and Celestialize
our American govern-
ment, we may give
him the freedom of the country. And if we cannot afford to do that we had
better let him stay where he is."14
According to the Courier -
which was not
as concerned about
the Chinese as a source of cheap labor the Chinese were still the
"other." Racism under
girded its basic assumption that Chinese could not be assimi-
lated. So, although
the same paper referred to
|
the two Chinese men
in Lowell as well-
behaved and "worthy
the respect and protec-
tion of our citizens,"
racial and cultural preju-
dice led to fears
of Lowell being overrun by Chinese. 15
Not surprisingly, the Lowell Weekly Sun, a Democratic paper representing
Irish
Americans in Lowell,
joined the capitalists in expressing the racially prejudiced assumption
that the culture of "the [white] American peo-
ple" was the superior
kind and that "the
Chinese who have come
to this country have not assimilated" with it "and show no disposi-
tion to do so." On
behalf of Lowell's workers, the Sun also expressed fears of their
having to compete with Chinese labor. The
Sun asserted that "Chinese
work for low wages is really a reason for rendering their coming all the
more undesirable,
as American civilization requires for its maintenance a high rate of wages."16
For the preservation of "the [white] American people," the Chinese should
be excluded.
The Saturday Vox Populi was another Republican paper, but claiming
to represent
the voice of the people.
It defended the
Chinese Exclusion
bill as "a good one" with
no "injustice in it."
This paper held that, "Our nation has just as much right to say who shall
come here and sojourn with us, as the owner
of a farm has to decide
who shall pasture it, or
a city as to what
branches of business shall not be carried on in its borders." 17
The only dissenting voice in Lowell came from The Morning Mail,
which claimed not to
be "the organ of any
party or individual."18 It observed that it was beyond comprehension that
"any lover of equal rights can war upon
the Chinamen who were
the last to accept the long standing invitation, extended to all
nations to come to
our shores and enjoy the |
