An article appearing in the Elizabethville Echo, October 25, 1906, seemed to suggest that the newspaper and its proprietor, Milton A. Miller, supported the views of Rep. Marlin E. Olmsted (R-PA), who, at the time, represented Dauphin County in Congress, and was an avid supporter of excluding Chinese labor from the United States.
Marlin Edgar Olmstead was elected in 1896 and served as a representative of the district through early 1913. He did not stand for re-election in 1912. He died in July 1913, only weeks after completing his Congressional service.
Olmstead’s views were not unique. In the speech in which he is quoted in the news article, he stated that the exclusion bill he was supporting was favored by all [political] parties. Olmstead repeated some of the common stereotypes about the Chinese while he supported exclusion in order to preserve an advantage for “American” labor.
The racist stereotypes were not refuted by the Elizabeth Echo.
OLMSTED DEFENDS AMERICAN LABOR FROM CHINESE COMPETITION
Congressman Marlin E. Olmsted from this district is an active supporter of the Chinese Exclusion Bill, and on the 7th of April, 1902, made a speech in Congress in which he said:
It may seem ungracious to select one nation from among all the nations of the world and say to her”Your citizens shall not be permitted within our borders,” but self-preservation demands it. The protection of American labor is one of the most important objects which the Republican Party has in view. We desire to continue, and if possible improve, the present prosperous condition of affairs. In order to do that we believe it to be necessary to continue to exclude the Chinese, and, indeed, to so improve the existing exclusion law as to make evasions of its provisions more difficult.
This bill does not present a dividing line politically. Members of all parties favor it. China, with her 4000,000,000 inhabitants, is as thickly populated as an ant-hill. Throw down the bars and the lower classes of her people will swarm in upon us, lowering the present high grade of American citizenship, lowering the character and dignity of American labor, and lowering the compensation of labor. Centuries of privation have taught these people to live upon what would starve an American family to death. We believe that labor should receive its just reward, that the families of our laborers may live respectably and comfortably and their children have educational advantages, so that in the race of life the child of the humblest citizen may not be handicapped, but his chances for political or other preferment may be as good as those of the child of the wealthiest parents.
Those lower orders of Chinese do not come here for the purpose of becoming American citizens. They come here, frequently under contract, to make what they can to carry back to their own country. They do not assimilate with our people, they are not interested in our institutions, and do not breathe their spirit. We do not deem it wise to permit them to pour into this country to the displacement or disadvantage of intelligent, patriotic American citizens who now occupy the field of honest labor.
The article that the Elizabethville Echo printed in its October 25, 1906, had actually appeared on October 20, 1906, in the Harrisburg Telegraph, but the Echo failed to indicate that fact.
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News article from Newspapers.com.
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