CHAPTER XXXII.

HARRISON AND THE CHINESE..

I

FOR THE CHINESE WHEN AT HOME.

HOW HARRISON PROFITED BY THE NATURALIZATION OF CHINAMEN IN INDIANAL DURING THE DORSEY CAMPAIGN IN 1880.

In October, 1880, while the contest preliminary to the presidential election of that year was being waged in Indiana, the Republicans concluded that it would be a stroke of business to naturalize a lot of Chinese in the city of Indianapolis and vote them for their candidates for State offices. Accordingly, five such Chinese applied for naturalization papers to Daniel M. Ransdell, the clerk of the courts in Marion county, in which Indianapolis is situated.

The question thus raised was new, from the legal point of view, as no Chinaman had previously been naturalized, and Ransdell was in some doubt as to the tenability of his position. His regular legal adviser was William A Ketcham, of the Indianapolis bar, who also expressed some doubt on the question.

Ransdell, who had been a soldier in Harrison's Indiana regiment during the late war, had been accustomed to rely upon his friend for advice on those more knotty points of the law with which his regular counsel did not feel thoroughly familiar. Among them was this question of issuing certificates of naturalization to the Chinese who had applied for them. The doubt was resolved by Harrison in favor of giving papers to the applicants, which was done. It was generally asserted that a written opinion affirming that the clerk of the courts had this power, was given by John B. Elam, then Republican district attorney, and now the law partner of General Harrison.

WHERE THEY WERE VOTED.

Three of the Chinamen were located in the eleventh ward of the city and two in the seventeenth ward-each ward at that time constituting a voting precinct. On the day of the State election, October 5, 1880, one of the newly made citizens (?) presented himself at the polling place in the eleventh ward, and his vote was challenged by Joseph W. Nichol, a Democratic lawyer in good standing before the courts of Marion county, upon the ground that no court or court officer had a right, under the constitution or the laws, to issue certificates of naturalization to Chinese.

In spite of this challenge the vote of the Chinaman was sworn in and received by the election officers, a majority of whom were Republicans. It was known that the Chinaman had presented a Republican ticket, as he had been brought to the polls and vouched for by a Republican lawyer, George Carter by name.

In the seventeenth ward one of the Chinamen presented himself at the voting place under the patronage of one of the leading Republican workers of the precinct, who offered the Mongolian's ballot to the election officers. His right to vote was challenged by Austin H. Brown, who for many years had been the representative of Indiana on the Democratic National Committee. As in the eleventh precinct, the vote was sworn in and accepted by the election officers, a majority of whom were Republicans, as in the other case, and the vote went to swell the Republican major. ity which the State gave as the result of the free use, by Mr. Dorsey, of the commodity since known as "soap."

ONLY SENATOR SENT BY CHINESE VOTES.

Thus it was that Benjamin Harrison advised and consented to the naturalization of Chinese who voted the Republican ticket, and it was a legislature chosen at the election in question which sent him to the United States Senate where, both by votes and dodging of votes, he did all he could to admit Chinese without restriction. He is the only Senator of the United States, for any State, who during the entire history of this country ever represented a Chinese constituency, and that, too, a constituency which he himself had by his own advice made into voters.

II.

FOR THE CHINESE IN THE SENATE.

HOW HARRISON VOTED FOURTEEN TIMES IN FAVOR OF IMPORTING CHINESE INTO THIS COUNTRY. WITHOUT LET OR HINDRANCE.

I.

On March 8, 1882, Senator Hoar introduced the following amendment to the Chinese exclusion bill then under consideration:

"Provided, That this bill shall not apply to any skilled laborer who shall establish that he comes to this country without any contract by which his labor is the property of any person other than himself."

On this 17 Republican Senators voted "aye," including BENJAMIN HARRISON, of Indiana.

II.

On the same day Mr. Hoar picked his flint and tried again with the following amendment:

"Provided further, That any laborer who shall receive a certificate from the U. S. Consul at the port where he shall embark that he is an artisan coming to this country at his own expense and of his own free will, and has established such fact to the satisfaction of such Consul, shall not be affected by this bill."

On this amendment 19 Republicans voted aye, among whom was found BENJAMIN HARRISON, of Indiana.

DODGED TWICE IN ONE DAY.

On March 9, 1882, upon an amendment offered by Senator Farley, of California, to prohibit the naturalization of Chinese, BENJAMIN HARRISON, of Indiana, is recorded as dodging, although on April 25th following he voted against this amendment.

The same policy was pursued on the same day on a proposition submitted by Senator Grover, of Oregon, to make the term "Chinese Laborers" include ali Chinese, whether skilled or unskilled.

III.

On the same day, March 9, 1882, Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, offered an amendment changing the term of exclusion from twenty to ten years. Mr. Harrison was absent, but paired with Mr. Maxey, of Texas (Democrat), who, before the vote was taken, rose in his place in the Senate and said:

Mr. MAXEY-On this particular amendment I am paired with the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Harrison), who is necessarily absent. I would vote "nay" if he were here, and the Senator from Indiana would vote "aye."

This is of course equivalent to a vote in favor of this amendment. Twenty Senators, all Republicans, voted for the amendment, and twenty one, all Democrats except four, voted against it.

IV.

Again, on the same day, March 9, 1882, when the vote was taken on the final passage of the twenty years exclusion act, Senator Harrison was still absent. When his name was called, Senator Maxey, of Texas, again rose and said:

Mr. MAXEY-I was paired with the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Harrison) on the ten years' amendment. In the note which he wrote me he said if that amendment should be voted down he would vote against the bill. I am inclined to think that under that statement he would regard it as a pair upon the bill, because the amendment was voted down, and therefore I shall decline to vote. I should vote for the bill, and he, from the statement made to me, would vote against it.

Thus did Benjamin Harrison, even during a temporary absence from the Senate, still insist upon carrying out his scheme to promote the unrestricted importation of servile labor. This was his way of "protecting" American labor even when it would have been possible for him to have dodged.

The bill was passed by a vote of thirty-five ayes, all but eight of which were cast by Democratic Senators, to fifteen nays, only one of which, that of Senator Brown, of Georgia, was cast by a man who had been chosen as a Democrat.

V.

On April 5, 1882, when Senator Farley proposed to take up President Arthur's veto of the Chinese Restriction Bill, twenty-five Republican Senators voted against it, among them appearing the name of BENJAMIN HARRISON, of Indiana.

VI.

At the same session Senator Sherman moved that the bill be referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, there to be smothered. Only eighteen Republican Senators voted for this, but among them appears the name of BENJAMIN HARRISON, of Indiana.

VII.

On the same day, again, the motion to refer the President's veto message, with accompanying papers, to the Committee on Foreign Relations, in order to kill it, was voted for by nineteen Republican Senators. As usual, the name of BENJAMIN HARRISON is found with them.

VIII.

On the same day, on the question of passing the bill, notwithstanding the objections of the President, twenty one Republican Senators voted "nay." Among them, consistent to the last in favor of the free and unrestricted importation of the Chinese hordes, stands the name of BENJAMIN HARRISON, OF INDIANA.

IX.

On April 25, 1882, a new bill to prohibit Chinese immigration for ten years, was introduced in the Senate, and on the motion to strike out section 14, which provided that

"Hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship, and all laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed,"

the vote was 26 ayes, 32 nays and 18 absent.

BENJAMIN HARRISON voted aye, and thus declared himself in favor of the policy he had promoted in his own city in 1880, when five Chinamen were naturalized upon his recommendation and advice, in order that they might vote for the Republican candidates for State offices and thus save some of Dorsey's "soap."

X.

In the new restriction bill, as in the old one, the following amendment was proposed:

Sec. 15. That the words Chinese laborers, wherever used in this act, shall be construed to mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining."

Twenty-nine Republican Senators voted, on April 25, 1882, in favor of striking

out this amendment, which was adopted by a majority of one.

As usual, BENJAMIN HARRISON was found among the advocates of the unrestricted importation of cheap labor by the creation of a condition whereby it might be brought in.

XI.

When this provision was reported to the Senate from the Committee of the Whole on April 28, MR. HARRISON again voted with nineteen of his Republican colleagues in favor of this loophole for the introduction of cheap labor.

XII.

On April 28, Senator Edmunds moved the following amendment:

"The words Chinese laborers, wherever used in this act, shall be construed to mean persons usually engaged in manual labor."

Seventeen Republican Senators voted in favor of this construction of the bill, among whom appears the name of BENJAMIN HARRISON, of Indiana.

XIII.

On the same day Senator Edmunds moved to strike out the section prohibiting absolutely the naturalization of Chinese and to insert the following in lieu thereof:

"Nothing in this act shall be construed to change the existing naturalization laws so as to admit Chinese persons to citizenship."

On this proposition sixteen Republican Senators voted "aye," and BENJAMIN HARRISON's name is found among the rest.

XIV.

The bill came up for final passage on the same day, April 28, 1882, when, after having voted thirteen times in favor of unrestricted immigration of Chinese and dodging twice, BENJAMIN HARRISON again cast his vote against the enactment of a law which had for its purpose the protection of American labor from unnatural competition with the unnumbered hordes of Asiatics.

SENATOR HARRISON DODGES AGAIN.

On July 3, 1884, the bill introduced in the House by Mr. Page, of California, entitled "An act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to the Chinese, approved May 6, 1882," passed.

Under the interpretation of the Exclusion Act by the Republican Federal Judges of California, it had been found that Chinese were coming in almost without restriction. These judges held that Chinese on the island of Hong Kong, after its cession to Great Britain, did not come within the provisions of the Exclusion Act of 1882.

The new bill consequently sought to so amend the act that the spirit as well as the letter of the law would be obeyed by the courts of the Pacific Coast, so that Chinese, wherever born, would be excluded. This had been the interpretation given to the law by Judge Stephen J. Field, who was then the only Democrat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.

But the action of the Republican Judges, Sawyer and Sabin, had been such as to let everybody in. The bill was passed in the House by a large majority, and in the Senate only twelve Republicans could be found to vote against it. Senator Harrison returned to his old tactics and dodged the vote, even with his scruples against violating a treaty-which had served him so well in the long discussion two years before.

Whatever else may be said of it, nobody will ever question the consistency of Benjamin Harrison's record on the Chinese question. From first to last he voted in the Senate against every proposition to exclude Chinese imported labor-labor imported under contract in the interest of "manufacturers" who, another Senator has recently said, “are most benefited by our tariff laws." He voted in favor of every scheme by which they should be permitted to come here, and declared, in an address before a literary society, that "the Government had no more right to exclude the Chinese than it had to forbid the coming of Irish and Germans."

From the day when, in 1880, he advised and profited by the naturalization and votes of Chinamen in his own city of Indianapolis, down to his last utterance, his last vote or his latest "dodge" of a vote in the Senate, he has shown himself the same consistent advocate of the free and unrestricted importation of Chinese labor, and the consequent degradation of American labor, in whose behalf he is now showing such a lively interest.