These laws were fairly effective. The incoming tide was checked and the outgo led to a rapid diminution of the Chinese population of the colonies. Victoria, for example, had about 42,000 Chinese in 1859, while in 1863 there were only 20,000 left. Public fear subsided and the exclusion law was repealed after being eight years in force. New South Wales also repealed her exclusion act after using it six years. From 1867 to 1881 the Chinese could go and come pretty much as they pleased outside of Queensland and South Australia.

But the yellow tide rose again in 1880 and '81 and in the latter year exclusion laws more drastic than those above mentioned were passed by New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and New Zealand. The four acts were much alike,' the essence of them being that every Chinaman must pay an arrival tax of £10, and that only one could coine for each 100 tons of tonnage in any ship. South Australia provided in addition that the Chinese immigrant must have been vaccinated.

Queensland left her Chinese tax at £10 and her tonnage ratio at 1 to 10 tons until 1884, when she found it necessary to raise the bars as the Chinese were jumping over the old fence in uncomfortable numbers. The arrival tax was lifted to £30 (about $150) absolute, payment not to be refunded on leaving the colony, and the proportion of Chinese immigrants was not to be more than one to 50 tons.

After this there was a lull until 1888. Then it was learned that nearly 4,500 Chinese had entered New South Wales in the previous twelve months. They were pouring into other colonies also. There was a panic. Henry Parkes, Prime Minister of New South Wales, telegraphed to England urging the Imperial Government to negotiate a treaty with China similar to that which had just been secured by the United States, but before diplomacy could be tried an emergency arose which drove the Colonial Governments to drastic measures for their immediate defense.

The emergency was brought by the steamer Afghan, which reached Port Philip in April, 1888, with 264 Chinese on board-250 more than her tonnage entitled her to bring under the Victorian law of 1881. Some of the Chinese passengers claimed to be naturalized British subjects and showed naturalization papers. These were alleged to be fraudulent and the collector of customs refused to allow

1 Tasmania followed with a similar law in 1887.

any of the Chinamen to land. The Afghan then went to Sidney and there, with three other steamers carrying Chinamen, met a similar refusal. Parkes induced the House to suspend the standing orders and, in a few hours, passed a strong exclusion bill. The Senate rejected the measure. The Chinese, meanwhile, appealed to the Supreme Court and it held that those who were British subjects, or had previously lived in New South Wales, could land. The rest had to go away. About a hundred of them were somehow landed in New Zealand, which led to a brilliant executive order, erecting a medical wall against the Chinese by declaring the Far East and the Malay Archipelago to be infected countries. This gave the authorities power to detain in quarantine all ships coming from those regions. No use was made of this device however, as the drastic laws adopted by the Colonies soon after the Afghan incident made it unnecessary to resort to such medicinal inventions.

An inter-colonial conference discussed the situation in June, 1888, and passed resolutions urging further restriction of Chinese immigration by diplomatic action of the Imperial Government and by uniform colonial laws. It was recommended that Chinese passengers in any ship should not exceed 1 to each 500 tons; and that it should be made a misdemeanor for a Chinaman to go from one colony to another.

New South Wales was the first to act. With public opinion behind him, Parkes pushed through another exclusion bill, which became law in July, 1888, a few weeks after the conference. It raised the arrival tax from £10 to £100 and the tonnage per Chinaman from 100 tons to 300 tons. British subjects were exempted from the act but no Chinese alien could thereafter be naturalized. The penalty for breach of the law might be as high as £500. The act was assented to by the Home Office in spite of its scruples about legislation against specific nationalities, and the new law proved its effectiveness at once. In 1887 New South Wales had 4,436 Chinese arrivals; in 1889, the number fell to 9; and ten years later only 5 Chinese aliens entered the colony.

Victoria passed a law in 1888 limiting Chinese passengers to I for every 500 tons as suggested by the inter-colonial conference. The arrival tax was abolished, but a Chinaman entering Victoria by land without the Governor's permission must pay not less than £5, nor

more than £20. This law has not proved as effective as the statute of New South Wales.

New Zealand raised the tonnage to 100 tons per Chinaman, but left the arrival tax at £10 for almost another decade. In 1896, after a struggle with the Senate, or Legislative Council, as it is called, the Seddon Government succeeded in raising the entrance fee to £100. From this it would appear that civilization comes high to a Chinaman. It is the penalty he pays for being born in bad company.

These laws so far discouraged Chinese immigration that the cen sus of 1891 showed but 42,521 Chinese in all the seven colonies, or only about as many as were in Victoria alone in 1860.

We come now to a decided change of method in colonial immigration laws. The laws we have now to study are not specific antiChinese acts, but provisions against low-grade immigrants in general. This alteration of method was due partly to the change of the Chinese stream from an invasion to an outgo, together with the fact that other inferior peoples were beginning to come in numbers sufficient to cause uneasiness, and partly to the definite policy established by Joseph Chamberlain as head of the Colonial Office that, for the future, exclusion laws must not be aimed specifically at the people of any nationality but at undesirable persons generally. The Natal law of 1897 followed his suggestion, and has since been copied, more or less completely, by the Australasian colonies. It excludes: (1) Any person who fails to write in some European language an application for admission; (2) A pauper or person likely to become a public charge; (3) An idiot or lunatic; (4) One having a loathsome or contagious disease; (5) One convicted within two years of a serious nonpolitical offense; (6) A prostitute or person living on the earnings of prostitution. The New Zealand law (1899) omits the second and last, and stipulates that the writing test shall not be applied to persons of British birth. Tasmania (1898) omitted the sixth clause. New South Wales (1898) struck out five of the six clauses, leaving only the first. West Australia (1897) enacted all six clauses, improving on the first by requiring immigrants to write fifty words in English taken from some British author, a method that allows a better test than the mere writing of a stereotyped application form, using the same set of words each time which might therefore be mastered

On January first, 1901, the Australian Commonwealth came into being and in the enumeration of powers in the Constitution, the Federal Parliament was given authority to legislate with respect to "the influx of criminals; immigration, emigration," etc.

Early in the first Federal session, the Commonwealth Preinier, Mr. Barton, took up the exclusion question and a Federal law was enacted in October, 1901, modeled after the Natalian act and repealing the State acts on the same model.

The main points of the act are: (1) a provision for a writing test. of fifty words dictated to and written by the immigrant in some European language directed by the customs officer; and (2) a clause prohibiting the importation of "persons under a contract or agreement to perform manual labor within the Commonwealth," except "workinen exempted by the Minister for special skill," and crews of vessels engaged in the coasting trade, the agreed wages not being below the rates ruling in the Cominonwealth.

In addition to contract laborers and persons who fail to stand the European writing test, the class of "prohibited immigrants" includes:

(3)

"Anyone likely to become a charge upon the public or upon any public or charitable institution;"

(4) "Any idiot or insane person;"

(5) "Any person suffering from an infectious or contagious disease of a loathsome or dangerous character;"

(6) "Any person who has within three years been convicted of an offense, not being a mere political offense, and has been sentenced therefor, and has not received a pardon;"

(7) "Any prostitute or person living on the prostitution of others;"

Ambassadors or others accredited to the Commonwealth or sent on any special mission by their Government; the King's regular land and naval forces; the crew of any public vessel of any Government; the wife of a man who is not prohibited and the children under eighteen of a person not prohibited; and persons who were formerly domiciled in Australia, are exempt from the prohibitions of the act. The Minister for External Affairs may give to anyone he sees fit a certificate of exemption for a limited period, subject to cancellation by order of the Minister at any time. The crew of any vessel may land while the ship is in a Commonwealth port, going out with the ship when it leaves the harbor.

In his speech upon the bill, Premier Barton said that the selection of the language for the writing test would not be arbitrary and that the test would not be applied at all to persons who were manifestly desirable citizens. This would seem to place a large discretion in the customs officers. The law provides,

however, that any immigrant may be subjected to the writing test at any time within a year, and if he fails under it, he shall be deemed a prohibited immigrant. A person who fails in the writing test may, in the discretion of the officer, be allowed to enter or remain in the Commonwealth on deposit of £100, subject to refunding, if within thirty days he obtains a certificate of exemption from the Minister, or leaves the country. If he does neither, the deposit may be forfeited and he may be treated as a prohibited immigrant.

Violation of the act subjects the prohibited immigrant to risk of six months' imprisonment and deportation. And masters, owners and charterers of any vessel from which a prohibited immigrant enters the Commonwealth are subject to a penalty of £100 for each prohibited immigrant so entering the Commonwealth.

The Barton Government next grappled with the black problem -the Kanakas on the sugar plantations of Queensland. It was claimed that white men could not work in the terrible heat and under the other peculiarly trying conditions of the plantations, and that even if white labor could stand the strain, it would be so much more expensive that this great business, supplying one of Queensland's main products, would be ruined. The people of Australia, however, were determined to wipe out the black spot on their map. They will have a white Australia, cost what it, may, so the Federal Parliament passed the Pacific Islands Laborers Act (1901) putting an end to all agreements with Kanaka workers after 1906. After January 1, 1907, the blacks must go. To protect the planters from ruin, a tariff of £6 per ton is put on foreign-grown sugar. The excise duty on sugar grown in Australia is only £3 and £2 of this is handed back to planters who use only white labor.

These two Commonwealth Acts and the New Zealand statutes of 1896 and 1899 above referred to constitute substantially the present immigration laws of Australasia.

This vigorous legislation for the preservation of civilization was not secured without opposition. Some capitalists desire cheap labor, regardless of social and political effects. Some economists also focus their gaze on cheap production and a low wage rate, 2

2 It is argued that the Chinese are very industrious and give the Colonists a large amount of valuable service for a small compensation. The statesmen of Australia and New Zealand reply that a man may be industrious and yet be dirty, miserly, ignorant, a shirker of social duty, a source of weakness in the civic life, and a danger to the public health. All these most of the Chinese immigrants are. Moreover, their low plane of living makes even their industry a curse instead of a benefit. The white workman is expected to be clean and comfortably dressed; to marry and have children; be well fed and clothed and educated; to have a home that will be a credit to the neighborhood; to read books, magazines and newspapers; take part in the social life of the community and give a reasonable amount of time and intelligent attention to public affairs. To accomplish this he must have short hours and good wages. But in