Harrison would have
reelected Cleveland. As it was, his popular vote of 5,540,000 exceeded
by 140,000 that of Harrison, which numbered 5,400,000. Besides bolding
the Senate the Republicans won a face majority of ten in the House,
subsequently increased by unseating and seating. They were thus in
control of all branches of the general government.

CHAPTER III.

MR. HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION.

[1888]

The new President, of course, renounced his predecessor's policy upon
the tariff, but continued it touching the navy. He advocated steamship
subsidies, reform in electoral laws, and such amendment to the
immigration laws as would effectively exclude undesirable foreigners.

A chief effect of the Kearney movement in California, culminating in the
California constitution of 1879, was intense opposition throughout the
Pacific States to any further admission of the Chinese. The constitution
named forbade the employment of Chinese by the State or by any
corporation doing business therein. This hostility spread eastward, and,
in spite of interested capitalists and disinterested philanthropists,
shaped all Subsequent Chinese legislation in Congress. The pacific
spirit of the Burlingame treaty in 1868, shown also by President Hayes
in vetoing the Anti-Chinese bill of 1878, died out more and more.

[Illustration: Speaker exhorting a crowd.]
"The Chinese must go!"
Denis Kearney addressing the working-men on the night of October 29, on
Nob Hill, San Francisco.

A law passed in 1881 provided that Chinese immigration might be
regulated, limited, or suspended by the United States. A bill
prohibiting such immigration for twenty years was vetoed by President
Arthur, but another reducing the period to ten years became law in 1882.
In 1888 this was amended to prohibit the return of Chinese laborers who
had been in the United States but had left. In 1892 was passed the Geary
law re-enacting for ten years more the prohibitions then in force, only
making them more rigid. Substantially the same enactments were renewed
in 1902.

Mr. Harrison wished this policy of a closed state put in force against
Europe as well as against Asia. An act of Congress passed August 2,
1882, prohibited the landing from any country of any would-be immigrant
who was a convict, lunatic, idiot, or unable to take care of himself.
This law, like the supplementary one of March 3, 1887, proved
inadequate. In 1888 American consuls represented that transatla