proposed which it was asserted were in conflict with the treaties with China. It was claimed that these additional measures were made necessary by the frauds practiced by the Chinese laborers in their great desire to gain admittance to the United States.
The bill from the committee passed the House of Representatives without much opposition, but the subject caused an animated debate in the Senate. Senator Lodge, who was one of the ablest supporters of the bill, at the close of a lengthy speech on the subject, based his opposition to immigration of the Chinese upon two grounds. He said: "The first reason is that they are members not of a new malleable people who can come here and adopt our methods and imbibe our ideas. They are members of an old and immutable civilization. They never can form a part of a body of American citizenship. They do not wish to do so. They would not do so if they could. They have come here simply for profit. A great race that means to do that and nothing else in the United States is better outside the line than inside. And, second, I am in favor of Chinese exclusion because the Chinese can create economic conditions in which we cannot survive. It is not a question of the fittest surviving, but a question of the survival of the fittest to survive. The best do not necessarily survive, and here we have a people 450,000,000 strong, who can produce an environment and a standard under which we cannot live."
The senators who opposed the passage of the bill conceded that the further coming of Chinese laborers to the United States should be prohibited; but they
