Although the initial reception of the Chinese in the United States was fairly warm, antagonistic feelings toward them grew during the late 19th and early 20th century. Partly due to an economic downturn, and partly because of the exotic culture of the Chinese, numerous parties in the US began discriminating against the Chinese and breaking treaties signed with China. This was due to the simple need for a scapegoat for a number for social and economical downfalls that had afflicted the majority-white community. Consequently, Chinese in the 1850-1943 period suffered many mistreatments in the United States, yet in each incident they stood up for themselves as best as they could against a government that was severely biased against them.
Perhaps the only type of mistreatment the Chinese were unable to fully defend themselves against were the spontaneous violent eruptions of antagonism as experienced in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The Chinese Massacre in 1885 was an unjust uprising in which white miners murdered many of their Chinese co-workers because executives replaced white workers with Chinese workers during a strike and of rumored favoritism towards Chinese when assigning work areas . Of all the accusations declared by the attackers as justification for their actions, the Chinese were only officially "guilty" of one, not joining the local chapter of the Knights of Labor . Even though the Chinese were unable to repel the initial onslaught because of their passive nature, (had opportunity to arm themselves but didn't…why?) subsequent requests made in part by the Chinese Consul in San Francisco to the United States government allowed for the victims of the attack to be compensated monetarily. Unfortunately, all the attackers escaped accountability when the Sweetwater County court refused to convict the suspects based solely on Chinese testimony . This incident highlighted the two primary types of mistreatment Chinese in United States faced: economic and legal discrimination.
Throughout this period of time, the state of California was probably the prime example in which exclusionary legislation brought forth severe economic discrimination against the Chinese in the form of taxes of somewhat dubious intent . The first, and possibly the most innocuous, was the Foreign Miner’s License Tax of 1852 . Although it was not enacted directly towards the Chinese, it affected all foreign miners who did not have any intentions to become a citizen (yet the specific prohibition of Chinese applying for citizenship brings into question the integrity of such an tax). The direct result of this tax was an extra burden that the Chinese miners had to carry, and it also meant that the miners could not send as much money home to China as they could before. Initial Chinese responses were in a cooperative tone, in the hopes that peace and stability could be maintained. But as the tax was increased over time and Chinese resentment continued to grow, those who were affected by the tax decided to challenge it by clearing up misconceptions of the Chinese culture to the legislative Committee of Mines and Mining Interests in 1853 . This endeavor was met with a modest degree of success, with the outrageous rate increases repealed as a result, and in addition the Chinese had garnered political and economical allies along the way .
The enlistment of non-Chinese allies was very beneficial in the Chinese resistance against unfair taxation. At the same time as the Foreign Miner’s Tax, the California legislature introduced a “commutation tax” on all inbound ships carrying foreigners. This tax prompted the affected shipmasters to pass on the tax and increased the passage fare for non-American travelers, most of which were Chinese laborers looking for work. However, partly because of the business allies the Chinese had found while fighting the Foreign Miner’s Tax, the capitation tax was soon found unconstitutional and overturned by the California Supreme Court in 1857 . Yet the most directly discriminating tax against the Chinese in California was the so-called Chinese Police Tax of 1862 . In and of itself the tax claimed to be protecting white laborers, while taxing any Chinese who was not engaged in mining or agriculture. But the tax was challenged by the Chinese in the California Supreme Court in the same year it was passed by the California legislature. White business owners who had economic interests at stake and religious leaders sympathetic to the cause testified on the virtuous character of Chinese laborers. Using the failure of the "commutation tax" as precedence, the California Supreme Court overturned the tax on the grounds of interfering with federal jurisdiction . Thus with the taxes as examples of economic discrimination, the Chinese were able to defend their meager earnings against encroachment through the court of law. Ironically, it was also in the court of law where the Chinese faced legal discriminations.
The discriminatory nature in which the Wyoming courts dismissed the criminal suits from The Chinese Massacre was reinforced when the California Supreme Court decided in 1854 to exclude Chinese testimony in court for civil suits. The exclusion was later extended to criminal suits, and the Chinese community feared an increase in violent crimes against themselves8. Without testimony to support their cases, the Chinese had no fair legal recourse. Not only was justice withheld in this precedent setting civil case, it was threatened to be forever denied from the Chinese at the sole discretion and interpretation of an appellate judge. The Chinese considered this to be a severe grievance, one that their Caucasian allies/sympathizers rallied to in short order in hopes of turning public opinion against such a direct attack on the ideal of a “fair trial” . As a result, it took a formal meeting between Congressional members of the United States government and representatives of the Chinese Six Companies, an amended treaty between the United States and China, and the declaration of the Civil Rights Act of 1870 before full judicial equality was restored to the Chinese residing in the United States . The involvement in the political process of the United States that the Chinese had submerged themselves to achieve this goal demonstrated the extent to which they would go to retaliate against abuse.
Unfortunately, the Chinese victory over the right to bear witness was short lived, since it took several years before it was fully enforced . In 1868 a congressional committee was formed as a fact-finding task force to investigate the Chinese demographic makeup. While the information gleaned from the study was fairly unbiased, the final report written by the politicians weighed heavily against the Chinese . The Page Law of 1875 prohibited the importation of Chinese indentured servants and prostitutes because it was introduced under the false assumption that most Chinese immigrants were of one class or the other. By 1876 the anti-Chinese discrimination/sentiment had caught the full attention of the federal government, due to economic and political conditions. This resulted in the creation of the Angell Treaty between the US and China, which allowed the introduction of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The Act virtually suspended Chinese immigration into the United States, with a few exceptions made for different classes of immigrants. As Sandmeyer solemnly points out at the end of his study on this piece of legislation, it was the “first law on the statue books of the United States restricting the immigration of an entire race.”
Realizing that it would be futile to fight the law in front of a biased audience, Chinese immigration adapted to the new restrictions by taking advantage of the exceptions listed in the Exclusion Act: wife and children of the exempt class (until this was also banned in the 1920 amendment), and exemption as a citizen . The wife and children exemption clause led to the creation of “paper sons” in which a prospective immigrant would purchase falsified birth certificates, attempt to convince the inspectors that they are what the certificate claimed them to be, and lead a new life in the United States should they succeed in convincing the customs (later immigration) inspectors. Likewise, when the great fire in 1906 destroyed the majority of birth certificates in San Francisco, many Chinese immigrants began to claim to have been born in the United States. They professed to have traveled back to China while still young and were now returning to their actual homeland . Whether they were legitimate or not, when the immigrants failed to convince the customs inspector of their background, they then resorted to the courts once again to settle the issue. Up until 1905 when the Immigration and Naturalization Service began to conduct background checks on immigrants, the judicial system proved to be an efficient tool for the Chinese to pry apart the Exclusion Act . The judicial process took advantage of the US government’s designation of the Dept. of Commerce (which allowed habeas corpus judicial appeals) being in charge of Chinese immigration rather than the INS (which did not allow judicial appeal on its decisions). This unorthodox tactic showed that the Chinese immigrants and community were able to retaliate against bias legislation by unorthodox means.
Throughout the 1850-1943 period when anti-Chinese sentiments were very active, Chinese immigrants were subject to numerous mistreatments ranging from mildly annoying to absolutely demeaning. Yet, in many instances, both economic and legal, the Chinese have fought back with every option available to them, whether demanding the fairness of the courts, lobbying the congressional representatives, or summoning allies within the Caucasian business and religious sectors. Furthermore, when presented a situation in which no viable legal means are available, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese were then able to employ more unorthodox means of bypassing the offending legislation, if nothing else simply as a protest against the circumstances. Granted, while there were situations in which the Chinese were unable to retaliate effectively, as can be seen by the incident in Wyoming, such cases were more likely to be the exception rather than the rule.