because violating the treaty of 1868. Finally in 1882 exclusion was effected by an act which has been continued up to the present time.
There is little doubt that refusal of the United States to admit hordes of Chinese laborers has been best for the internal peace of the nation, although the Pacific Coast region has suffered thereby for lack of efficient laborers. Mr. Scott clearly foresaw both the social need of exclusion and the industrial need of Chinese labor on the Pacific Coast. The former need he regarded as the determining one. The immediate theme of his writings during the critical time of anti-Chinese agitation was the treaty rights of Chinese in this country to protection against mob violence. He condemned in unsparing terms the cruel attacks made upon them by agitators and mobs, whose cry was "The Chinese must go!" He pointed out that attacks upon the persons of the alien residents would involve the United States in international complications with China and bring discredit upon this country among foreign nations. He declared that industrious Americans had nothing to fear from the labor competition of Chinese. The crusade against Chinese was general in the Pacific Coast in 1880-90, and in several places the aliens suffered sorely, as in San Francisco and Tacoma. Portland had less disturbance than other cities of the Coast—in which Mr. Scott both bespoke and guided the temper of his city.
During more than thirty years and from his first to his last utterances on the Chinese question, Mr. Scott insisted that the problem was not one of labor, but of race. It was neither true nor important that Chinese were doing work that white men otherwise would do, or taking "jobs" away from American citizens. The real objection to them was that they were not an assimilable element; could not fuse with the white population; in other words, race antipathy existed which was not to be overcome by argument and which would cause discord and continual upset in the political and social body. In 1869, the Editor pointed out that labor wages here—then about fifty per cent higher than east of the Mississippi—would be reduced not by Chinese at that time few in number, but by influx of workers from our own denser populated part of the country.
