MR. YEW FUN TAN
Harper’s Weekly, April 22, 1882, page 243 (Editorial)
Mr. Page, of California, continues the Chinese debate by reporting to the Senate from the Committee on Education and Labor a new Chinese bill, prohibiting immigration for ten instead of twenty years. If Goldsmith were among us, the Chinese Philosopher would pierce the advocates of this extraordinary measure with ridicule. But an actual Chinese student of Yale College, Mr. Yew Fun Tan, handles the arguments with great skill in a letter to the Evening Post. He concedes that the importation of coolies ought to be prohibited, and states that the Chinese government would most cordially co-operate in that good work.
As for "assimilation," however, Mr. Yew Fun Tan very truly says that it is not the Chinese, but the Americans, who refuse to assimilate. It is unfair to assert that the Chinese will not remain and become good citizens, for the good reason that we will not allow them to do so. It is equally foolish to accuse them of every kind of vice, for they are generally a quiet and industrious people. The accusations which the Chinese student repels were brought by Mr. William T. Coleman at the anti-Chinese meeting in San Francisco a few weeks ago, in a speech which illustrates the curious condition of the Californian mind upon this subject.
Mr. Coleman says that China has always avoided foreign contact, but he imagines that country suddenly buying an enormous fleet and flinging herself upon America, "so that five, ten, or even twenty millions could be here in a comparatively short time." The prospect is appalling, he exclaims; and he asks what would become of us. Now Mr. Coleman knows that after thirty or more years, with higher prices for labor, and generally with encouragement to immigration, the result is that there are rather more than 100,000 Chinese in the country, while during the same time some five or eight millions of persons have come from other countries. Mr. Coleman is aghast at the vision of a Chinese army, a modern disciplined horde of Gengis-Khan or of Timour the Tartar, overwhelming Anglo-Saxon civilization, and yet he knows that the Chinese capital was sacked within a few years by a moderate European force, and that treaties were dictated to the empire by an army of 10,000 puny Sepoys. When there is a sign whatever of a Mongolian invasion, there will be plenty of time to defend ourselves. Meanwhile, "the fact that the United States," says Mr. Yew Fun Tan, "has committed two great wrongs, one on the negro and the other on the Indian, does not justify her in committing this third wrong."
Harper’s Weekly, April 22, 1882, page 243 (Editorial)

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