How John may dodge the exclusion act
Uncle Sam’s boot kicks a Chinese immigrant off a dock as part of an anti-Chinese immigration campaign. Vignettes show how the Chinese can possibly emigrate to the United States, by coming as “a cup-challenger” in yacht races, “as an industrious anarchist,” or “disguised as an humble Irishman,” or “as an English wife-hunter” with “pedigree” in his pocket, or wielding knife and handgun, as a mean-looking “peaceful, law-abiding Sicilian.”
Comments and Context
A 1905 Puck cartoon by J. S. Pughe might seem on the surface merely to be a humorous, if stereotype-laden, treatment of immigration issues of the day, particularly the difficulty of Chinese immigration leading to comic subterfuge. It would be that; but there were deeper, longer-lasting, and core consequential aspects to the problem. A modern version might have immigrants wishing to enter the United States to pose as Mexicans, whose ease of border crossings has been legendary; that would be upside-down as a cartoon concept, but relates to the larger issue.
Chinese immigration to the Western half of the United States became an issue after the Civil War, when laborers were imported to help build the railroads. This only became an issue as the railroads neared completion; when other recent immigrants (European, mostly Irish) felt their jobs threatened and nativist sentiments were inflamed. Periodic breakouts of bubonic plagues in California’s Chinatowns upset older resident groups.
