MR. STUART. I have been a patient listener in this Convention, and have not been on the floor since its first organization-over two months ago. I have heard what was said with a great deal of instructionsometimes; and sometimes with disgust and disappointment. I have been, during my life, in California nearly thirty years During the thirty years that I have been here I have been a cultivator of the soil. I have made my living, raised and educated a large family through the cultivation of the soil. I have employed hundreds and hundreds of I have never been in the political arena; it is distasteful to me, and consequently I know little of the political movements, and of the management, and the plans that are used in the State for self-preference. I do not know whether I shall get through to-night with what I want to say, or not. I am somewhat unprepared and unaccustomed to public speaking. I will only make a few remarks, and then prepare myself for some future day on this article a little better.

men.

Sir, I am opposed to all these sections from number one to number eight. They are not proper to be placed in any Constitution of the United States, let alone ours. It is in direct conflict with the Constitution of the United States and the treaty-making power. It is a boyish action for us to admit either one or the whole of these articles to be engrafted in our organic law. It would be the laughing-stock of the world, a disgrace to the State, a movement toward secession, and a disregard of the constitutional laws of the United States. I am not prepared to be one of the advocates of, or one of the silent listeners here and have it pass. I believe, sir, it is in conflict with article six of the Constitution of the United States, which says: This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

That is sufficient for me, sir. That is sufficient for any intelligent gentleman in this body to reflect upon before he will take up a hotch potch, you may call it, or a set of articles of that character, that is neither one act or another, that belongs to a Constitution. It looks to me like the act of a ward political meeting, for the purpose of catching votes, or like some of the acts of this Convention in that behalf. I do not desire to reflect upon any gentleman, or the course of any gentleman's procedure here; neither do I desire to make an unparliamentary remark. MR. O'DONNELL. You say you have employed hundreds of men; have you not employed hundreds of Chinamen?

MR. STUART. I have, sir, thousands of them, and hundreds of white men and thousands of white men, too.

MR. O'DONNELL. I thought so.

MR. STUART. That is what I am coming to now. There is not a man in California in my profession, that of farming, but what employs, directly or indirectly, the Chinaman. The Chinaman becomes your cook, the Chinaman becomes your servant, he becomes your hewer of wood and drawer of water, even in the City of San Francisco. The Chinaman has been, for the last twelve or fourteen years, a hobby horse for all political parties to pass their resolutions on and make their platforms. Before that, it was the honest contraband in the fence. The honest contraband and the Democratic party came hand and hand into every campaign until, finally, the question was ended in blood and war. The honest contraband now is never heard of, but the Chinaman is in the fence in his stead. The Chinaman is now used by both parties, or by all the parties, if there be more than two-I believe there are three parties now. One party, which is probably like other eruptions of that character, may throw something upon the surface that may remain there. There are a good many elected by this Workingmen's party, young men that I delight to know, men of talent, of character, of responsibility, and I hope they will succeed as politicians, I hope they will succeed as men, but I hope they will not lay themselves up in this Convention for the purpose of future promotion, for future renown. Here is the place to make it without regard to their political party, without regard to who will be Governor, or who will be the Judges, or who will be the next representatives in our Legislature and in our Congress. These things, sir, are what I am astonished at. This thing is what I have listened to for months with a great deal of calmness and a great deal of interest. These are matters which the gentlemen who are foremost in their aspirations probably know better than I do what their motives are. I do not intend to impugn them.

But let me go back a little further. In eighteen hundred and fifty, I believe it was, in San Francisco, there was a celebration of the admission of California into the Union. I think it was October fourteenth; the State was admitted on September ninth. At that time, sir, if I am not mistaken, the Chinamen, few as they were, were admitted to a post of honor, and they followed the officers of the State and city in the parade. From that time down to the war, every movement of our government and every movement of our State, was to induce the Chinaman to come here and to capture the oriental trade. There were treaties made, first by force, by Porter, for he went with the navy, next by peace, and next by Mr. Burlingame, who was at one time in the Congress of the United States. The Burlingame treaty admitted, and has since admitted, the Chinaman to our country as free probably as any other treaty that has

been made among the nations. That power lies in the government. There have been steamboats between here and China subsidized, and there have been other connections made and railroads built since. The Chinese have been the laborers of this coast for almost twenty years. White men we have plenty of here; and, sir, I will go further. If I was a member of a Constitutional Convention of the United States, I would raise my voice and put in an article there to repeal the naturalization laws. We have over forty million of inhabitants now, of Americans-foreign and native born. We have too many. We have thousands and tens of thousands of white men traveling this State and the United States, voluntary idlers-not involuntary. We have a class of so-called white laborers that never have worked, never intend to work, and never will work. I do not desire to go into details on that subject now. I desire more especially to have this article passed over until the Chairman of the committee comes in here so that he can explain them to me. Looking at it as a juror, it looks like a perfect hotch potch-nothing in it. There is not a section in the report that should be put into any school book, let alone the Constitution of the State. It is all very pretty to talk about, and the speech of my friend, the Colonel from Los Angeles, Colonel Ayers, was all very beautiful, handsomely arranged, beautifully delivered, and it almost, as Agrippa said to Paul, converted me. Also, my young friend to the right, Mr. Freud, just from his college days. He was eloquent, but there was no pith in it. It was a little as if we were upon a jury and some lawyer was prosecuting a Chinaman for some act he had done. Unfortunately our friend from Los Angeles quoted all his authorities from the minority report of the different Judges.

MR. AYERS. Not all of them.

MR. STUART. Well, most of them, I took notice. He also quoted very lengthily from Roger Taney. I remember when Taney made another decision. Do you know what became of it? I remember his Dred Scott decision. I think that was the first political case that was ever decided in the United States, and I remember what that led to, and I think you do. I want to steer clear of all that kind of Constitution making here; I want none of those things to be thrown up to us when we are out, by the Courts, or by the United States Courts and these attorneys-that we are a set of school boys, here as a debating society, getting in things not competent to a Constitution, and things that would not be fit to put into a common school book. I will say, for one on this floor, that I am in favor of holding America for Americansthat Americans shall rule America. I have no confidence in this wave of discontent, as you call it; I have no confidence in anything that may be thrown on top. It is only intellect that will tell in the United States; nothing else. I will say, sir, that I believe, taking the farmers in this. Convention-and I tried to find out how many there were-probably twenty-(what I mean by farmers is, men that have cultivated the land for years, men connected with farming pursuits, men who live upon farms and support themselves and families there)-I believe that a vote among them to-night, sir, would throw that report into the waste basket. They would say: "We want labor; let the Chinamen alone." Let the Government of the United States control the matter; place it in the hands where it belongs, and have none of this senseless tinkering here, as you would tinker an old tin kettle if it was leaking. I have not inflicted you before, and I do not intend to now. I am somewhat unaccustomed to this kind of business, consequently I am going to leave that to others who are better posted than myself-after awhile. Chinese immigration is injurious to the country, is it? Chinese immigration to the country has made it what it is. [Derisive laughter.] Labor has made it what it is! The labor that has been done for the last fifteen years has been the progressive labor of the State of California. It has been labor that has cleared up farms, that has planted fruit trees, that has built cities, that has done every thing except the mining, and even then, the tailings we always used to rent to Chinamen in early days. Everything has been done by this labor. There is only one class of men you can get for servants-I mean servants that will do what they are wanted to do. I believe one white man is worth two Chinamen; that one Chinaman is worth two negroes, and that one negro is worth two tramps [laughter and hisses]-that is, for labor. It is a well known fact that in all nature, both animate and inanimate, both animal and every other kind, that the weak fall under the march of the strong. That is a well settled fact in all governmental philosophy-that the weak fall under the strong. The black man has faded away, and the Chinaman takes his place as a laborer. He is for a day, and gone. The idea of the Chinaman, or the Chinese Empire, overthrowing the AngloSaxon race is preposterous. A hundred thousand a month scattered through the United States would not affect it in a hundred years. The growth of the United States is something, and their energy is a great deal; and it has surprised me that the laboring portion of the people of California have not captured all this floating capital of labor and rented it out to us at increased rates. That is what has been astonishing to me. No, it has not been astonishing. Almost every gentleman that ever got up, has been perfectly astonished at something. I have never been astonished. Nothing astonishes me.

One of the gentlemen from San Francisco said money never made the man. Well, that might be so, but I would like to see the man that ever made money and became very wealthy but what is a big man. I would like to see the nation that has large amounts of money and has become very rich, but has been great. That is a mistake. It fills in very well in speech; it is beautiful to the ear, and it is very well for those who are satisfied with declamation only. I will not say anything more about it now; some other time-to-morrow, may be, I will refer to it again. I would like to hear from the farmers here; the men who live by the cultivation of the soil; the producers; that class of men who form one half of the population of the United States-over twenty millions of men who feed the world. Two years of the stopping of farming-yes, one year-would starve one half of the nation to death. The

farmers have made the country wealthy; the farmers and the producers have covered every sea with the white sails of our commerce, and have gridironed the land with railroads. They have controlled the lightning and sent it over the world. The farmers and cultivators have done this. Not the consumers that my young friend thinks so necessary. They are necessary if they will labor; but the consumer should eat the bread from the sweat of his brow, like all of us have done who lived here long, like myself. For three score years I have worked all the time; I have been laborious all my life; I have done hard manual labor; I have succeeded in doing that which I laid out to do, and consequently I have no regrets if I am not called a workingman. But I tell you that I am not speaking for any party. I do not belong to any party. I was elected by a nondescript party, Non-partisan. You can call me Independent, Republican, Union, American man. What I was speaking about was not my own nomination. What I say in regard to repealing the laws of naturalization I do not wish to be understood as saying for any party. It is my own doctrine; it is not the doctrine of any party I am acting with. I have got my own ideas upon the subject, and I have got them from reading the monthly review, not from my neighbors, and not from any political friends. Now, I would like to hear some gentleman from among the farmers say something in regard to this question.

REMARKS OF MR. NOEL.

MR. NOEL. Mr. Chairman

MR. LARUE. I would ask the gentleman if he is a farmer? MR. NOEL. Mr. Chairman: I do not desire to make a speech on the Chinese. I simply wish to express my satisfaction with section one, and my entire dissatisfaction with all the remainder of this report. I am prepared to go in this matter, that is, to rid the State of the curse of the Chinese, just as far as we can go consistently, and I am not willing to go any farther.

[Cries of "louder."]

I

My lungs are weak. This section one seems to me to be justified, if understand it, by the exercise of the police power of the State. MR. BEERSTECHER. I believe the gentleman is an attorney at law. I would ask him whether section one confers any new powers at all; whether there is anything in section one, as presented to us for adoption, that confers any additional powers upon the Legislature, or in any way changes or alters the condition of things as they exist to-day. In other words, whether section one amounts to anything at all?

MR. NOEL. I will answer the gentleman. I believe it confers no additional power on the Legislature. I believe to-day that the Legislature has this power. But it seems to be deemed necessary that the Convention should give expression to something upon this subject, and it seemed to me to be about as harmless an expression as we can have, therefore I shall support it. [Laughter.] There is one other section, Mr. Chairman, that I do not know but I might support-section three. MR. BEERSTECHER. That secures the unanimous support of the Independent party.

MR. NOEL. Yes. The Independent party is entirely sound upon the Chinese question. Section three provides: "No alien ineligible to become a citizen of the United States shall ever be employed on any State, county, municipal, or other public work in this State after the adoption of this Constitution." I see no objection to that, so far as I am concerned. I will support that and section one, but no more of this

report.

REMARKS OF MR. WHITE.

MR. WHITE. Mr. Chairman: As a farmer who, like Mr. Stuart, has lived on a farm and raised his family and supported them out of the produce of the soil, I wish just to state at this time that I entirely dissent from his views in every particular that he has expressed them; and I will state, with regard to the farming community with which I am connected, that of the Pajaro Valley, the facts of the case. In eighteen hundred and fifty, eighteen hundred and fifty-one, eighteen hundred and fifty-two, eighteen hundred and fifty-three, and eighteen hundred and fifty-four we had plenty of white labor. There was not a Chinaman in our neighborhood. We neither had them as cooks, servants, or in workhouses. We never employed them in the harvest field, or in any other capacity whatever. So it run on for some years, and finally the Chinamen began to come in and settle in our center, in Watsonville. They crowded in there, and as they crowded in the white labor seemed to disappear. I will say for the farmers of that valley, that they universally had a great objection to employing them at all, but at the time of the harvest they would employ them to bind; and they gave them out the jobs of binding in the field because they could not find white men. Now, as to this great army of tramps which is talked about as some contagious sort of people that come around, I will tell you that my house is on the trail that was the shortest trail from the County of Santa Clara to Santa Cruz, consequently a great many white laborers came with their blankets, and I will say that I never wanted a man that these men would not turn in and work when I asked them.

In the twenty-five years I lived on that trail I never was refused by a single man, and I never even, in any way, was troubled by the tramps. When I offered them work they invariably took it. That is my experience. Even the religious papers talk about tramps, and some of them even say they ought to be seized and put into prison, at the time when the Chinamen were housed around these men's houses. They have no sympathy at all with the men going around, and say they do not want work. I do not know of any such men traveling in this State, and I have had some experience about it. Now, sir, of late years they have been determined to get rid of these Chinamen, and they have worked in every way to prevent even their binding. For years I have not employed them. My son runs the farm, and he does not employ one of them; and he finds it more profitable not to employ them. Twenty-five cents an acre is saved by using white men to bind the grain, and that is about the

difference in the wages. That is the tendency among the farmers as to being rid of these Chinamen. Let the white men come; the men that will bring their families and deal with the stores and give the storekeepers some sort of show. The storekeepers and ranchers are joining in this cry against the Chinese, because they do not get any trade from them. They have no wives and children. They live upon a little rice, and they go to their own little stores to get that. Now that is the state of this case.

Can a country possibly prosper under the doctrine of Mr. Stuart? Here is a large laboring class. They can scarcely do anything else but labor for others. They are all thrown out of employment and looked upon with contempt, and a gentleman says a negro or Indian is worth two of them. If these Chinese were out of the country, these men would have a chance of working; they would settle down; they would take a few acres of ground. I wish I had at least five or six families of that kind settled on my place; let them have a few acres of land, and have them work for me in the harvest and in the Spring, and they live on the few acres of land in the meantime. We are trying to get rid of the Chinese in any possible way we can. We do not mistreat them. I cannot have any sympathy with the ideas expressed by my fellow farmer, because I know and see that the country is held back by these people.

Mr. Chairman, I did not intend to speak on this question at all, but Mr. Stuart appealed to the farmers, and I was astonished at the doctrine entirely in favor of these men running over the country. A short Santa Barbara or Los Angeles somewhere. They had it all planned time ago some men proposed to buy four or five ranches down towards had it all planned out on paper, and it made a splendid speculation. out to put a couple of hundred Chinamen on there with cattle. They They were getting a large capital subscribed in San Francisco, and they were going to do this until, upon consulting with some friends, they were told: "Do not do it; the people will go down there and clean it through very fear these men did not do this thing. Now, if we are to out, if it costs every one of them their lives. They will rise up." And preach that kind of doctrine, there would be no fear, and California kind of vassals can come here and do not drive men out of the country. would be absorbed by these men. It is all nonsense to say that that There was no difficulty in getting white hired girls some ten years ago. These men in San Francisco tell us that white girls do not come here at all now because they know that these Chinamen are in every house. here and finally became the wives of good men. Now they do not Is this a wholesome state of affairs? These laboring girls used to come come here at all; they go west, or somewhere where there are no Chinamen. I trust that there are very few farmers that hold the views farming, which I have always gloried in. When I left it for a time, I I hope so, for the honor of that glorious profession of could not keep away from it, and there I am still. [Applause.] THE CHAIRMAN. Order! Order!

of Mr. Stuart.

MR. STUART. Mr. Chairman: A year ago last Summer about twenty to employ them. or thirty white men came up near my place. I went down with others I wanted fifteen, I think; another wanted ten or twelve, and so on; and we took them all. After a little they inquired: wanted a dollar and a half. We gave them until Monday morning to "How much will you give?" "A dollar a day and board." They make up their minds, otherwise we would get other help. Nobody came. They did not want work. They would sooner go to San Francisco afoot; sooner go back to their beer. It is always my rule to buy an extra amount of beef and deal it out piece by piece to these tramps that come along. We have got to feed them. I would employ them if they would work for me. But I have always found myself the loser. It is not necessary for me to tell the gentleman this. If he has been a farmer twenty-five years he knows it. Speaking of the girls; it has not been the case for ten years that you could get a good one that would stay and work. I have paid high prices. I have paid them as high as eighty dollars a month, and found them; sixty dollars a month, and found them, when I lived in San Francisco. I have paid forty dollars a month-nothing less than that. Take them up to the ranch, where they could not hear the bell ring along the railroad line, and they get sick in a week or ten days and go away.

MR. BEERSTECHER. I would ask the gentleman if he considers one dollar a day and board fair wages?

MR. STUART. It is fair wages. You can get them East for twelve and fifteen dollars a month-that is half a dollar a day. MR. BEERSTECHER. I don't wonder that they do not work for you. MR. WHITE. Wages in the Pajaro Valley are two dollars a day, and always have been, so far as I know. [Applause and confusion.]

THE CHAIRMAN. The house will keep order. MR. INMAN. I would like to know if this is a political meeting? THE CHAIRMAN. The Sergeant-at-Arms will keep order in the lobby.

REMARKS OF MR. O'SULLIVAN.

MR. O'SULLIVAN. Mr. Chairman: I must confess that I have listened to this general tirade with indignation. Who are tramps? There are just as good men as any on this floor tramps in California. We were all tramps in forty-nine, will the gentleman remember that? Many gentlemen here, forty-niners—I am a forty-niner myself, have tramped in this State, in the mines. We were all tramps then and carried our blankets on our backs, and have seen an honorable and honest workingmen as there are in God's world tramping in this State in search of work and could not find it. I venture to say that the gentleman is an employer of Chinese.

MR. STUART. Yes.

MR. O'SULLIVAN. Yes; I knew it the first words that fell from his lips; that he had such a hatred of his white fellow man