would help to secure a wider distribution of our immigrants.

Asiatic Immigration.--What has been said regarding there being no good
social or political argument for the prohibition of immigrants does not
apply to Asiatic immigration. Here the importance of the racial factor
becomes so pronounced that it may well be doubted if a policy of
exclusion toward Asiatic immigration would not be the wisest in the long
run for the people of this country.

It is true that but few Asiatic immigrants have as yet come to this
country, but there are grave reasons for believing that if the policy of
exclusion had not been adopted a quarter of a century ago, Asiatic
immigration would now constitute a very considerable proportion of our
total immigration. It is chiefly the Chinese who are the main element in
Asiatic immigration, and between 1851 and 1900 the Chinese sent us a
total of only 310,000 immigrants; but in 1882, the year before the first
Chinese Exclusion Law was put into effect, 39,000 Chinese immigrants
entered the United States, and if their rate of increase had been kept
up the Chinese would now be sending us from 100,000 to 300,000
immigrants annually. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, reenacted and
strengthened again in 1892 and in 1902, excluded all Chinese laborers
from the United States. Consequently in 1890 the census showed only a
total of 107,000 Chinese in this country, and in 1900 only 93,283,
exclusive of Hawaii. In Hawaii, however, there were 25,767 Chinese in
1900, most of whom were residents of the islands previous to the
annexation. The Chinese in continental United States were, moreover,
massed in 1900 chiefly in the Pacific Coast states, there being 67,729
Chinese in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states, of which number
45,753 were in California alone.