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Alexander Del Mar: Free Trade and the Chinese QuestionAuthor(s): Kashia ArnoldSource: Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 94, No. 3 (Fall 2012), pp. 304-345Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Historical Society of SouthernCaliforniaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/scq.2012.94.3.304 .Accessed: 05/08/2015 15:50

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304

Alexander Del Mar: Free Trade and the Chinese Question

By Kashia Arnold

abstract: In 1878, in the midst of anti-Chinese agitation, four letters from an educated Chinaman, Kwang Chang Ling, in the San Fran-cisco Argonaut argued that Chinese commerce and labor were essential to Californias future progress. The letters, which caused a nationwide stir, were actually written by economist and statistician Alexander Del Mar. His arguments for free trade were prescient, and his economic position on the Chinese Question drew from a global perspective. Del Mars points resonate in current Sino-US relations and world eco-nomic issues.

Keywords: Alexander Del Mar, anti-Chinese agitation, free-trade econom-ics, Kwang Chang Ling letters, Chinese immigration

The cry is here that the Chinese must go. I say that they should not go; they can not go; that they will not go ... [W]ere it conceivable that they went, your State would be ruined; in a word, that the Chinese population of the Pacific Coast have [sic] become indispensable to its continued prosperity ... It concerns every element of the future, social life of California.1

Kwang Chang Ling, 1878

1. Alexander Del Mar, Letters of Kwang Chang Ling. The Chinese Side of the Chinese Question, by a Chi-nese Literate of the First Class, Communicated to the San Francisco Argonaut of the dates of August 7th, 10th, 17th, and September 7th, 1878, [n.d.]. Special Collections, Oviatt Library, California State Univer-sity, Northridge, Letter 1.

Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 94, No. 3, pp. 304345. ISSN 0038-3929, eISSN 2162-8637. 2012 by The Historical Society of

Southern California. All rights reserved. Request permission to photocopy or reproduce article content at the University

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scq.2012.94.3.304.


free trade and the chinese question 305

In 1878, Kwang Chang Ling expressed these sentiments in the San Francisco Argonaut to warn Californians that their states eco-nomic growth depended on fostering amicable relationships with Chinese immigrants. Kwang, who identified himself as a Chinese Literate of the First Class, published letters in three consecutive issues and one later issue of the Argonaut to demonstrate that historic processes of global commerce bound California and China across the Pacific Ocean through the conduits of immigration and trade.2 In Kwangs eyes, Chinas venerable participation in a four-hundred-year trade process starkly contrasted with Californias tenderfoot status among the Pacific territories. Furthermore, China possessed the capacity to become an economic giant within the world econ-omy, a fact of great commercial significance to industrially devel-oped nations such as the United States. However, he warned, racial hostilities toward Chinese immigrants in California would have regrettable consequences. Kwang proposed that Californians should embrace trade and labor relationships built on the principles of free trade and racial harmony, which would result in unprecedented lev-els of economic prosperity in both California and China.3

However, Kwangs four Argonaut letters represent a larger prob-lem that scholars have failed to recognize for more than 130 years, for Kwang Chang Ling was not a real person but a pseudonym used by the economist Alexander Del Mar. Del Mar wrote the let-ters during his time in San Francisco, while he was investigating the Comstock Lodes mining output. As an economist, his sophisticated theories predated those of the twentieth century, but despite an impressive publication record and long-standing presence and influ-ence in American politics and on government commissions, Del Mar remains largely excluded from the canon of American econo-mists.4 He received little academic attention until the 1980s, when economists George S. Tavlas and Joseph Aschheim recognized that his remarkably advanced monetary theories paralleled discoveries

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Joseph Aschheim and George S. Tavlas, Academic Exclusion: The Case of Alexander Del Mar, European Journal of Political Economy 20 (2004): 3160; Lawrence R. Klein, Comment on Academic Exclusion: The Case of Alexander Del Mar, European Journal of Political Economy 20 (2004): 6971; Robert Mundell, Comment on Academic Exclusion: The Case of Alexander Del Mar, European Journal of Political Economy 20 (2004): 6168.


southern california quarterly306

of leading twentieth-century economists, most notably Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.5 Perhaps due to this academic lacuna, historians have, with few exceptions, also over-looked Del Mars impressive array of intellectual, political, and eco-nomic contributions to the nineteenth century.6

Furthermore, because Del Mars ideas have been obscured since the nineteenth century, his Kwang letters have been misunderstood and mistaken as a primary-source perspective on Chinese immigra-tion to America. Both scholars and contemporary media sources have denied Del Mars authorship on many occasions and have failed to question why these letters were written under a pseud-onym. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) used the Kwang let-ters in a Bill Moyers special, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, stating that Kwang Chang Lings letters represented a

5. Tavlas and Aschheims overview on Del Mars contribution to monetary economic theory discerns that Del Mars work was phenomenally advanced for his era in his use of statistics to demonstrate moneys inherent properties as a mechanism for exchange. They compare Del Mar to famed econo-mists Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, and they also note that Del Mar was plagiarized by Henry George in the late 1890s. George S. Tavlas and Joseph Aschheim, Alexander Del Mar, Irving Fisher, and Monetary Economics, The Canadian Journal of Economics 18, no. 2 (May 1985): 294313;Tavlas and Aschheim, Academic Exclusion: The Case of Alexander Del Mar, 3160. Else-where, Tavlas and Aschheim identify Del Mar, along with Keynes and George F. Knapp, as the progenitors of the chartalist theory of money that connected paper money and metallic currency under the auspice of the state as both a unit of account and a medium of exchange. This theory is important for contemporary purposes because it provides the basis for the arithmetic required for keeping score in the economic game; without the monetary unit, the calculation of exchange ratios among different goods, services, and financial claims would be impossible. Joseph Aschheim and George S. Tavlas, Money as Numeraire; Doctrinal Aspects and Contemporary Relevance, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review 59 (December 2006): 333361; reference to Del Mar and Milton Friedmans theories are discussed in George S. Tavlas, Retroview: The Money Man, American Interest 7, no. 2 (November/December 2011).

6. Hubert Howe Bancroft and Frances Fuller Victor, History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 15401888 (San Francisco: The History Company Publishers, 1890), 141; Ivan Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 220222; Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 43; for accurate accounts of Del Mars academic contributions please refer to the works of Aschheim and Tavlas; L.L. Bernard and Jessie Bernard, Origins of American Sociology: The Social Science Movement in the United States (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1965); Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (18651918), Vol. 3, Reprint: 1939 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1963); Henry W. Spiegel, The Rise of American Economic Thought (Philadelphia: Chilton Co., 1960). According to Tavlas and Aschheim, Irving Fisher originally discounted Del Mars work only to reassess his opinion and extend high praise 38 years later. Tavlas and Aschheim, Alexander Del Mar, Irving Fischer, and Monetary Economics, 15. Earl Hicks published an article in 1940 denouncing Del Mars economic contributions, which Tavlas and Aschheim have since refuted. Tavlas and Aschheim assert that Hicks was relying on contemporary 1930s monetary theory and could not objectively critique Del Mar; Earl Hicks, Alexander Del Mar, Critic of Metallism, Southern Economic Journal 6, no. 3 (Janu-ary 1940): 314332.



Chinese response to the hatred in San Francisco that stemmed from the anti-Chinese movement of the 1870s.7 The Library of Congress, not recognizing Del Mars authorship, has also misread the Kwang letters significance and presented them for classroom use as a first-hand rebuttal to anti-Chinese prejudice in America.8 In 2012, the edi-tors of the two-volume series Voices of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Experience published sections from the Kwang letters in their anthology because, they explained, documents by Chinese authors from this time were rarely written in English. The letter [sic] not only provides insight into a Chinese American perspective but also high-lights one of the ways Chinese resisted their marginalized status.9 Voices, in addition to numerous other academic publications that discuss Chinese immigration, used the letters as a primary source to relate an authentic Chinese immigrants expression of his experience in America, without recognizing or crediting Del Mars authorship.10

Yet what scholars should know about Del Mar is that he stood apart from others within Californias pro-Chinese minority: he pro-jected a novel kind of authority in using the Kwang Chang Ling pseudonym to promote Californias critical importance to Sino-U.S. trade relations and to disseminate free-trade ideas. During the 1870s,

7. http://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/ce_witness2.html (accessed April 7, 2011); The Library of Congress, The Chinese in California, 18501925.

8. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/chinese-cal/history5.html (accessed April 7, 2011).

9. Sang Chi and Emily Moberg Robinson, eds., Voices of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Experi-ence, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC., 2012), vivii, xviii, 9497.

10. The list of publications included here have all used the Kwang letters as a primary source to relate ideas about the Chinese immigrant experience in America while denying authorship to Alexander Del Mar or even acknowledging the use of a pseudonym, including: R. Scott Baxter, The Response of Californias Chinese Population to the Anti-Chinese Movement, Historical Archaeology 42, no. 3 (2008): 32. Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 18601910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 465; Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 467, 512; Rhoda Hoff, Americas Immigrants: Adventures in Eyewitness History (New York: Henry Z. Walk, 1967), 85; Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler, The Chinese American Family Album (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 65; Rockwell Den-nis Hunt and Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, California and Californians, Vol. 2 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1930), 364; Linda Perrin, Coming to America: Immigrants from the Far East (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980), 38; David Scott, China and the International System, 18401949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation (New York: State University of New York Press, 2008); Ronald K. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 510. Dennis Wepman, Immigration (New York: Facts on File, 2007), 165; Xiao-huang Yin and Roger Daniels, Chinese American Literature since the 1850s (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 215.



his promotion of free trade with China was a rare example of Sino-U.S. free-trade propaganda that also provides an original critique of the Chinese Question, a phrase widely used by Californians of that period to question whether Chinese immigration was harmful to California and what could be done to prevent additional immi-gration from Chinaand even to remove Chinese immigrants who had already established residency. The phrase generally conveyed a tone of anti-Chinese hostility. Del Mar believed that Chinese immigrant labor was essential to Californias future progress and that Californias geographical location was strategically important for expanding United States trade markets.11 He argued that adher-ence to free trade could promote a mutually beneficial relationship between the two Pacific nations. Del Mars Kwang letters also pro-vide an unusual perspective on Chinese immigration by advancing the ideology of free trade as the answer to the Chinese Question.

The Chinese Question was as much an ideological expression about economic policies as it was a political craze fed by a racial backlash. The subsequent Chinese Exclusion Era, from 1882 to 1943, is intrinsically connected to Californias role in the Chinese Question, which pitted an anti-monopoly labor movement against U.S. trade interests in China.12 Protectionist policies expanded dur-ing this period to include white laborers wages. California wage earners wanted safeguards against the influx of Chinese immigrants who were willing to work for significantly lower wages. The depressed economic climate of the 1870s witnessed harsh unemployment condi-tions that led to demands for immediate economic solutions to both lower- and middle-class struggles.13 While scholars such as Patricia Limerick have asserted that most Americans refused to acknowledge the benefits of Chinese immigration to the state of California, to the broader United States, and to specific interests, such as the Central

11. Del Mar, Letters of Kwang Chang Ling, no. 3, The Argonaut, August 17, 1878.

12. Coolidge, 6982; Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Cha-pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 6; Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 17851882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 192; Shirley Hune, Politics of Chinese Exclusion: Legislative-Executive Conflict 18761882, Amerasia 9, no. 1 (1982): 527; Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement in California, 63; Alexander Sax-ton, Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 258267.

13. Michael A. Bellesiles, 1877: Americas Year of Living Violently (New York: The New Press, 2010), 109113.



The Chinese Question (Harpers Weekly, 1871) The caption reads, Colum-biaHands off, Gentlemen! America means Fair Play for All Men. The

image depicts her as Americas moral judge protecting a lone and vulnerable Chinaman against a horde of angry western vigilantes. In 1871, the year of a

deadly riot in Los Angeles in which 18 Chinese were killed, this national pub-lication took the side of fair play and justice against Californias anti-Chinese

mobs enraged by racist stereotypes and the belief that Chinese immigrants were undercutting white wages. To the question of whether Chinese immi-

grants should be allowed to enter the United States, their answer was No! Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. MTP/HW:

vol 15:149.



and Southern Pacific railroads and mining corporations, others have recognized key organizations and individuals from this period who opposed anti-Chinese activism and stressed the importance of the China trade, including San Franciscos Friends of Humanity, Reverend Otis Gibson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Del Mars unorthodox contribution to this position should be acknowledged.14

The United States did not relax its protectionist stance toward China until the late twentieth century. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the United States had raised tariffs on most imported raw materials and manufactured goods to prohibit low-cost imports from competing with developing U.S. domestic indus-tries. The federal government relied primarily on tariff revenues to meet Civil War expenses and fund government operations. Yet by the 1870s opposition to protective tariffs increased as Americans sought new markets for U.S. goods. David Pletcher notes that the U.S. primarily sought reciprocity treaties within the Western hemi-sphere. Despite American diplomat Anson Burlingames efforts to strengthen Sino-U.S. relations during the 1860s, Hawaii remained the sole territory in the Pacific to participate in a reciprocity treaty with the U.S. by 1875.15 Free trade was largely viewed as a distaste-ful British practice, and free trade placed in the context of Chinese immigration was considered by some Americans to be an abomina-tion. Harvard professor Raphael Pumpellys widely distributed 1870 work, Across America and Asia, argued that lowering the price of labor through Chinese immigration would solve the free-trade ques-tion by enabling American producers to compete with the British in foreign markets.16 By the late 1880s more Americans began to voice support for liberalized markets and to discuss the potential for free trade with China. But it was not until the end of World War II that United States trade policies began a marked and consistent trend toward tariff reduction due to U.S. influence in the world economy.

14. Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987), 262; Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden, 1877), 31, 271.

15. David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Involvement: American Economic Expansion across the Pacific, 17841900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 34.

16. Raphael Pumpelly, Across America and Asia: Notes of a Five Years Journey around the World (New York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1870), 253.



Finally, Del Mars moral argument for free trade was unusual for the 1870s; the U.S. did not entertain similar arguments for free trade with China until the 1970s, when free-trade policies proved attractive as a means of advancing Chinas economic and social conditions follow-ing the end of Mao Zedongs rule.

Del Mars background in economics and mining engineering and his talents as a statistician had likely prepared him to view the Chinese Question as a subject of great economic impor-tance. He was born in New York City in 1836 to parents of Jewish, Spanish, and English descent. His father, Jacques Del Mar, owned several Spanish silver mines and served for a time with the United States Treasury Department. Del Mar graduated from New York Universitys polytechnic school.17 He received a degree in min-ing engineering from the prestigious Madrid School of Mines. He also lived in England, where he received private tutelage under Sir Arthur Helps in the classical school of economic thought upheld by Hume, Ricardo, Thornton, and Mill. Helps was a noted corre-spondent of famed British economist John Stuart Mill (18061873).18 Upon his return to the U.S., Del Mar became well connected to the publishing world and edited several prominent journals, including the New York Social Science Review.19 His statistical talents demon-strated in the pages of the Review drew the attention of the Treasury Department, which recruited him in 1865. He served as the first director of the United States Bureau of Statistics from 1866 to 1869, until his position ceased to exist within the Treasury Department due to a conflict with the Commissioner of the Revenue, David A.

17. John W. Leonard, Whos Who in New York City and State, Containing Authentic Biographies of New York-ers Who Are Leaders and Representatives in Various Departments of Worthy Human Achievement (New York: L. R. Hamersly Co., 1907), 397.

18. Del Mar had an uncle in England, Don Manuel Del Mar, a scholar in his own right who published a number of historical works on Mexico and Latin America and who also collaborated with Sir Arthur Helps to produce the four-volume series, History of the Spanish Conquest in America: And Its Relation to Slavery and to the Government of Colonies (18551861). Alexander Del Mar, A History of the Precious Metals: From Earliest Times to the Present, rev. ed. (New York: Cambridge Encyclopedia Com-pany, 1902), 503. The classical school emphasized laissez-faire practices and unrestrained individual competition within the marketplace. This ideology is rooted in Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, which determined that wealth stands the best chance to grow when individuals are enabled to make their own economic choices. L.L. Bernard and Jessie Bernard, Origins of American Sociology, 465. Helps also served as an advisor to Queen Victoria.

19. Del Mar also edited Hunts Merchant Magazine, DeBows Review, and the Commercial and Financial Chronicle. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 98.



Wells.20 Congress eliminated the office of Director of the Bureau of Statistics from the Treasury Department, reassigning Del Mars duties to Wellsessentially firing Del Mar.21 The press ascribed the Bureaus unpopularity to Del Mars ridiculous assumptions and absurd follies and claimed that he manipulated trade statistics to further his free-trade agenda and promote his radical theories. The Philadelphia Inquirer was glad to see him go: After the experi-ence which we have had of Delmars [sic] eccentricities, it ought to be agreed that the country has had quite enough of that sort of entertainment.22

20. J.R. Robertson, The Life of Hon. Alex. Del Mar, M.E., Formerly Director of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States; Superintendent of Mining Commissioners; Mining Commissioner to the United States Mon-etary Commission; Member of the International Congresses at Florence, the Hague and St. Petersburg; Mem-ber of the Economic Societies of Paris, New York, San Francisco, etc. (London: E.F. Gooch & Son, Steam Printers, 1881) 89; Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1871.

21. New York Times, September 28, 1868.

22. Ibid, February 29, 1868; New York Herald, February 13, 1869; Philadelphia Inquirer, February 15, 1869.

Alexander Del Mar, frontispiece to his book, The Science of Money (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1885). Courtesy of the Young Research Library, UCLA.



Even though Wells and Del Mar both advocated replacing existing tariff restrictions with free-trade policies, Wells viewed Del Mars mon-etary theories as too radical to warrant further deliberation.23 Wells, a highly respected economist of the time, believed that the overproduc-tion of commodities created economic depressions, while Del Mar argued that they stemmed from contractions in the countrys available money supply.24 Del Mar maintained that state regulation determined monetary value and not golds perceived market worth. His beliefs were antithetical to those of Wells and other contemporary economists, who upheld the importance of the gold standard. Del Mars ideas about fiat (paper) currency and central banking would not be adopted by the U.S. until well into the twentieth century. For Del Mar, a stable economy required the state to closely regulate the money supply, for had money been regulated instead of being left to commerce, chance, and politi-cal contention, the great panics of 1815, 1821, 1837, 1861, and 1870 might have been averted.25 Del Mars advocacy for laissez-faire economics was connected to his belief in classical liberalism, which held that the state should play only a limited role in managing transactions between private parties, unless the state could perform a necessary service with greater efficacy than private institutions. To Del Mar, the states regula-tion of its currency was essential to the autonomy of nations and necessary to facilitate the demands of domestic and global commerce.26

23. George S. Tavlas, Retroview: The Money Man, The American Interest 7 (November/December 2011), 67.

24. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 36.

25. Del Mar consistently advocated that the states management of its currency affected the progress and development of society through its effects on price levels. He argued that money represented a measure of value that required careful regulation of its supply to benefit both domestic and interna-tional exchange. He recognized the merchant classs crude efforts to manage currency as both a legal unit of account and as a metallic commodity that suffered from market expansions and contrac-tions. He noted, [i]f money ever ceases to be made of the precious metals, the merchants will have fewer of these distracting indications to watch; they will be enabled to concentrate their attention upon their own proper province, the movement of commodities, and to leave money . . . to the custody and consideration of the State. Furthermore, Del Mar maintained that moneys inherent value was also based on the volume of currency in circulation, known as the velocity of money, due to moneys dynamic properties that directly impacted the availability of money at any given time, and that merchants tacitly recognize the theory when they consult the bank clearings and discounts, because these indicate the increase or diminution in the sum of exchanges which is to be measured by money; they act upon the theory when their transactions are guided by shipments or movements of gold, because as the law of money now stands, these movements rudely mark the shrinkage or augmentation of money in the State. Alexander Del Mar, The Science of Money (New York: Burt Franklin, 1885), 112; Aschheim and Tavlas, Academic Exclusion, 40.

26. Del Mar, The Science of Money (London: George Bell and Sons, 1885), 136.



Del Mar published extensively on monetary subjects, including its legal functions, from antiquity to modern times in a wide variety of coun-tries. His most prominent works include Money and Civilization (1867), A History of the Precious Metals (1880), and, his most critically acclaimed, The Science of Money (1885). In all, he published a known thirty-six books and more than a hundred articles pertaining to financial topics and the historical and legal functions of money.

In turn, several of Del Mars publications also examined subjects of political economy. He was fascinated by a number of financial topics, particularly commerce, government revenue, and monetary policy. And he was particularly keen to uncover and determine how vari-ous currency practices impacted a nations development. He was con-vinced that the source of the worlds ills could be understood through moneys tendencies to produce social inequality.27 In contrast, he con-sistently stressed the importance of free trade for its natural power to equalize social and economic progress.28 He stated as his credo:

a conviction that harmonizes with every noble belief that our race entertains; with Civil and Religious Freedom for All, regardless of race or color; with the Harmony of Gods works; with Peace and Goodwill to all Mankind. That conviction is this: that to make taxation the incident of protection to special interests, and those engaged in them, is robbery to the rest of the community, and subversive of National Morality and National Prosperity. [He further testified:] I believe that taxes are necessary for the support of government, I believe they must be raised by levy, I even believe that some customs taxes may be more practicable and economical than some internal taxes, but I am entirely opposed to making anything the object of taxation but the revenue required by government for its economical maintenance. I do not espouse Free Trade because it is British as some suppose it to be ... I espouse Free Trade because it is just, it is unselfish, it is profitable.29

Del Mars biographer, J.R. Robertson, states that as an economist [Del Mar] leaned toward Free Trade, though not without some mis-givings as to the wisdom of pursuing any commercial policy beyond the bounds of National Expediency.30 Del Mar recognized that

27. Alexander Del Mar, Money and Civilization: Or, A History of the Monetary Laws and Systems of Various States since the Dark Ages, and Their Influence upon Civilization (New York: B. Franklin, 1969), vxvi.

28. Ibid., xvi.

29. Emile Walter [Alexander Del Mar, pseud.], What is Free Trade? An Adaptation of Frdrick Bastiats Sophismes conomiques (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1874), viiviii.

30. Robertson, The Life of Hon. Alex. Del Mar, 27.



some tariffs were necessary to fund government ventures, but felt that trade agreements to reduce or eliminate tariffs required careful consideration on behalf of national economic interests. Even so, there is some navet in Del Mars remarks. Many free traders in the post-Civil War era, inspired by the British free trader Richard Cobden, believed that free trade would lead to a world defined by peace, stability, and moral progress by improving material condi-tions for all and reducing conflict between capital and labor over wage labor rates within and between trading nations.31

Del Mars promotion of free trade with China was rooted in Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, which proposed that non-restricted free trade among nations stimulated material gain when commodi-ties were produced as cheaply as possible. Classical economist David Ricardos Principles of Political Economy and Taxation advanced free-trade rhetoric with his comparative advantage theory. This theory maintains that a country can produce a commodity at a lower cost and still experience a material gain through trade with another country, even if that country is an advanced producer of a variety of different goods. Essentially, because the United States was a wealthy nation that facilitated trade with undeveloped China, China would materi-ally benefit more from the trade relationship due to the increased volume of capital entering its economy. This trade phenomenon would potentially raise wages and fund new industries, especially if the balance of trade tilted in Chinas favor. Ideally, if the people of China experienced a rise in their wealth and their standard-of-liv-ing, China would provide consumers to purchase U.S. goods. And though extensive debate continues to be waged to the present day about free trades merits and faults and whether or not comparative advantage is a real occurrence, no attempt will be made here to prove the validity or invalidity of free trades alleged benefits.32 What Del Mar understood when he was writing in 1865 was that the countries which are the least favored by Nature are those which profit most by mutual exchange.33

31. Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan, Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden Bicen-tenary Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 16.

32. Jagdish Bhagwati, Free Trade Today (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 46, 52, 68, 83; Leland B. Yeager and David G. Tuerck, Foreign Trade and U.S. Policy: The Case for Free International Trade (New York: Praeger, 1976), 137144.

33. Emile Walter [Alexander Del Mar, pseud.], What Is Free Trade? 28.



Theoretically, even if China could produce goods at a lower cost than the United States, free-trade policies would benefit American workers. Ricardos theory of comparative advantage holds that free trade in practice encourages specialization in the production of raw materials, food, goods, and services. Since China specialized in the production of silk, tea, and salt at a lower cost than U.S. produc-ers, the U.S. would benefit by purchasing from China. At the same time, the United States specialization in the production of wheat, timber, and mining products would provide a cost advantage for China. Ideally, both nations, when taken together, would obtain these commodities at a lower cost through trade than if each nation relied on their domestic economies. Furthermore, this specialization would encourage global economic growth by freeing up resources for investment in new industries, and it would stimulate employment by ensuring a steady demand for workers.

Del Mar conjectured in his 1865 publication What Is Free Trade? (published under the pseudonym Emile Walter) that consumption of goods and raw materials produced as cheaply as possible posed a solution to improving workers material condition. Furthermore, protectionism would not raise workers wages. Del Mar stated that:

The rate of wages depends on the proportion which the supply of labor bears to the demand [and] on the quantity of disposable capital seek-ing investment. And the law which says, Such or such an article shall be limited to home production and no longer imported from foreign countries, can it in any degree increase this capital? Not in the least. This law may withdraw it from one course, and transfer it to another; but cannot increase it one penny. We here see why, since the reign of protective tariffs, if we see more workmen in our mines and our manu-facturing towns, we find also fewer vessels in our ports, fewer graziers and fewer laborers in our fields and upon our hill-sides.34

Del Mar wanted workers to understand that they would benefit from free trades tendency to reduce prices through free-market competi-tion. They should realize that their standard of living was not pri-marily derived from wages but from their access to affordable goods.

In 1865 Del Mar helped establish the American Free Trade League (AFTL), the United States first free-trade organization.35

34. Ibid., 9798.

35. Andrew L. Slap, The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 17.



The 1864 Lincoln-Morrill Tariff had fixed import taxes at rates up to 47 percent, and the AFTL wanted to reform U.S. tariff policies. AFTL members believed that the government was only entitled to the tariffs, duties, and taxes necessary to fund government needs. Moreover, AFTL members contended that the government exerted too much control in the economy through abusive tariff measures that harmed individual producers and promoted corporations. The AFTLs membership included the abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and New York Post Editor William Cullen Bryant, in addition to other prominent individuals. The AFTL disseminated free-trade propaganda through newspa-pers, pamphlets, public speeches, and clubs, but the league met its demise in 1872, alongside Horace Greeleys failed presidential can-didacy for the Liberal Republican Party. It is important to note that U.S. publications from this period, including those of the AFTL, did not advocate free trade with China, as witnessed through a survey of newspapers, trade journals, government publications, and free-trade literature during the 1860s and 1870s.36

However, political economist Henry George put forth a proposal for free trade with China in his testimony before the 1877 congres-sional investigation on Chinese immigration.37 George testified to the committee through his lofty capacity as the state inspector of gas-meters, though he also wrote prolifically on subjects of political economy. Georges socialist views on Californias land use, his sup-port for free trade, and his opposition to Chinese immigration were widely received in the state and abroadand included at times in con-gressional discussion.38 One economic historian notes that Georges most famous work, Progress and Poverty (1879), probably had the greatest circulation of any nonfiction book in the English language

36. The AFTL accused the federal government of funneling an excessive amount of government funds acquired through unnecessary tariffs to support appropriations that benefited special interests. The League also maintained close communication with the Cobden Club, its British counterpart. George Haven Putnam, Memoirs of a Publisher, 1865 to 1915 (1916; repr., Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 40. When the League ended in 1872, the Free Trade Alliance (FTA), in later years known as the Council for Tariff Reform, replaced the AFTL, though it is not clear whether AFTL members joined the FTA. In addition, by 1882, a second American Free Trade League formed and maintained its position as the largest U.S. free-trade association until its demise in 1932. Northrup and Turney, Encyclopedia of Tariffs and Trade in U.S. History, 16.

37. Aschheim and Tavlas, Academic Exclusion, 47.

38. Henry George, Jr., The Life of Henry George (New York: Manhattan Press, 1900), 571.



before 1900 except for the Bible.39 In later years, Del Mar accused George of plagiarizing his theory of interest rate determination. According to Del Mar: His fellow-townsman, Mr. Henry George, in his work on Progress and Poverty, has adopted the authors pos-tulate with reference to the origin of interest, but has nowhere given him credit for it.40 Consequently, economists George Tavlas and Robert Aschheim have noted, several authors have assigned credit for the theory of organic productivity to George rather than to Del Mars earlier authorship.41 George and Del Mar both resided in San Francisco during the 1870s, though George opposed Chinese immi-gration and maintained a different view on free trade, stating:

Between a Chinaman working here cheaply and a Chinaman work-ing cheaply in China, there is a very great difference. He can work as cheaply as he pleases in China, and, in my opinion, only benefit[s] us if we exchange freely with him. Here he only injures us. If their race there works cheaply and exchanges with us, it really adds to our production.42

George explained that:

The Chinaman, by laboring in China cheaply, does not affect the rate of wages here, that is, he does not affect the distribution of our product, he simply affects the production. If we ship a cargo of flour to China and get back a cargo for tea, the more tea we can get for our flour the better we are offthe greater is the aggregate sum that we have to divide among all classes; but when the Chinaman comes here and works for low wages the effect is to make a great many other men also work for low wages and to lessen the rate of wages that is given to the working man.43

Essentially, George proposed that the United States would benefit by exclusively exchanging for goods not produced in the U.S. However, he did not identify the comparative cost breakdown for U.S. flour and China tea or explain how this exchange scenario would protect

39. Jacob Oser, Henry George (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974), 68.

40. Del Mar, Science of Money, 98.

41. Economist Robert V. Andelson also notes that Henry George was accused of plagiarism by his con-temporaries J. Bleeker Mill and Arthur Crump, and his former associate James L. Sullivan. Robert V. Andelson, Critics of Henry George: A Centenary Appraisal of Their Strictures on Progress and Poverty (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1979), 20; Tavlas and Aschheim, Alexander Del Mar, Irving Fisher, and Monetary Economics, 309310.

42. Cong. Rep., 44th Cong., 2d sess., 1877, 280.

43. Ibid., 280281.



U.S. wage labor rates. George also assumed that China and the United States would not be in competition with one another in the production of the same commodities. He claimed that U.S. goods such as cigars could be exchanged for tea inexpensively produced in China and that this practice could be applied to a number of com-modities for exchange. However, George failed to take into consid-eration Chinas potential to adjust to a modern capitalist system by manufacturing products that could compete in the world market.44

In the nineteenth century, the United States relied on treaty privileges initiated by Great Britain for trading rights with China while jockeying against other European nations to expand the U.S. economic sphere of influence in the Pacific. But despite U.S. ambi-tions, the China trade only occupied 2 percent of all U.S. foreign trade by 1900.45 During this period the U.S. imposed high tariffs on most Chinese imports, with rates up to 50 percent. At the same time, the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin established a maximum tariff of 5 per-cent ad valorem on U.S. imports into China. However, American merchants were often required to pay additional fees as high as 50 percent on the few goods the U.S. successfully sent to China. Efforts to enforce treaty terms were not always successful, and by the 1870s the balance of trade weighed heavily in Chinas favor at more than twenty to one.46

During the late 1860s, government economic data and trade sta-tistics were modernized by Del Mar when he served as director of the United States Bureau of Statistics, leaving an indelible mark on the U.S. governments economic development. He was not one to light-heartedly speculate on abstract theory without empirical evidence, a feature of his neoclassicist leanings. He single-handedly overhauled the governments ability to receive, interpret, and organize valuable information on its revenue collection, a task that included reform-ing census information, tariff collections, commerce, navigation, tonnage accounts, tax collection, and debt repayment.47 And he

44. Lye, Americas Asia, 267.

45. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Involvement, 5.

46. United States Department of State, Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives, during the Second Session of the Fortieth Congress, 186768 (Washington: Govt. Print. Office, 18671868, 578600; United States House of Rep., Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Countries (Washington: Govt. Print. Office, 18561903), 156; Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Involvement, 98.

47. Robertson, Life of Hon. Alex. Del Mar, 35, 1013.



implemented the first known statistical methods to systematically organize the Treasury Departments economic data.48 Yet when Del Mar released a Bureau of Statistics report to the press in 1868 that showcased the harmful economic effects of the 1867 tariff on raw and unfinished wool, a scandal ensued that resulted in his dismissal and the elimination of his position within the Bureau (see page 311312).49 Del Mars biographer, J.R. Robertson, insisted that Del Mars intent behind the report was to reduce customs tariffs and provide pub-lic transparency of the governments finances, which had upset the Washington Ring.50 In spite of these political controversies, Del Mar remained connected to government financial projects and trav-eled to the Pacific Coast in 1876 to lend his professional expertise to the western mining boom.

The year 1876 was special for Del Mar because his government had asked him to do what he did best: quantify the data on silver mining for currency purposes using his statistical talents. In 1876, Del Mar traveled to San Francisco to serve as the commissioner for the U.S. Mining Commission. He was to contribute to a report for the U.S. Silver Commission and U.S. Monetary Commission after investigating the mines of Nevadas Comstock Lode, interview-ing California bankers and mining officials, and providing statisti-cal data and reports on silvers role in world affairs.51 The United

48. Ibid., 1013; Tavlas and Aschheim, 42. Archivist Meyer H. Fishbein of the National Archives and Records Association commented on Del Mars statistical abilities: The formative statistical profes-sion was fortunate in the first choice for a director of the Bureau of Statistics. Alexander Del Mar was intractable, but a lesser man might have set back the bureaucratic development of statistics for years . . . Del Mar had a dogmatic faith in the statistical or inductive method of arriving at immutable laws of economic behavior. Meyer H. Fishbein, Early Business Statistical Operations of the Federal Govern-ment (Washington: National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1973).

49. Wells was dismissed from his position as the Special Commissioner of the Revenue in 1870, and he became the chairman of the New York State Tax Commission. Bernard and Bernard, Origins of American Sociology, 488.

50. Robertson, Life of Hon. Alex. Del Mar, 1011.

51. Del Mar was permitted to examine California and Nevada mines, the mining companies books, available mining equipment and technology, and the transportation methods used to extract and carry the ore to San Francisco. Sacramento Bulletin, July 11, 1879; Daily Inter Ocean, July 11, 1879.

His appointment received a mixed reception from newspapers. The Sacramento Daily Union sar-castically mocked, Mr. Delmar, as a statistician, deservedly ranks next after the New York Worlds famous arithmetic man, and we have no doubt that he will electrify the Commission with figures before he has done with it. Sacramento Daily Union, October 28, 1876; The Daily Alta was much more impressed, commenting: Mr. Delmar is peculiarly well fitted both by experience and research for the successful performance of this duty. He is well-known throughout the country as a careful observer, and enjoys also a professional relationship in Europe. Daily Alta, December 19, 1876.



States government wanted to assess silvers impact on labor, indus-tries, and the wealth of the country.52 The commissions were also interested in silver usage in the Asiatic trade and Chinas currency practices.53

The three commissions findings were compiled together under the U.S. Monetary Commissions final report in 1877.54 Del Mars report on Chinas monetary system clarified Chinas financial vul-nerabilities. He observed that:

[a]s the appreciation of the copper standard of China seems to have followed and not preceded the gradual decline in the commercial value of copper, zinc, &c., it is to be regretted that the facts concern-ing it cannot be so multiplied as to afford a sound basis of theory. If they could, they might lead to some interesting inferences regarding the influence of such a currency upon the welfare of the empire and the effects of refusing it the function of legal tender in so important

However, by the time Del Mars reports came to light his ambiguous reputation evoked scorn and contempt. He had predicted the Comstock Lode would taper off its ore supply within the next few years, but he was discredited by the discovery of a deep-seated ore deposit in 1877. The Idaho Avalanche, along with other newspapers, lampooned Del Mars judgment, proclaiming we dont believe he is as smart an Alexander as he believes himself to be. Furthermore, Del Mar had trig-gered the derision of mining companies and stock speculators for his prediction that each pounds worth of dor has consequently cost to the owners about five pounds in terms of the Comstock lodes actual profits. Idaho Avalanche, November 3, 1877.

52. United States Senate, Reports of the Silver Commission of 1876, Being a Reprint of Senate Report No. 703, 44th Congress, Second Session, submitted by Senator Jones, of Nevada, for the U.S. Monetary Com-mission (Washington: Govt. Print. Office, 1887), 1.

53. United States Senate, Report and Accompanying Documents of the United States Monetary Commission Organized under Joint Resolution of August 15, 1876, 1877, 145147; United States Senate, Reports of the Silver Commission of 1876, 200202.

54. The extent of Del Mars contributions to the final report remains unclear. In reference to the Silver Question regarding the demonetization of the silver dollar in 1873, J.R. Robertson claimed that Del Mar projected the Silver Commission of 1876, was appointed one of its members, prepared and edited its reports and accompanying documents, and personally took all the evidence offered to the Commission on the subject of mining, in the Pacific States and Territories. He drafted and helped to push through Congress the original bill remonetizing the silver dollar, and had the satisfaction to see it substantially enacted. In a word, he was the originator and the soul of the entire movement for the remonetization of silver; and yet so retired is his manner of working that he rarely permitted his name to be used in connection with the movement, and except to the leading members of Con-gress and the Government, is scarcely known to have taken part in it. The numerous documents signed by his name, or marked with his initials, which are printed in the Report of the Silver Com-mission, will, however, attest in some degree the remarkable influence, energy, and industry which he exercised in this great movement. Robertsons commentary sheds lightand uncertaintyas to what credit Del Mar should receive for his efforts. An examination of the U.S. Monetary Report indicates Del Mars contribution of statistical data from the Nevada mines and minutes on the cur-rencies of silver-receiving nations, including China. Robertson, Life of Hon. Alex. Del Mar, 15.



a respectmore important in China than perhaps in any other great country.55

Del Mars experience on these commissions exposed him to the United States expansionary market goals and the obstacles to Chinas acceptance of its currency to facilitate trade growth. In 1873, the United States had created the Trade Dollar, a silver coin without legal properties intended for export to Chinas port cities. While U.S. efforts to establish the Trade Dollar as Chinas dominant legal currency ultimately failed by 1878, the Monetary Commission sought to examine the Trade Dollars effectiveness on behalf of silver and the U.S. governments interests.56 Furthermore, the Monetary Commission raised concerns about the unequal balance of trade between the two nations, which favored China.

The Monetary Commission interviewed witnesses who com-mented that the U.S. imbalance of trade disproportionately bene-fited China.57 Congressman George Willard observed that

the balance is ... against us because we import our tea and silk and only export a few cotton goods, kerosene oil, & c. [sic] The great export from the United States to China is silver dollars [but] [t]he export of silver dollars from this country to China does not settle the balance between the two countries.58

Between 1870 and 1878, the U.S.-China trade featured 158 mil-lion dollars worth of goods being imported from China to the U.S., while the U.S. only exported 18 million dollars worth of goods in return.59 It is conceivable that Del Mar was aware of these trading

55. United States Senate, Report and Accompanying Documents of the United States Monetary Commission Organized under Joint Resolution of August 15, 1876, 1877, 145147. Quotation is from: United States Sen-ate, Reports of the Silver Commission of 1876, 107.

56. Because China lacked an effectively managed state-regulated currency supply, Chinese merchants within Chinas port cities relied on Mexican silver dollars to facilitate commercial exchanges. The Trade Dollar was designed to replace the Mexican silver dollar and provide a market for U.S. silver.

57. United States Senate, Report and Accompanying Documents of the United States Monetary Commission, 157158, 172174.

58. Ibid., 455.

59. Douglas A. Irwin, Exports, by Country of Destination: 17902001,Table Ee533550 in Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition, edited by Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.csun.edu/10.1017/ISBN-9780511132971.Ee362611; Douglas A. Irwin, Imports, by Country of Origin: 17902001, Table Ee551568 in Historical Statistics of the United States, Ee362611.



trends due to his experience with customs and trade revenue in his former capacity as Director of the Bureau of Statistics, in addition to his role as the Mining Commissioner on behalf of the Monetary Commission. The Monetary Commissions report demonstrated the U.S. governments interest in examining the relationship between silver and its effects on the balance of trade with China, as well as Chinas economic importance to the U.S.60 In addition, the 1877 Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration emphasized concern regarding the trade imbalance: the balance of trade is all against us; that the [silver] money which we send there and the goods are not compensated by any adequate return.61 Because Del Mar had, years earlier, accepted Ricardos comparative advantage theory, and because he supported the balance of trade theory that claimed a nations rise in wealth was connected to an increase in the value of its exports over imports, it is plausible that the United States gross imbalance between imports and exports is what motivated him to write the Kwang letters.62 More directly, Del Mar used the letters to counter arguments in the Joint Special Committees report that claimed the Chinese were economically dis-advantageous to the state, and to underscore the American Wests economic vulnerabilities.63

During Del Mars time in San Francisco his dogmatic views were regularly featured in San Franciscos weekly journal, The Argonaut, which adopted Del Mars polarizing rhetoric and published his arti-cles on mining, economic topics, and Chinese immigration during the journals formative years.64 Newspapers during this era waxed

60. In later writings, Del Mar often commented on the Monetary Commissions findings in his discus-sion of the gold standard. Alexander Del Mar, A History of the Precious Metals (London: Messrs. Geo. Bell and Sons, 1880), xiv; Del Mar, Science of Money, xxvi; Del Mar, Money and Civilization, 277; Alexander Del Mar, The History of Monetary Systems (London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1895), 467.

61. U.S. Congress, Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, Report of the Joint Spe-cial Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 44th Cong., 2d sess., 1877, 28.

62. Walter [Del Mar, pseud.], What Is Free Trade? 2747, 5565.


64. Argonaut, June 29, 1878; Jerome Alfred Hart, In Our Second Century: From an Editors Notebook (San Francisco: The Pioneer Press, 1931), 195. Jerome A. Hart, one of the Argonauts founding editors, com-mented on Del Mars literary contributions to the Argonauts early years, and he noted that Del Mar was not well-liked among his San Francisco contemporaries. Hart observed that although a man of ability, Del Mar was not popular. In the eighties, at an annual meeting of the Bohemian Club, a violent debate was raging in which Del Mar took part. His side was outvoted and in a fit of petu-lance Del Mar rose and tendered his resignation, which was at once accepted. About ten minutes



extensively on the Chinese Question in a harmonized chorus of anti-Chinese sentiment. However, in San Francisco, newspapers were divided over Denis Kearneys Workingmens Party.65 A charis-matic rabble-rouser, Kearney had lumped railroad and mining bar-ons together with the Chinese as the source of Californias labor woes, raising the fears of Nob Hills elite that its political power could shift in favor of the lower-class and unsavory Irish laborers.66 Frank Pixley, Jerome Hart, and Fred M. Somers formed the Argonaut, an elitist political journal, in the spring of 1877 to conduct class war-fare against the Irish rabble and to quash Kearneys political influ-ence.67 The formidable Ambrose Bierce served as its editor.68 The Argonaut boasted a reading circulation of 14,000 copies per week in California and tailored its contents for San Franciscos middle and upper classes.

At first glance, it seems surprising that Del Mars Kwang letters appeared in the Argonaut. Editor Frank Pixley, Californias former attorney general, disapproved of Chinese immigration and even served on the 1877 congressional investigation committee aimed at stopping the flow of further immigration from Chinaan anti-Chinese stance more akin to Kearneys position than to Del Mars. Yet, Kearneys mobilization of the Irish working class impelled Pixley to drop the immigration issue in order to target the Irish and German laborers who banded together in San Francisco to control its politics.69 Pixley used the Argonaut as a soapbox to denounce Kearney in order to preserve the political power of the upper class-es.70 However, Pixley relied on his associate editor, Ambrose Bierce,

later Del Mar again rose to speak, but was called to order by Walter Holmes on the ground that Del Mar was no longer a member. The gentlemans point of order is erroneous, said Del Mar. I offered my resignation to take effect at the end of the month. Walter Homes solemnly replied: I withdraw my point of order. In the general joy over [Del Mars] resignation, its date was overlooked. Hart, In Our Second Century, 195; Aschheim and Tavlas, Academic Exclusion, 3160.

65. Ira Brown Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 320.

66. Roy Morris, Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 156.

67. Ibid., 156; Argonaut, June 29, 1878.

68. Somers from time to time contributed columns cut out of other journals. He sold his share in the journal to Jerome Hart in 1880. Jerome A. Hart, In Our Second Century: From an Editors Note-Book (San Francisco: The Pioneer Press Publishers, 1931), 153.

69. Argonaut, June 29, 1878; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 18601925 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 31.

70. Morris, Ambrose Bierce, 156.



to execute the bulk of the Argonauts editorial work. Bierces biogra-pher, Roy Morris, noted that Pixley and Bierce clashed over their visions for the Argonauts literary purpose.71 From the journals onset, Pixley wanted the Argonauts content to focus primarily on counter-ing the political influence of the Workingmens Party, while Bierce, who was more liberal-minded, wanted the Argonaut to provide qual-ity literary content for its readers. It is plausible that Bierce, who often promoted literary pieces of a sensational nature, collaborated with Del Mar to publish the Kwang letters. Both men were members of San Franciscos irreverent Bohemian Club and shared a tolerance for Chinese immigration.72

Despite Bierces tolerance, the Argonaut still belittled San Franciscos heathen Chinese residents. An unsigned editorial pub-lished in the same edition as the third Kwang letter addressed the question of Chinese immigration, stating that

[t]he Chinese are the cause of our hard times, our labor difficulties, our bankruptcies, our shrinkage of values, our pauperism, our crime .... [I]f there had been no Chinese upon this coast we should not be as rich as now; but riches would be more equally distributed, and California would have been the exceptional spot upon Gods footstool where there had been no hard times, and where poverty and destitution are forever impossible.73

Whether or not Pixley read his weekly journal in its entirety is difficult to prove, but one suspects that he supported the publica-tion of Del Mars controversial letters in his journal. An Argonaut editorial published in the same edition as the fourth Kwang letter proclaimed that

[w]e have given the series of communications of Kwang Chang Ling because they are the best presentation of the Chinese side of the Chinese question that we have seenbecause they are argumentative, historical, and bristling with facts, presented in a style and language that the American writer might well afford to imitate. We have pre-sumed upon the generosity and intelligence of our readers that they would desire to hear an argument from the Chinese standpoint, if conducted in fairness, although they might altogether dissent from the conclusions of the writer.74

71. Ibid. By 1880, Ambrose Bierce had ended his employment as the Argonauts associate editor.

72. Robert L. Gale, An Ambrose Bierce Companion (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001), 227.

73. The Argonaut, August 17, 1878.

74. The Argonaut, September 7, 1878.



Del Mars Kwang letters appeared in the Argonaut on August 7, 10, 17, and September 7, 1878, and they were republished in pamphlet form in October of 1878 and in 1881.75 They received comment and speculation from newspapers all over the country and in places as far as England, Germanyand even China.76 Most newspapers did not suspect that Kwang Chang Ling was a fictitious person. A few suspected Kwang Chang Ling to be the pen name of an American author. The Chicago Tribunes extensive coverage praised

[t]he substance of these remarkable letters, so much information is stowed away in every page of them, and such admirable use is made of it in application and argument, the defense is so compact, strong, and solid, the letters are so full of the most convincing logic as well as of power and dignity, that they would not do discredit to the most

75. An Argonaut editor, in noting the Kwang letters unanticipated popularity among its readership, stated: The demand for copies of the ARGONAUT containing the letters of Kwang Chang Ling has been so great that we have been unable to supply it. We have therefore determined to issue them in pamphlet form, and they will be on sale at our business office early. The Argonaut, September 7, 1878. See also, Daily Alta, October 7, 1878. It remains unclear when Del Mar confessed to orches-trating the letters under the Kwang Chang Ling pseudonym, but he did write them. In addition to Del Mars citation of them as an academic source within his own publications, Argonaut editor Jerome A. Hart acknowledged Del Mars involvement in the burning issue up to the time of the Exclusion Act of 1880. Hart, In Our Second Century, 195. Secondly, economist Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind, Vol. 3, 98, has noted Del Mars use of a variety of pseudonyms, including Emile Walter, Atlanticus, and Kwang Chang Ling. Furthermore, Del Mars long-standing frustration with the Crime of 73, when silver was demonetized, is visible in the third Kwang letter, where he states that Chinese immigrants were not the source of Californians troubles, but that [p]erhaps they [would] find it in the worlds dwindling stock of metallic moneyand in this respect one of the planks of their platform commends itself most heartily to my mind. Del Mar, History of the Precious Metals (1880), and Argonaut, July 29, 1878. Del Mar was a bimetallist and loud critic against the gold standard, and a significant portion of his publications and government assignments were directly correlated with the drive to reinstate silvers monetary properties. Lastly, by comparing the grammatical patterns between the Kwang letters and Del Mars other publications, the similarities in sentence structure and historical research methods employed also indicate that Del Mar is their author. Del Mar is cited as the Kwang letters author by archives at the Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge; Charles Young Research Library, University of California, Los Ange-les; and University of California, Berkeley, in addition to other university collections. Ella Sterling Mighels, The Story of the Files: A Review of California Writers and Literature, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Co-operative Printing Co., 1893), 248250.

76. Most newspapers were repeating similar commentary in limited detail. Additionally, while many newspapers marveled at the Kwang Letters arguments, there was no analysis that determined the authors agenda aside from protecting Chinese immigration. American Socialist, October 10, 1878; Chicago Daily Tribune, October 15, 1878; Daily Constitution, October 19, 1878; Cedar Rapids Times, October 24, 1878; Galveston Daily News, October 30, 1878; Jackson Sentinel, October 31, 1878; Deca-tur Daily Review, November 1, 1878; Freeport Daily Bulletin, November 10, 1878; Pall Mall Gazette, November 12, 1878; Marion Daily Star, November 15, 1878; London and China Telegraph, November 18, 1878; Cambridge Daily Tribune, December 19, 1878; North China Herald, January 1, 1879; Daily Alta, November 23, 1879; F. Ratzel, Die chinesische Auswanderung seit 1875, [Chinese immigration since 1875] Globus 39 (1881): 89.



brilliant of American scholars. Is it possible that one of the latter class is hiding behind a Chinese nom de plume?77

The Tribune, like most newspapers, marveled at the Kwang letters singular position on the Chinese Question. But in California, the San Francisco Bulletin was outraged that

[t]he Eastern Journals are now devoting themselves to the consideration of Kwang Chang Lings letters in defense of the Chinese, which appeared some time ago in the columns of the Argonaut. For the most part they regard them as the production of a genuine Chinaman. But a very differ-ent view was taken when they were published here. The general opinion was that they emanated from the pen of some mocking Bohemian . . . The mode of expression, idioms and all were essentially American.78

The Bulletin, suspicious that Kwang Chang Ling was a fictional char-acter, connected the Argonauts affiliation with certain Bohemian Club members, and hinted at Bierce as the letters author, though possibly suspecting Del Mar. Even so, the majority of journals and gazettes did not address Del Mars free-trade message. Existing accounts did praise the letters argument for Chinese immigration but only focused on minor topics addressed in the writings, with the exception of the Bulletin. Despite these varied interpretations, the letters of a San Francisco Chinaman, whose thought-provoking sentiments challenged the historical and economic foundation of the Chinese Question, were a national sensation.

The Kwang letters sparked national discussion, and later editions of the Argonaut featured San Francisco attorney Henry N. Clements inflammatory rebuttals to Kwang Chang Ling that appeared in the Argonauts August 24, August 31, and September 14, 1878, editions. Clement believed Kwang Chang Ling was a mere pseudonym adopted by some glib-penned Bohemian writing for coin, though he empha-sized that the Chinese Question was a question of political economy, and that cheap labor means low diet, few comforts, and no luxu-ries for the laborer, unacceptable standards for American workers.79 Clement also opposed Chinese immigration on the racist grounds that

77. Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1878.

78. San Francisco Bulletin, November 5, 1878.

79. The Argonaut, September 14, 1878. For further insight on the complexities of white labor, economic competition, and labors racial divisions during the era of anti-Chinese sentiment, see Alexander Saxtons The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990).



(1) Mongolian and Caucasian races do not assimilate. (2) That the mixing of inferior with superior civilizations subverts and destroys the superior. If any further evidence than that furnished by ancient and medival his-tory is necessary to establish these propositions I need but refer to the history . . . to prove the blighting influences of Mongolian blood and civi-lization upon the nations cursed with their presence.80

Opposition to the Chinese from Clement and other anti-Chinese voices stemmed in part from their beliefs about wage competition and racial superiority, but also reveals their efforts to define an eco-nomic ideal for white workers. Clement asked rhetorically,

If our American laborer has an ambition to get out of a lower and go into a higher employment, is that to his discredit? Have we not always pointed to that as one of the strongest evidences of our superiority? Is it to the interest of our race that we should introduce a race of patient, plodding, unambitious laborers who do not aspire?81

Clement sought to purify American labor on the basis of race, believ-ing that the Chinese posed a threat to white labors ability to repre-sent the ideals of the American Republic.82 Clement also called for an end to further Chinese immigration, for Chinese immigration means coolie labor. Coolie labor means concentration of wealth. Concentration of wealth means aristocracy, landed estates tyranny, and oppression of the poor.83

Furthermore, Clements views, while deeply prejudiced and cal-loused against the Chinese, captured the mood in San Francisco during 1878. Clement was a lawyer from the East who had arrived in San Francisco in 1875. Prior to his arrival, he was indifferent to the Chinese Question; however, he soon developed a strong anti-Chinese stance, and his essays on the subject were included in the 1878 California Senate Special Committee on Chinese Immigration and the Argonaut.84 Clement claimed he held no personal stake in condemning Chinese labor, nor did he stand to gain politically by supporting their exclusion from the state. Yet he ardently believed that the Chinese were the source of Californias moral, social, and

80. The Argonaut, August 24, 1878.

81. H.N. Clement, The Conflict of Races in California, presented to the California State Senate Special Committee on Chinese Immigration, Chinese Immigration; Its Social, Moral, and Political Effect (Sacramento: State Office, F.P. Thompson Supt. State Printing, 1878), 268.

82. Ibid., 277.

83. The Argonaut, August 24, 1878

84. Clement, The Conflict of Races in California, 269271.



economic woes. Clement addressed the Chinese Question from a law-yers perspective, and he looked for evidence to understand why the Chinese could not assimilate within the United States. He deduced

[t]hat the true prosperity of a nation consists in all classes of society enjoying the comforts and luxuries of civilization [T]oward the bor-ders of barbarism, wages become lower and still lower, and the com-fort and welfare of the laboring classes are totally neglected; that as we approach the more highly civilized and prosperous nations wages become higher; that low wages means stagnation and decay, and high wages, growth and progress.85

85. Ibid. Ping Chius economic study of Chinese labor in California found that a paucity of Anglo

Cigar Making in Chinatown, San Francisco (The Wasp,1879). One of the trades affected by Chinese labor competition was cigar-making. In this

cartoon, opium use, rats, disease, sleeping facilities, and dehumanizing labor share the industrial space. But Del Mar, writing as Kwang Chang Ling, con-tended that No one pretends that cigars can be made upon your would-be

basis of [white] wages. Already most of the cigars consumed here, apart from those made by Chinamen, are imported from New York. As for the yarns

about leprous Chinese cigar-makers, the finest cigars in the world, those of Havauna [sic], are all, without exception, made by Chinamen. (Del Mar,

Letters of Kwang Chang Ling, no. 3, August 17 1878.) Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. F850.w18v.3 no.134:472.



Clement, like so many opposed to Chinese immigration, believed that wages must be protected in order to protect the white American worker.86 His beliefs stood in contrast to those of Del Mar, who stressed that elevated wages were not the panacea to the workers plight, and that, instead, the lowest price, or cheapness of avail-able goods for consumption affected national prosperity, which he discussed extensively in his publication, What Is Free Trade?87

In his fourth and final letter, Del Mar departed from his delib-eration on free trade and the Chinese Question in order to dispel Clements claims that the Chinese were racially inferior and unable to assimilate to Western standards, and to redress Clements call for halting Chinese immigration to protect American interests. Though Del Mar never outright addressed Clement or incorporated quotes from Clements writings, he did call attention to the inability of others to recognize his intentions, stating, I am too well aware of the inveteracy and rancor of race prejudice to expect to convince my opponents so long as they refuse to join issue with me.88 In an effort to prove wrong Clements position that the Chinese should be excluded on the basis of racial inferiority, Del Mar broached the subject of anti-Semitism as an instructive parallel. (See below, page 342.) But Clement remained obdurate, dismissing Del Mars logic and reiterating his prejudiced views in a following letter to the Argonaut, explaining that he was not disposed to listen with any degree of patience to the cold-blooded arguments of the political economist who welcomes the Chinese immigrant as a cheap laborer.89

In contrast to Clements vitriolic prose against the Chinese and Kwang Chang Lings ghostwriter, the American Socialist Journal com-mented favorably on the Kwang letters. Because the question of whether the Chinese shall be allowed to live in our country. . . is the main issue on which the Kearneyites and other workingmen of the Pacific coast have settled, it is well for all Socialists to have

labor encouraged the employment of the Chinese within cigar manufacturing firms and elevated San Franciscos cigar making as a significant industry in the state. Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in Cali-fornia, 18501880: An Economic Study (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin for the Department of History, University of Washington, 1967), 122.

86. Ibid.

87. Walter [Del Mar, pseud.], What Is Free Trade? 95100.

88. Del Mar, Letters of Kwang Chang Ling, no. 4, The Argonaut, September 7, 1878.

89. The Argonaut, September 14, 1878.



an intelligent understanding of it.90 The American Socialist stressed Kwang Chang Lings argument that Chinese immigration did not pose an economic threat to the United States. Similar thoughts were put forth by the Galveston Daily News, which reprinted an article from the St. Louis Republican supporting Kwangs writings, noting that the current open immigration policy of the United States

[a]ssured [all immigrants] a warm welcome, complete protection in all their rights, and an equal chance with the natives in the struggle for life. We cannot expel the Chinese now here, or prohibit or limit Chinese immigration hereafter, without violating a fundamental prin-cipal of republican institutions.91

The Cedar Rapids Times also applauded the defense of the Chinese by Kwang Chang Ling, a mandarin of San Francisco. Summarizing Kwangs arguments, the Times concluded: His arguments have not been answered. The hoodlums that abuse him cannot.92 The major-ity of newspapers that commented on the Kwang letters noted the skillful manner in which they contradicted popular anti-Chinese views and agreed that Chinese immigration was not as great a threat as many had perceived it to be. And while scholars, including Stuart Creighton Miller, Andrew Gyory, and Gwendolyn Mink, have indi-cated that newspapers across the nation created a negative percep-tion of Chinese immigrants, the Kwang letters and these editorials demonstrate an exception to this dominant narrative.93

Del Mar used the forum of the Argonaut to shift Californians focus away from racial labor disputes and redirect them to a wider global context, specifically the importance of the China trade. The tone of the letters vacillated between compassion and contempt. Kwang Chang Ling countered Kearneys infamous slogan, The Chinese Must Go, emphatically insisting that they should not go; that they can not go; that they will not go.94 Kwang introduced Chinas historical relationship to the industrial world by stressing

90. Why Should the Chinese Go? The American Socialist, October 10, 1878.

91. Galveston Daily News, October 30, 1878.

92. Cedar Rapids Times, October 24, 1878.

93. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, 113141; Gyory, Closing the Gate, 18; Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 18751920 (Ithaca: Cor-nell University Press, 1986), 8889.




Chinas critical role in the rise of the West, such as the inventions of the mariners compass, sails for ships, rudders, gunpowder, paper, printing, and many other useful things introduced to Europe from China.95

95. Ibid.

Chinese Immigrants at the San Francisco Custom House, (front cover, Harpers Weekly, February 3, 1877). The custom house was a critical location

where trade and immigration intersected. Harpers Weekly, a national publica-tion, depicts an orderly line of Chinese coming down the gangplank and wait-

ing to be assigned to the Chinese merchants and American employers who will send cart-loads of them off to their work places. Courtesy of The Bancroft

Library, University of California, Berkeley. MTP/HW: Vol 21:81.



A central theme throughout the letters is Chinas critical impor-tance to the economies of commercially developed nations. The U.S. Monetary Commissions report (to which Del Mar contributed his findings on the Comstock Lodes silver output) possibly inspired Del Mar to recognize the Wests longstanding interest in the China trade, because:

[t]he traditional ideas of mankind have certainly always been that it is the greater or less [sic] degree of commerce with the East which determines the commercial position of nations. It is a familiar and general belief that it was the control of the trade of the Orient which aggrandized Tyre and Alexandria in ancient times, the Italian cities of the Middle Ages, and after a change in the route to the East by the doubling of Cape Hope, first Portugal, then Holland, and finally, and to the present days, England.96

Throughout the Kwang letters, Del Mar blamed the United States desire to access Asian trade markets as the mechanism that raised the Chinese Question and argued that efforts to limit the Chinese presence constituted harmful protectionism.

You insist upon trade with China, but you want no contact with her people . . . Can you be gratified in both respects? Impossible. The same God that made you, made us; the same inexorable laws of nature that govern you, govern us . . . If you must trade with China, you must come into contact with Chinamen.97

By emphasizing Californias geographical position, Del Mar recog-nized the states critical role in U.S. ambitions in the Pacific and as the point of entry for U.S.-Asian trade.

As Kwang Chang Ling, Del Mar urged Californians to consider the effect of their hostility toward Chinese immigrants on the states economic interests. Scholars Gwendolyn Mink and Roseanne Currarino have documented that the Chinese were not a real eco-nomic threat to white labor, and that the high unemployment rate coupled with an increasing volume of white overland migration created an oversupply of white workers who chose to blame the Chinese for their plight.98 Yet these fears of competition were readily

96. United States Senate, Report and Accompanying Documents of the United States Monetary Commission, 109.


98. Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development, 80; Rosanne Currarino, The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 3659.



adopted by individuals of both the lower and middle classes due to an overwhelming demand for improved economic conditions, which included access to employment, affordable land, and a stable supply of currency.99 Philip Kuhn asserts that Californias unemployment rate hovered around an unprecedented 20 percent.100 Railroad com-panies, and a minority of large land owners, controlled the states best farming acreage, reducing the opportunity for potential small land owners while simultaneously employing Chinese labor at low wages to work in the fields.101 Furthermore, a contraction in the available currency supply proved devastating to the states economy. Michael Bellesisles notes that in the United States during the late 1860s, $31.18 in currency circulated per person, yet by 1878 only $16.95 was available per head.102

In addition, the U.S. emphasis on domestic market growth dur-ing this period was colored by anti-monopolist sentiments. Railroads and other large businesses were the main employers of Chinese labor, which was a source of frustration for white workingmen who engaged in deadly riots in 1877 that harmed San Franciscos Chinese population.103 While the Daily Alta California and San Francisco Bulletin emphasized that both white and Chinese men were killed, it was Chinese washhouses and residences that were ransacked and burned, Chinese-owned stores that were looted, and Chinese indi-viduals who were beaten and forced to flee.104 The Chinese, whom the railroads preferentially employed, became a visible scapegoat for popular ire at the railroads corrupt practices of high rates, depot site acquisitions, and sullied reputation in the land-grant business.105 Railroad corporations, including the Southern Pacific and the Central Pacific, owned extensive acreage on some of Californias

99. Bellesisles, 1877: Americas Year, 112113.

100. Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2008), 208.

101. Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement, 67.

102. Bellesisles, 1877: Americas Year, 7. Historian Ira Cross also discerns Californias financial vulner-abilities due to a chronic shortage of available coinage. In the 1870s, Californians refused to cir-culate greenback notes, preferring to rely on gold dust, and silver and gold coins as mediums for exchange. Ira B. Cross, vol. 1 of Financing an Empire: History of Banking in California (Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1927), 357361.

103. Gyory, Closing the Gate, 96.

104. Editorial, Daily Alta California, July 24, 1877; San Francisco Bulletin, July 26, 1877.

105. Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement, 67.



best lands, which further corroborated their image as monopolistic entities.106 In addition, a small but powerful elite comprised of pri-vate capitalists and wheat farmers rented out small parcels to the Chinese. The image of the wealthy capitalist colluding with railroad cor

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