PROVOCATIONS TO A BOYCOTT

“The injuries inflicted, though trifling in comparison with the benefits conferred, are such as no self-respecting people should either perpetrate or endure.  Take one example, where I could give you twenty.  Two young men, both Christians, one rich, the other poor, came to the United States for education.  They were detained in a prison-shed for three months, One of them, falling sick, was removed to a hospital; the other obtaining permission to visit him, they made their escape to Canada and thence back to China.

“What wonder no more students come to us and that over 8,000 are now pursuing their studies in Japan![*]

[Footnote *:  The conciliatory policy of President Roosevelt is bearing fruit Forty students are about to start to the United States (May, 1906).]

“The present irritation is, we are assured by the agitators, provoked by the outrageous treatment of the privileged classes (merchants, travellers, and students) and not by the exclusion of labourers, to which their government has given its assent.  Yet in the growing intelligence of the Chinese a time has come when their rulers feel such discrimination as a stigma.  It is not merely [Page 251] a just application of existing laws that Viceroy Chang and his mandarins demand.  They call for the rescinding of those disgraceful prohibitions and the right to compete on equal terms with immigrants from Europe.  If we show a disposition to treat the Chinese fairly, their country and their hearts will be open to us as never before.  Our commerce with China will expand to vast proportions; and our flag will stand highest among those that overarch and protect the integrity of that empire.”

On November 16, I was received by President Roosevelt.  Running his eye over the documents (see below) which I placed in his hands he expressed himself on each point.  The grievances arising from the Exclusion Laws he acknowledged to be real.  He promised that they should be mitigated or removed by improvements in the mode of administration; but he held out no hope of their repeal.  “We have one race problem on our hands and we don’t want another,” he said with emphasis.  The boycott which the Chinese have resorted to as a mode of coercion he condemned as an aggravation of existing difficulties.  The interruption of trade and the killing of American missionaries to which it had led made it impossible, he said, to turn over to China the surplus indemnity, as he had intended.

This response is what I expected; but it will by no means satisfy the ruling classes in China, who aim at nothing short of repeal.  When I assured him the newspapers were wrong in representing the agitation as confined to labourers and merchants, adding that the highest mandarins, while formally condemning it, really give it countenance, he replied that he believed that to be the case, and reiterated the declaration that [Page 252] nothing is to be gained by such violent measures on the part of China.