HAYMARKET RIOT. 1886 was a year of great labor unrest in the United States, and nowhere was this unrest more evident than in the city of Chicago, where a strike of freight-handlers disturbed all the industries of the city. On May 3, there occurred a conflict between the police and the strikers, in which several of the workingmen were wounded. On the next day, Anarchists called a meeting of protest in Haymarket Square, at which various speakers delivered incendiary speeches. When a speaker openly exhorted his hearers to resort to violence, the police tried to disperse the meeting, only to be met with a dynamite bomb which killed and wounded a number of the officers and bystanders. Seven anarchists were tried for murder as a result of the bomb-throwing, of whom four were hanged, one committed suicide, and two were sentenced to jail terms, only to be pardoned some years later. The excitement aroused by the "Haymarket Riot" was intense over the entire country, and for a long time feeling against anarchists ran high. (See Haymarket Riot, Encyclopedic Index.) panying documents, relative to the commerce between the United States and certain foreign countries in cereals, and the cotton product during the years 1884 and 1885. GROVER CLEVELAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 22, 1886. To the House of Representatives: In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 15th of February last, calling upon the Secretary of State for copies of all the correspondence relating to the claims of certain governments to be accorded the reductions and exemptions of tonnage dues accorded to vessels entering ports of the United States from certain ports named in the shipping act of June 26, 1884, I transmit the report of that officer, together with the correspondence. GROVER CLEVELAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 25, 1886. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith the report of the Civil Service Commission for the year ended on the 16th day of January last. The exhibit thus made of the operations of the Commission and the account thus presented of the results following the execution of the civilservice law can not fail to demonstrate its usefulness and strengthen the conviction that this scheme for a reform in the methods of administering the Government is no longer an experiment. Wherever this reform has gained a foothold it has steadily advanced in the esteem of those charged with public administrative duties, while the people who desire good government have constantly been confirmed in their high estimate of its value and efficiency. With the benefits it has already secured to the public service plainly apparent, and with its promise of increased usefulness easily appreciated, this cause is commended to the liberal care and jealous protection of the Congress. GROVER CLEVELAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 30, 1886. To the House of Representatives: In further answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 15th of February last, calling upon the Secretary of State for copies of all correspondence relating to the claims of governments to be accorded the reductions and exemptions of tonnage dues accorded to vessels entering the ports of the United States from certain ports named in the shipping act of June 26, 1884, I transmit herewith a copy of the reply of the Attorney-General to the letter of the Secretary of State of December 15, 1885, as found on pages 35 and 36 of Executive Document No. 132, House of Representatives, Forty-ninth Congress, first session, communicated on the 22d instant. GROVER CLEVELAND. To the House of Representatives: EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1886. In response to a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 24th of March, relative to the employment of substitutes in the Department of State, I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State on the subject. GROVER CLEVELAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1886. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith a letter from the Secretary of the Interior and the accompanying report, submitted by the governor of Alaska in compliance with section 5 of the act of May 17, 1884, entitled "An act providing a civil government for Alaska." GROVER CLEVELAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1886. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State, in relation to the claim of the representatives of the late Hon. James Crooks, a British subject, against this Government for the seizure of the schooner Lord Nelson in 1812. The matter is commended to the favorable consideration of Congress. GROVER CLEVELAND. EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 6, 1886. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I transmit herewith, for the consideration of Congress with a view to appropriate legislation in the premises, a report of the Secretary of State, with certain correspondence touching the treaty right of Chinese subjects other than laborers "to go and come of their own free will and accord." In my annual message of the 8th of December last I said: In the application of the acts lately passed to execute the treaty of 1880, restrictive of the immigration of Chinese laborers into the United States, individual cases of hardship have occurred beyond the power of the Executive to remedy, and calling for judicial determination. These cases of individual hardship are due to the ambiguous and defective provisions of the acts of Congress approved respectively on the 6th May, 1882, and 5th July, 1884. The hardship has in some cases been remedied by the action of the courts. In other cases, however, where the phraseology of the statutes has appeared to be conclusive against any discretion on the part of the officers charged with the execution of the law, Chinese persons expressly entitled to free admission under the treaty have been refused a landing and sent back to the country whence they came without being afforded any opportunity to show in the courts or otherwise their right to the privilege of free ingress and egress which it was the purpose of the treaty to secure. In the language of one of the judicial determinations of the Supreme Court of the United States to which I have referred― The supposition should not be indulged that Congress, while professing to faithfully execute the treaty stipulations and recognizing the fact that they secure to a certain class the right to go from and come to the United States, intended to make its protection depend upon the performance of conditions which it was physically impossible to perform. (112 U. S. Reports, p. 554, Chew Heong vs. United States.) The act of July 5, 1884, imposes such an impossible condition in not providing for the admission, under proper certificate, of Chinese travelers of the exempted classes in the cases most likely to arise in ordinary commercial intercourse. The treaty provisions governing the case are as follows: ART. I. * * * The limitation or suspension shall be reasonable, and shall apply only to Chinese who may go to the United States as laborers, other classes not being included in the limitations. * * * * * * ART. II. Chinese subjects, whether proceeding to the United States as teachers, students, merchants, or from curiosity, together with their body and household servants, shall be allowed to go and come of their own free will and accord, and shall be accorded all the rights, privileges, immunities, and exemptions which are accorded to the citizens and subjects of the most favored nation. Section 6 of the amended Chinese immigration act of 1884 purports to secure this treaty right to the exempted classes named by means of prescribed certificates of their status, which certificates shall be the prima facie and the sole permissible evidence to establish a right of entry into the United States. But it provides in terms for the issuance of certificates in two cases only: (a) Chinese subjects departing from a port of China; and (b) Chinese persons (i. e., of the Chinese race) who may at the time be subjects of some foreign government other than China, and who may depart for the United States from the ports of such other foreign government. A statute is certainly most unusual which, purporting to execute the provisions of a treaty with China in respect of Chinese subjects, enacts strict formalities as regards the subjects of other governments than that of China. It is sufficient that I should call the earnest attention of Congress to the circumstance that the statute makes no provision whatever for the somewhat numerous class of Chinese persons who, retaining their Chinese subjection in some countries other than China, desire to come from such countries to the United States. Chinese merchants have trading operations of magnitude throughout the world. They do not become citizens or subjects of the country where they may temporarily reside and trade; they continue to be subjects of China, and to them the explicit exemption of the treaty applies. Yet if such a Chinese subject, the head of a mercantile house at Hongkong or Yokohama or Honolulu or Havana or Colon, desires to come from any of these places to the United States, he is met with the requirement that he must produce a certificate, in prescribed form and in the English tongue, issued by the Chinese Government. If there be at the foreign place of his residence no representative of the Chinese Government competent to issue a certificate in the prescribed form, he can obtain none, and is under the provisions of the present law unjustly debarred from entry into the United States. His usual Chinese passport will not suffice, for it is not in the form which the act prescribes shall be the sole permissible evidence of his right to land. And he can obtain no such certificate from the Government of his place of residence, because he is not a subject or citizen thereof "at the time," or at any time. There being, therefore, no statutory provision prescribing the term upon which Chinese persons resident in foreign countries but not subjects or citizens of such countries may prove their status and rights as members of the exempted classes in the absence of a Chinese representative in such country, the Secretary of the Treasury, in whom the execution of the act of July 5, 1884, was vested, undertook to remedy the omission by directing the revenue officers to recognize as lawful certificates those issued in favor of Chinese subjects by the Chinese consular and diplomatic officers at the foreign port of departure, when viséed by the United States representative thereat. This appears to be a just application of the spirit of the law, although enlarging its letter, and in adopting this rule he was controlled by the authority of high judicial decision as to what evidence is necessary to establish the fact that an individual Chinaman belongs to the exempted class. He, however, went beyond the spirit of the act and the judicial decisious, by providing, in a circular dated January 14, 1885, for the original issuance of such a certificate by the United States consular officer at the port of departure, in the absence of a Chinese diplomatic or consular representative thereat; for it is clear that the act of Congress contemplated the intervention of the United States consul only in a supervisory capac ity, his function being to check the proceeding and see that no abuse of the privilege followed. The power or duty of original certification is wholly distinct from that supervisory function. It either dispenses with the foreign certificate altogether, leaving the consular visé to stand alone |