Massachusetts Labor on "Rice Eaters," Manly Trade Unionism, and Worker-Citizens, 1900–10

Some twenty years after enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), officers of the Massachusetts State Branch of Labor debated whether to organize Chinese immigrants.  Though labor sought to increase union density in the Commonwealth, its leaders advanced three arguments for exclusionary unionism.  First, T. J. Regan averred in 1904, Chinese laborers undercut trade and prevailing wage rates.  Second, increased Chinese immigration would flood the U.S. “with cheap Asiatic labor” and, consequently, lessen labor’s bargaining power.  Third, Charles J. Lamb reasoned in 1905, the Chinese could not be elevated to white “civilization;” hence, they would pollute the American polity.
                In 1907, State Branch President Edward Cohen condemned his brethren’s anti-Chinese sentiments, arguing unequivocally “there are no undesirable citizens come to these shores of ours.”  Though Cohen likened Chinese immigrants to “an unpolished piece of granite,” he reasoned that trade unionists could make the Chinese “as perfect and as well polished as any tool . . . [can make] the piece of granite” or the “law can make our citizens. . . .”
                I will read these arguments against contemporary prescriptions for manly trade unionism and workingmen’s racialized assertions of equality with employers.  My focus is the interplay between labor’s ethnocentrism, anxieties over workingmen’s diminished status, and campaigns for expanded workers’ rights.  Key sources include labor proceedings, journalism, and testimony before lawmakers.