ad to contend with
a traditional sentiment in favor of maintaining the United States as an
asylum for all peoples. But the demand from the workers of the Pacific
slope for protection against Asiatic competition in the home labor
market was so fierce and so determined that Congress yielded. President
Arthur vetoed a bill prohibiting Chinese immigration as "a breach of our
national faith," but he admitted the need of legislation on the subject
and finally approved a bill suspending immigration from China for a term
of years. This was a beginning of legislation which eventually arrived
at a policy of complete exclusion. The Mormon question was dealt with
by the Act of March 22, 1882, imposing penalties upon the practice of
polygamy and placing the conduct of elections in the Territory of
Utah under the supervision of a board of five persons appointed by the
President. Though there were many prosecutions under this act, it
proved so ineffectual in suppressing polygamy that it was eventually
supplemented by giving the Government power to seize and administer the
property of the Mormon Church. This action, resulting from the Act of
March 3, 1887, created a momentous precedent. The escheated property
was held by the Government until 1896 and meanwhile, the Mormon Church
submitted to the law and made a formal declaration that it had abandoned
polygamy.

Another instance in which a lack of agreement between the executive and
the legislative branches of the Government manifested itself, arose
out of a scheme which President Arthur recommended to Congress for the
improvement of the waterways of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The
response of Congress was a bill in which there was an appropriation of
about $4,000,000 for the general improvements recommended, but about
$14,000,000 were added for other special river and harbor schemes which
had obtained congressional favor. President Arthur's veto message of
August 1, 1882, condemned the bill because it contained provisions
designed "entirely for the benefit of the particular localities in which
it is proposed to make the improvements." He thus described a type
of legislation of which the nation had and is still having bitter
experience: "As the citizens of one State find that money, to raise
which they in common with the whole country are taxed, is to be expended
for local improvements in another State, they demand similar benefits
for themselves, and it is not unnatural that t