The law, however, was very loosely drawn and administrative confusion arose at once.  Chinese laborers leaving the United States were required to obtain a certificate from the collector of customs at the port of departure entitling them to reentry.  Other Chinese—­merchants, travelers, or visitors—­who desired to come to the United States were required to have a certificate from their Government declaring that they were entitled to enter under the provisions of the treaty.  As time went on, identification became a joke, trading in certificates a regular pursuit, and smuggling Chinese across the Canadian border a profitable business.  Moreover, in the light of the law, who was a “merchant” and who a “visitor”?  In 1884 Congress attempted to remedy these defects of phraseology and administration by carefully framed definitions and stringent measures.[48] The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of exclusion as incident to American sovereignty.

Meanwhile in the West the popular feeling against the Chinese refused to subside.  At Rock Springs, Wyoming, twenty-eight Chinese were killed and fifteen were injured by a mob which also destroyed Chinese property amounting to $148,000.  At Tacoma and Seattle, also, violence descended upon the Mongolian.  In San Francisco a special grand jury which investigated the operation of the exclusion laws and a committee of the Board of Supervisors which investigated the condition of Chinatown both made reports that were violently anti-Chinese.  A state anti-Chinese convention soon thereafter declared that the situation “had become well-nigh intolerable.”  So widespread and venomous was the agitation against Chinese that President Cleveland was impelled to send to Congress two special messages on the question, detailing the facts and requesting Congress to pay the Chinese claims for indemnity which Wyoming refused to honor.  The remonstrances of the Chinese Government led to the drafting of a new treaty in 1888.  But while China was deliberating over this treaty, Congress summarily shut off any hope for immediate agreement by passing the Scott Act prohibiting the return of any Chinese laborer after the passage of the act, stopping the issue of any more certificates of identification, and declaring void all certificates previously issued.  It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this brutal political measure was passed with an eye to the Pacific electoral vote in the pending election.  In the next presidential year the climax of harshness was reached in the Geary law, which required, within an unreasonably short time, the registration of all Chinese in the United States.  The Chinese, under legal advice, refused to register until the Federal Supreme Court had declared the law constitutional.  Subsequently the time for registration was extended.