Quotes of the Morning: Yellow Menace to Society

“After a emotional debate fraught with symbolism, the Senate yesterday voted to make English the ‘national language’ of the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English except for those already guaranteed by law.
The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to ‘preserve and enhance’ the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages. Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.”
-Washington Post, May 19, 2006

“Well, it looks like the War on Mexicans is continuing on its drunken stumble. Yes, the United States for the first time has a ‘national language’. I’m glad that our lawmakers took time out from their careful examination of the NSA spying and our ongoing conflict in Iraq to pass such essential legislation. America (especially such vulnerable states as California) hasn’t been in such a desperate situation since the turn of the last century when the dreaded Yellow Menace was coming aboard our fair shores.”
-Skippy

“MEN FROM CHINA come here to do LAUNDRY WORK. The Chinese Empire contains 600,000,000 (six hundred millions) inhabitants.
The supply of these men is inexhaustible.
Every one doing this work takes BREAD from the mouths of OUR WOMEN.
So many have come of late, that to keep at work, they are obliged to cut prices.
And now, we appeal to the public, asking them will they be partners to a deal which is only one of their many onward marches in CRUSHING OUT THE INDUSTRIES OF OUR COUNTRY from our people by grasping them themselves. Will you oblige the AMERICAN LAUNDRIES to CUT THE WAGES OF THEIR PEOPLE by giving your patronage to the CHINAMEN?
...
This is the one unvarying story everywhere. Let white men, in competition with Chinese, mark down wages and profits as they may, extend the hours of labor or reduce the food standard as they may, the Chinese, without seeming effort or privation, can at once get below them and work them out.”
-“China’s Menace to the World”, 1878

“You see, because this immigrant labor works hard and works cheap they are a threat to America and must be stopped. You can see what happened… The government did nothing, and now we all speak Chinese.”
-Skippy

"As long as California is white man's country, it will remain one of the grandest and best states in the union, but the moment the Golden State is subjected to an unlimited Asiatic coolie invasion there will be no more California."
-Asiatic Exclusion League, 1905

“Yes, that was written 101 years ago. Our inscrutable Asian overlords were obviously subtle in their conquest and only have used their immense power to make us east raw fish wrapped in seaweed in order to humiliate us. Sushi: proof of the fall of California.”
-Skippy

"They [Japanese] now occupy valleys in California by lease or purchase of land to the exclusion of not only whites but Chinese, and if this silent invasion is permitted by the federal government, they would at the rate at which they are coming, a thousand a month, soon convert the fairest state in the union into a Japanese colony. If they were naturalized they would outvote us.
But California is white man's country, and the two races cannot live side by side in peace, and inasmuch as we discovered the country first and occupied it, we propose to hold it against either a peaceful or a warlike invasion."
-James D. Phelan, Mayor of San Francisco, 1906

“Yes, they must be stopped from coming here, no matter how peaceful they are or how hard working, because they aren’t, you know, white. Stop me when any of this starts to sound familiar.”
-Skippy

“The Chinese have been largely employed in the fruit-packing business in San Francisco. That has been one of the largest, most useful, and most profitable of our industries. They have heretofore figured in it only as employees, but last year they began to operate extensively on their own account, and at a time of greater depression than ever before known in the business. There was such an over-supply of fruit that any one giving a large order could almost dictate the price. At such a crisis the Chinese entered the business, and they are now advancing rapidly in it. And they will continue to advance, for Chinese employers practice the co-operative system, and thus get much better work out of Chinese laborers than Americans possibly can. For the money they advance, Chinese employers charge two per cent a month, and they command, also, high salaries for the ir services. After these fixed charges have been provided for, then co-operation comes in. Chinese masters have the mental keenness to know that a co-operative laborer is a laborer with heart in his work, and that the heart is the very best spur to diligent hands.
The Chinese have recently secured a foothold in Lower California, 60 miles below the California State line, on a grant 125 miles square. No use was made of this land till some speculators at San Diego, while floating everything on paper there, transferred it to a joint-stock company. The shares had only a nominal value until a very sharp Chinaman appeared. He and his Chinese associates demanded and received a more than half of the shares, in order that the control should be in Chinese hands. All of the shares will finally be owned by them. The Chinese guarantee to build a canal 75 miles long the water of which is to be used for placer gold-washing and for irrigation. But much more important than that is a twenty years' concession, already granted by a Franciscan, of the sole rite to fish in the waters of the Gulf of California. He has turned this rite over to the Chinese. When the Chinese thus purchase territories, or get long leases of them, they pay but a trifle of money down. Payment of the great bulk of the purchase price is deferred until the amount can be taken out of the country, through profits from agriculture, mining, and fishing, made by the laborers, who will be imported from China. One of the parties interested in the scheme has gone to China to import 8,000 Chinese into that part of Mexico.”
-“China’s Menace to the World”, 1878

“Oh irony… Back in 1878 they were concerned about the Chinese immigrating to Mexico and taking over migrant farming. Many thanks to David Neiwert at Orcinus for today’s Quotes.”
-Skippy