The anti-Chinese fanaticism had now reached its highest point.  While the Government maintained its policy of exclusion, it modified the drastic details of the law.  In 1894 a new treaty provided for the exclusion of laborers for ten years, excepting registered laborers who had either parent, wife, or child in the United States, or who possessed property or debts to the amount of one thousand dollars.  It required all resident Chinese laborers to register, and the Chinese Government was similarly entitled to require the registration of all American laborers resident in China.  The treaty made optional the clause requiring merchants, travelers, and other classes privileged to come to the United States, to secure a certificate from their Government vised by the American representative at the port of departure.

In 1898 General Otis extended the exclusion acts to the Philippines by military order, owing to the fact that the country was in a state of war, and Congress extended them to the Hawaiian Islands.  In 1904 China refused to continue the treaty of 1894, and Congress substantially reenacted the existing laws “in so far as not inconsistent with treaty obligations.”  Thus the legal status quo has been maintained, and the Chinese population in America is gradually decreasing.  No new laborers are permitted to come and those now here go home as old age overtakes them.  But the public has come to recognize that diplomatic circumlocution cannot conceal the crude and harsh treatment which the Chinaman has received; that the earlier laws were based upon reports that greatly exaggerated the evils and were silent upon the virtues of the Oriental; and that a policy which had its conception in frontier fears and in race prejudice was sustained by politicians and perpetuated by demagogues.

Rather suddenly the whole drama of discrimination was re-opened by the arrival of a considerable number of Japanese laborers in America.  In 1900, there were some twenty-four thousand in the United States and a decade later this number had increased threefold.  About one-half of them lived in California, and the rest were to be found throughout the West, especially in Washington, Colorado, and Oregon.  They were nearly all unmarried young men of the peasant class.  Unlike the Chinese, they manifested a readiness to conform to American customs and an eagerness to learn the language and to adopt American dress.  The racial gulf, however, is not bridged by a similarity in externals.  The Japanese possess all the deep and subtle contrasts of mentality and ideality which differentiate the Orient from the Occident.  A few are not averse to adopting Christianity; many more are free-thinkers; but the bulk remain loyal to Buddhism.  They have reproduced here the compact trade guilds of Japan.  The persistent aggressiveness of the Japanese, their cunning, their aptitude in taking advantage of critical circumstances in making bargains, have by contrast partially restored to popular favor the patient, reliable Chinaman.