A Skeleton in His Closet: Exclusion of Chinese Labourers

The fear of economic competition and that of East Asian (in particular Chinese) labour migration clearly went hand in hand, evoking the spectre of cheap Chinese workers out-competing their counterparts in North America and Europe. Resistance to Chinese immigration forced US political institutions to react by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which severely curtailed Chinese labour migration. This later cartoon accuses the US, embodied by Uncle Sam, of hypocrisy: the US government had long been in conflict with that of Russia, which had repeatedly refused to recognise the passports of Jewish American citizens. The cartoon draws attention to America's own racially-based exclusionary policies.

Louise Glackens, "A Skeleton in His Closet," in: Puck 70,1818 (Jan 3, 1912), p. 2; source: Library of Congress, LC-USZC2-1043, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002720339/, public domain.