persons other than white men from giving evidence in the courts.
The subject of the equality of the races had not lost its importance. The legislature of 1862, according to the spirit of the constitution of Oregon, which declared that the legislative assembly should provide by penal codes for the removal of negroes and mulattoes from the state, and for their effectual exclusion, enacted that each and every negro, Chinaman, Hawaiian, and mulatto residing within the limits of the state should pay an annual poll-tax of five dollars, or failing to do so should be arrested and put to work upon the public highway at fifty cents a day until the tax and the expenses of the arrest and collection were discharged.[1]
By the constitution of Oregon, Chinamen not residents of the state at the time of its adoption were forever prohibited from holding real estate or mining claims therein. By several previous acts they had been "taxed and protected " in mining as a means of revenue, the tax growing more oppressive with each enactment, and as the question of Chinese immigration[2] was more discussed, the law of 1862 being intended to put a check upon it. All former laws
relating to mining by the Chinese having been repealed by a general act in 1864, the legislature of 1866 passed another, the general features of which were that no Chinamen not born in the United
- ↑ Or. Gen. Laws, 1845, 64; Or. Code, 1862, app. 76-7.
- ↑ Since the Chinese question is presented at length in another portion of this work, it will not be considered in this place. In Oregon, as in California, there was much discussion of the problem of the probable effect of Chinese immigration and labor on the affairs of the western side of the continent; and occasionally an outbreak against them occurred, though no riots of importance have taken place in this state. During the period of railway building they were imported in larger numbers than ever before. The Oregon newspapers have never earnestly entered into the arguments for and against Chinese immigration, as the California papers have done. The Or. Deutsche Zeitung has published some articles in favor of it, and an occasional article in opposition has appeared in various journals; but there had not been any violent agitation on the subject up to the year 1881. See Boise Statesman, April 20, 1807; Or. Legisl. Docs, 1870, doc. 11, 5-9; Or. Laws, 1870, 103-5; Eugene City Journal, March 14, 1868; S. F. Call, Oct. 21, 1868; McMinnville Courieer Sept. 18, 1868; S. F. Times, Sept. 2, 1868, Jan. 18, 1809; Or. Deutsche Zeitung, July 17, 1869.
