Must the Chinese Go?: An Examination of the Chinese Question

Mrs. S. L. Baldwin was born Ester M. Jerman to Reverend M. and Joanna Jerman on November 8, 1840. She attended the Pennington Seminary when it was a collegiate institute for women, earned a Methodist Episcopal studies diploma, and was the valedictorian of her class in 1859. She married Rev. Stephen L. Baldwin in April of 1862. She was a real daughter of the manse, and by the time she had written ***Must the Chinese Go?*** she had been a missionary in China for 18 years. But the Northern Christian Advocate reviewed her work in irritation, criticizing that "portions of it are only stinging and bold satire." Baldwin cites, sometimes with tongue in cheek, the arguments against Chinese immigration that are often lobbed against other groups of immigrants that have also attempted to enter the US: that they are of a lower class, will bring disease, they don't pay taxes, they cheapen labor, and fail to assimilate. Cries against Chinese immigration began in response to the development of the transcontinental railroad which saw the arrival of Chinese immigrants, exploited as cheap labor. The first restrictive Act passed on May 6, 1882, and was the start of a series of increasingly more restrictive laws against Chinese, such as the Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United States, known more popularly as the Geary Act of May 1892. It wasn't until the Immigration Act of October 1965 when the exclusionary practices were lifted, despite President Truman's signing of the Act to Repeal the Chinese Exclusion Acts, to Establish Quotas and for Other Purposes in December of 1943.