s of phraseology and administration by carefully framed
definitions and stringent measures.[48] The Supreme Court upheld the
constitutionality of exclusion as incident to American sovereignty.

Meanwhile in the West the popular feeling against the Chinese refused
to subside. At Rock Springs, Wyoming, twenty-eight Chinese were killed
and fifteen were injured by a mob which also destroyed Chinese
property amounting to $148,000. At Tacoma and Seattle, also, violence
descended upon the Mongolian. In San Francisco a special grand jury
which investigated the operation of the exclusion laws and a committee
of the Board of Supervisors which investigated the condition of
Chinatown both made reports that were violently anti-Chinese. A state
anti-Chinese convention soon thereafter declared that the situation
"had become well-nigh intolerable." So widespread and venomous was the
agitation against Chinese that President Cleveland was impelled to
send to Congress two special messages on the question, detailing the
facts and requesting Congress to pay the Chinese claims for indemnity
which Wyoming refused to honor. The remonstrances of the Chinese
Government led to the drafting of a new treaty in 1888. But while
China was deliberating over this treaty, Congress summarily shut off
any hope for immediate agreement by passing the Scott Act prohibiting
the return of any Chinese laborer after the passage of the act,
stopping the issue of any more certificates of identification, and
declaring void all certificates previously issued. It is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that this brutal political measure was passed
with an eye to the Pacific electoral vote in the pending election. In
the next presidential year the climax of harshness was reached in the
Geary law, which required, within an unreasonably short time, the
registration of all Chinese in the United States. The Chinese, under
legal advice, refused to register until the Federal Supreme Court had
declared the law constitutional. Subsequently the time for
registration was extended.

The anti-Chinese fanaticism had now reached its highest point. While
the Government maintained its policy of exclusion, it modified the
drastic details of the law. In 1894 a new treaty provided for the
exclusion of laborers for ten years, excepting registered laborers who
had either parent, wife, or child in the United States, or who
possessed property or debts to the amount of one thousand dollars. It