Part 12
The exhibit thus made of the operations of the Commission and the account thus presented of the results following the execution of the civil-service 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.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 1, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
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 terms 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 decisions, 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 capacity, 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 and sufficient, or else it combines in one official act the distinct functions of certification and verification of the fact certified.
The official character attaching to the consular certification contemplated by the unamended circular of January 14, 1885, is to be borne in mind. It is not merely _prima facie_ evidence of the status of the bearer, such as the courts may admit in their discretion; it was prescribed as an official attestation, on the strength of which the customs officers at the port of entry were to admit the bearer without further adjudication of his status unless question should arise as to the truth of the certificate itself.
It became, therefore, necessary to amend the circular of January 14, 1885, and this was done on the 13th of June following, by striking out the clause prescribing original certification of status by the United States consuls. The effect of this amendment is to deprive any certificate the United States consuls may issue of the value it purported to possess as sole permissible evidence under the statute when its issuance was prescribed by Treasury regulations. There is, however, nothing to prevent consuls giving certificates of facts within their knowledge to be received as evidence in the absence of statutory authentication.
The complaint of the Chinese minister in his note of March 24, 1886, is that the Chinese merchant Lay Sang, of the house of King Lee & Co., of San Francisco, having arrived at San Francisco from Hongkong and exhibited a certificate of the United States consul at Hongkong as to his status as a merchant, and consequently exempt under the treaty, was refused permission to land and was sent back to Hongkong by the steamer which brought him. While the certificate he bore was doubtless insufficient under the present law, it is to be remembered that there is at Hongkong no representative of the Government of China competent or authorized to issue the certificate required by the statute. The intent of Congress to legislate in execution of the treaty is thus defeated by a prohibition directly contrary to the treaty, and conditions are exacted which, in the words of the Supreme Court hereinbefore quoted, "it was physically impossible to perform."
This anomalous feature of the act should be reformed as speedily as possible, in order that the occurrence of such cases may be avoided and the imputation removed which would otherwise rest upon the good faith of the United States in the execution of their solemn treaty engagements.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 9, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State, in relation to the mercantile marines of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 14, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
In response to a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 17th ultimo, requesting the Secretary of State "to communicate to the House of Representatives, if not incompatible with the public interest, copies of the recent correspondence and dispatches between the Secretary of State and the minister of the United States at The Hague touching the subject of taxation of petroleum in Holland and in the Dutch colonies, and that of the export therefrom of leaf tobacco to the United States," I transmit herewith the report of the Secretary of State on the subject.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 14, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
In response to a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 6th instant, requesting the Secretary of State "to transmit, if not incompatible with the public interest, copies of all correspondence between his Department and the representatives of France, Germany, Austria, and any other European country which has partially or entirely restricted the importation of American pork," I transmit herewith the report of the Secretary of State on the subject.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 20, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State on the manufacture of milk sugar in Switzerland.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 22, 1886_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
The Constitution imposes upon the President the duty of recommending to the consideration of Congress from time to time such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.
I am so deeply impressed with the importance of immediately and thoughtfully meeting the problem which recent events and a present condition have thrust upon us, involving the settlement of disputes arising between our laboring men and their employers, that I am constrained to recommend to Congress legislation upon this serious and pressing subject.
Under our form of government the value of labor as an element of national prosperity should be distinctly recognized, and the welfare of the laboring man should be regarded as especially entitled to legislative care. In a country which offers to all its citizens the highest attainment of social and political distinction its workingmen can not justly or safely be considered as irrevocably consigned to the limits of a class and entitled to no attention and allowed no protest against neglect.
The laboring man, bearing in his hand an indispensable contribution to our growth and progress, may well insist, with manly courage and as a right, upon the same recognition from those who make our laws as is accorded to any other citizen having a valuable interest in charge; and his reasonable demands should be met in such a spirit of appreciation and fairness as to induce a contented and patriotic cooperation in the achievement of a grand national destiny.
While the real interests of labor are not promoted by a resort to threats and violent manifestations, and while those who, under the pretext of an advocacy of the claims of labor, wantonly attack the rights of capital and for selfish purposes or the love of disorder sow seeds of violence and discontent should neither be encouraged nor conciliated, all legislation on the subject should be calmly and deliberately undertaken, with no purpose of satisfying unreasonable demands or gaining partisan advantage.
The present condition of the relations between labor and capital is far from satisfactory. The discontent of the employed is due in a large degree to the grasping and heedless exactions of employers and the alleged discrimination in favor of capital as an object of governmental attention. It must also be conceded that the laboring men are not always careful to avoid causeless and unjustifiable disturbance.
Though the importance of a better accord between these interests is apparent, it must be borne in mind that any effort in that direction by the Federal Government must be greatly limited by constitutional restrictions. There are many grievances which legislation by Congress can not redress, and many conditions which can not by such means be reformed.
I am satisfied, however, that something may be done under Federal authority to prevent the disturbances which so often arise from disputes between employers and the employed, and which at times seriously threaten the business interests of the country; and, in my opinion, the proper theory upon which to proceed is that of voluntary arbitration as the means of settling these difficulties.
But I suggest that instead of arbitrators chosen in the heat of conflicting claims, and after each dispute shall arise, for the purpose of determining the same, there be created a commission of labor, consisting of three members, who shall be regular officers of the Government, charged among other duties with the consideration and settlement, when possible, of all controversies between labor and capital.
A commission thus organized would have the advantage of being a stable body, and its members, as they gained experience, would constantly improve in their ability to deal intelligently and usefully with the questions which might be submitted to them. If arbitrators are chosen for temporary service as each case of dispute arises, experience and familiarity with much that is involved in the question will be lacking, extreme partisanship and bias will be the qualifications sought on either side, and frequent complaints of unfairness and partiality will be inevitable. The imposition upon a Federal court of a duty so foreign to the judicial function as the selection of an arbitrator in such cases is at least of doubtful propriety.
The establishment by Federal authority of such a bureau would be a just and sensible recognition of the value of labor and of its right to be represented in the departments of the Government. So far as its conciliatory offices shall have relation to disturbances which interfere with transit and commerce between the States, its existence would be justified under the provision of the Constitution which gives to Congress the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States;" and in the frequent disputes between the laboring men and their employers, of less extent, and the consequences of which are confined within State limits and threaten domestic violence, the interposition of such a commission might be tendered, upon the application of the legislature or executive of a State, under the constitutional provision which requires the General Government to "protect" each of the States "against domestic violence."
If such a commission were fairly organized, the risk of a loss of popular support and sympathy resulting from a refusal to submit to so peaceful an instrumentality would constrain both parties to such disputes to invoke its interference and abide by its decisions. There would also be good reason to hope that the very existence of such an agency would invite application to it for advice and counsel, frequently resulting in the avoidance of contention and misunderstanding.
If the usefulness of such a commission is doubted because it might lack power to enforce its decisions, much encouragement is derived from the conceded good that has been accomplished by the railroad commissions which have been organized in many of the States, which, having little more than advisory power, have exerted a most salutary influence in the settlement of disputes between conflicting interests.
In July, 1884, by a law of Congress, a Bureau of Labor was established and placed in charge of a Commissioner of Labor, who is required to "collect information upon the subject of labor, its relations to capital, the hours of labor and the earnings of laboring men and women, and the means of promoting their material, social, intellectual, and moral prosperity."
The commission which I suggest could easily be ingrafted upon the bureau thus already organized by the addition of two more commissioners and by supplementing the duties now imposed upon it by such other powers and functions as would permit the commissioners to act as arbitrators when necessary between labor and capital, under such limitations and upon such occasions as should be deemed proper and useful.
Power should also be distinctly conferred upon this bureau to investigate the causes of all disputes as they occur, whether submitted for arbitration or not, so that information may always be at hand to aid legislation on the subject when necessary and desirable.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 26, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith a communication from the Secretary of State, accompanied by a report of Mr. Somerville P. Tuck, appointed to carry out certain provisions of section 5 of an act entitled "An act to provide for the ascertainment of claims of American citizens for spoliations committed by the French prior to the 31st day of July, 1801," approved January 20, 1885.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
[The same message was sent to the Senate.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _May 5, 1886_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
I transmit herewith a communication of 1st instant from the Secretary of the Interior, submitting a draft of a bill recommended by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, providing for the payment of improvements made by settlers on the lands of the Mescalero Indian Reservation in the Territory of New Mexico.
The subject is presented for the consideration and action of Congress.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _May 11, 1886_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
I herewith transmit a report from the Secretary of State, dated the 6th instant, touching the claims of Benjamin Weil and La Abra Silver Mining Company against the Government of Mexico.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _May 11, 1886_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
By a joint resolution of Congress approved March 3, 1877, the President was authorized and directed to accept the colossal statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World" when presented by the citizens of the French Republic, and to designate and set apart for the erection thereof a suitable site upon either Governors or Bedloes Island, in the harbor of New York, and upon the completion thereof to cause the statue "to be inaugurated with such ceremonies as will serve to testify the gratitude of our people for this expressive and felicitous memorial of the sympathy of the citizens of our sister Republic."
The President was further thereby "authorized to cause suitable regulations to be made for its future maintenance as a beacon and for the permanent care and preservation thereof as a monument of art and the continued good will of the great nation which aided us in our struggle for freedom."
Under the authority of this resolution, on the 4th day of July, 1884, the minister of the United States to the French Republic, by direction of the President of the United States, accepted the statue and received a deed of presentation from the Franco-American Union, which is now preserved in the archives of the Department of State.