precisely what was so long used to excuse or justify the same policy in China and Japan, viz., that the admission of foreigners tended to interfere with their trade and the labor of their people, and to corrupt their morals and degrade their religion. Our only absolute security, he said, consisted in devotion to the doctrines upon which the government was founded, and that the profound conviction that the rights of men are not conferred by constitutions, which may be altered or abolished, but are God-given to every human being.
The senator's conclusion from the investigations of the committee was that the difference of the Chinese in color, dress, manners, and religion had more to do with the hostility to them than their alleged vices or any actual injury to the white people of California. It was the resurrection of those odious race distinctions which brought upon the United States the late Civil War, and from which it fondly hoped that God in His providence had delivered it forever.
The testimony showed, according to the senator, that the crops in California could not be harvested or taken to market without the aid of Chinese labor; that the railroads could not have been constructed without it; that it was doubtful if it had injuriously interfered with the white people of that State; that there was work for all; that the Chinese, by their labor, opened up large avenues and demand for white labor; that the first successful introduction of manufactures there was by the employment of Chinese labor, and as manufactories became established, the employment of Chinese gradually diminished, and white labor largely increased. The
