Emigration and immigration

President Roosevelt looks over a fence at a farmer labeled “Congress” chopping the roast off a pig: “salary increase.” The rest of the pig is labeled, “inheritance and income tax,” “big warships,” “Panama Canal legislation,” and “currency reports.” He smokes a pipe as he says, “I’ll take this roast home. The rest will go in the smokehouse.” In the background stands “The Congressional Smokehouse” with a sign, “The Long Cure Process Used.” Four cuts of meat are in there: “Philippines Tariff Bill,” “Ship Subsidy,” “Santo Domingo Treaty,” and “Immigration Bill.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The underlying point, or contemporary pertinence, of cartoonist Kirk L. Russell’s cartoon is in its title — “Planning a Raid On the Smokehouse” — despite not portraying President Roosevelt as anything but a casual observer over the fence.

President Roosevelt takes a big stick labeled “Japanese question” and hits “San Francisco” with it. Caption: “Another earthquake.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Fortunately or unfortunately, the tragedy of the San Francisco earthquake provided cartoonists opportunities to employ the event as a reference-point for drawings that addressed other matters. But it is what cartoonists do — deal in the relatable; and after more than a century, the earthquake provides talking-points in politics and other fields.

A conference was held to discuss the Mitchell-Kahn Chinese bill which has become objectionable to the Pacific Coast and labor interests due to several amendments. It was determined that all of the amendments recommended by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs would need to be opposed.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-03-23

Richard Arthur writes to the Australian people regarding President Roosevelt’s visit and the role of Australia in world politics, particularly in Asia.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-05

President Roosevelt thanks Joseph Bucklin Bishop for his letter about the immigration office. He does not wish to have to intervene in the Dominican Republic in any way. He has no desire to annex the island: “I have about the same desire to annex it as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to.”

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1904-02-23

John Barrett writes to President Roosevelt to discuss the factors surrounding Japanese immigration. Barrett provides analyses of labor shortages, government involvement in regulation, and the motivations of groups and individuals who oppose immigration.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-09-08

Author claims many Catholic Universities would have gladly provided an education for Filipino refugees had they been given the opportunity and concludes by calling for an investigation into the decision making process.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-11

This article details Justice David J. Brewer’s address before the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Agents’ Association, where he said, “America is the great composite photographer of nations, with a duty to take all the various races of the earth…and put them on the canvas to make one picture, one race.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-07-21

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

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.

President Roosevelt fires a cannon to send a lifeline to a ship in distress on rough seas with dark clouds labeled “Prejudice” forming overhead. The rope spells out the word “Tolerance.” A rainbow shines on the left with the word “Liberty.” In the lower right corner is a quotation from “The President’s Reference to Immigrants.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

President Roosevelt’s “reference” to immigrants, and a welcoming, reasonable, national policy, was contained in a note to Secretary of State John Hay, not identified by depicted in this bold cartoon.

A Chinese woman with two children talks to an American missionary on a street with a market in the background. Caption: “But why is it,” asked the thoughtful Chinese, “that I may go to your heaven, while I may not go to your country?” The American missionary shrugged his shoulders. “There is no Labor vote in heaven!” said he.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-12-19

Photograph showing audience of Russian Germans waving American flags.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1903-06-11

Handwritten notes from an interview with Ernest Osgood. Osgood discusses, among other topics, the Dakota Territory and the “emigration to the gold fields and routes over land,” draft dodging, and emigration. The notes also include page references about the “balkanization of the United States,” Vallandingham of Ohio, and his thoughts on the separation of the eastern and western United States, possibly from Roy Franklin Nichols’ book The Disruption of American Democracy.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Creation Date

1952-11-07

Edward VII, King of Great Britain, thanks President Roosevelt for the letter, delivered by Ambassador Whitelaw Reid. He has been following the progress of the Great White Fleet in the Pacific, and admires the undertaking. Edward VII agrees that “the interests of the English speaking peoples are alike in the Atlantic & the Pacific,” and empathizes with the questions of immigration and emigration with which Roosevelt has to deal.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-03-05

Theodore Roosevelt apologizes to Millard J. Bloomer for not allowing the use of his name for the Citizens Peace Banquet, as he does not know the banquet’s stance regarding the arbitration treaties. Roosevelt discusses his opinions on these treaties.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-02

On behalf of Theodore Roosevelt, his secretary thanks Cornelius P. Kitchel for the copy of the Legal Aid Society’s resolution with reference to immigration.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-04

Theodore Roosevelt apologizes to Millard J. Bloomer for not allowing the use of his name for the Citizens Peace Banquet. He does not know what the banquet’s stance is regarding the arbitration treaties. Roosevelt discusses his opinions on these treaties.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-05

Theodore Roosevelt apologizes to Millard J. Bloomer for not allowing the use of his name for the Citizens Peace Banquet. He does not know what the banquet’s stance is regarding the arbitration treaties. Roosevelt discusses his opinions on these treaties.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-05

Theodore Roosevelt encloses a letter to Albert Warren Ferris detailing a difficult situation in which a man who has been in the United States for six years is being separated from his daughter and sent across the ocean. Roosevelt says federal authorities will keep the daughter in an asylum “if proper bond is furnished.” He finds the situation impossible.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-10-14

Theodore Roosevelt will see F. V. Greene when he returns. He admires Greene’s enclosures but has two suggestions, which he discusses at length. First, Greene only needs to state that King of Prussia Frederick II’s approbation of George Washington seems to be a myth, as he never showed interest in Washington or the American Struggle. Roosevelt comments on Helmuth Moltke’s opinion of the Civil War and how France could have implemented similar cavalry tactics. His second suggestion is that it is incorrect to say that America’s action in the peace settlement of the Russo-Japanese War did not produce the current hostile relationships with Russia and Japan. He discusses the other factors involved.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-03-07