Show The New Chinese Question The antiChinese act commonly called the GEARY act requiring every Chinaman in this country to register and receive a certificate of legal registration is likely to cause a great deal of trouble to the pigtailed pig-tailed subjects of the Celestial empire The report is that comparatively few of them have complied with the law which includes the requirement of the filing of a photograph of each applicant for a certificate certi-ficate The bureau of registration has had its offices open for ten months but it looks as though the law is to be ignored by the great majority of Chinamen in America That it is to be enforced there can be no doubt after the emphatic declaration of Secretary CARLISLE The exemption clauses will be also enforced and those forbidding the naturalization of Chinese by any court in a state or of the United States In San Francisco arrangements are being be-ing made for the arrest of every China man who after May 5 does not possess a certificate Unless some order from Washington is received or there is some action in the courts to prevent the jails in California will be crowded with China The Six Companies have determined to resist the law and have levied an assessment assess-ment on their countrymen to pay for the services of eminent counsel But the present determination seems to be that a test case shall only operate on the individual selected and not upon others who resist the law and if he is bailed out it will only be a temporary release re-lease in his personal instance Afew Chinese in California have registered reg-istered and it is said an attempt has been mado by some to repeat the registration in order to sell the duplicate certificates An nvestigation in one case disclosed the fact that the cunning applicant had been previously registered The ground on which legal proceedings are to be taken will be that the GEARY law is unconstitutional The contest is to take place in New York city because of the great antiChinese prejudice in San Francisco Eminent counsel have been employed among whom are Judge JOSEPH JO-SEPH H CHOATE JAMES C CARTER and J HUBLEY ASHTON Attorneys for the six companies have been to the east for the purpose On the 6th of May several sev-eral selected Chinamen are to be arrested and taken before cine of the United States judges On the committal of the prisoners prison-ers a writ of habeas corpus will be sued out before another court and the case will be hurried forward to the Supremo court of the United States and the validity of the law will be fully tested The Six Companies seem to be imbued with the idea that the case will be Won J The Californians generally including the press on the coastare just as satisfied that the law will stand And meanwhile as we have stated unless the officers are restrained from doing so by competent authority they will enforce the law upon every Chinaman found without a certificate cer-tificate The question as to the policy and right of excluding plodding patient cheap laboring Chinese will not figure largely in these proceedings The legal aspect of the case will be alone considered The right of the government to exclude the Chineseto modify and change the terms of a treaty and to exact the particular requirements of this act of Congress will be the subjects for the courts to decide The probabilities are that John Chinamen must go |