Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/525

 IH BB TIBUaCIO PARROTT. 617 �mode of their removal from the state upon failure or refusai to comply with such conditions. " �Section 2 is the one which prohibits any corporation from employing, directly or indirectly, in any capacity, any Chi- nese or Mongolians ; and section 3 provides that "no Chinese shall be employed on any state, municipal, or other work, except in punishment for crime." After providing for the removal from the state of ail who "may become vagrants, paupers," etc., it is difficult to conceive of any more effectuai means, so far as they go, to reduce the Chinese to "vagrants, paupers, mendicants, and criminals, " in order that they may be removed, than to forbid their employment, "directly or indirectly, in any capacity" — that is to say, to exclude them from engaging in useful labor. If it is competent for the state to enforce these provisions, it may'also prohibit corpo- rations from dealing with them in any capacity whatever — from purchasing from or selling to them any of the neces- saries of life, or any article of trade and commerce. �In view of the vast extent of the field of labor and business now engrossed by corporations, to exclude the Chinese from ail dealings with corporations is to reduce their means of avoiding vagrancy, pauperism, and mendicity to very narrow limits; and from the present temper of our people, and the number of bills now pending before the legislature tending to that end, there can be no doubt that if the legislation now in question can be sustained, the means of avoiding the condi- tion of pauperism denounced in the state constitution and lawB would soon be reduced to the minimum. �In the language of Deady, J., in Baker v. Portland, "admit the wedge of state interference ever so little, and there is nothing to prevent its being driven home and overriding the treaty-making power altogether." 5 Saw. 750; 3 Pacific Coast Law Journal, 469. �Vagrancy and pauperism, one would suppose, ought to be discouraged rather than induced by solemn constitutional mandates requiring legislation necessarily leading to such vices. Common experience, I thtnk, would lead to the con- clusion that the Chinese within the state, with equal oppor- ��� �