rite, took no cognizance of the life and growth of the United States,
and felt themselves to be strangers and sojourners in a country which
they wished to leave as soon as they could acquire the pitiful sum
necessary for the needs of old age in their native land. They were
simply a changing, ever renewing, foreign element in an American State.
They were ready to work at a rate of wages upon which a white man could
not subsist and support a family. Theirs was in all its aspects a
servile labor,--one which would inevitably degrade every workman
subjected to its competition. To encourage or even to permit such
an immigration, would be to dedicate the rich Pacific slope to them
alone and to their employers--in short, to create a worse evil in the
remote West than that which led to bloody war in the South. The number
at home was great. The cost of landing a Chinaman at San Francisco was
less than the cost of carrying a white man from New York to the same
port. The question stripped of all disguises and exaggerations on both
sides, was simply whether the labor element of the vast territory on
the Pacific should be Mongolian or American. Patriotic instinct, the
American sentiment dominant on the borders and outposts of the
Republic, all demanded that the Pacific coast should be preserved as a
field for the American laborer.

President Hayes vetoed the bill rather upon the ground of the
abrogation of a treaty without notice, than upon any discussion as to
the effects of Chinese labor. He did not doubt that the legislation
of Congress would effectually supersede the terms of the treaty, but he
saw no need for a summary disturbance of our relations with China.
Upon the communication of the veto to the House a vote was taken
thereon without debate; and upon the question of passing the bill
despite the objections of the President, the _ayes_ were 110, the
_noes_ 96. A considerable number of gentlemen who voted for the bill
on its passage had meanwhile changed their views, and they now voted
to sustain the veto. Among the most conspicuous of these were Mr.
Aldrich of Rhode Island, Mr. Abram S. Hewitt of New York, Mr. Blair of
New Hampshire, Mr. Landers of Indiana, and Mr. Townsend of Ohio.
Finding his veto sustained by Congress, President Hayes opened
negotiations with the Chinese Empire for a modification of the treaty.
To that end he dispatched three commissioners to China, gentlemen of
the highest intelligence, adapted