Andrew Gyory's "Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act" attempts to answer a central question about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, specifically why the United States government passed this bill. According to the author, current historians who have examined the issue fail to offer a comprehensive explanation for this event. Gyory claims that the act did not arise from nationwide racism or at the behest of national labor leaders even though these elements formed an important aspect in its passage. Instead, he offers an alternative thesis: the Chinese Exclusion Act came into existence largely because national politicians sought votes from western states. Moreover, office seekers falsely claimed that anti-Chinese legislation had tacit support from workers across the nation and further argued that the laboring classes would greatly benefit from such a bill. Gyory finds that far from supporting an exclusion of Asian workers, most workingmen east of the Rocky Mountains had few concerns with Chinese immigration.
The first few chapters define an issue that repeatedly appears throughout the book: labor in the West supported Chinese exclusion while workers in the East did not. The distinction between the two camps hinged on the issue of importation versus exclusion. Starting in 1869 and reappearing throughout the 1870s, eastern capitalists threatened to import Chinese to break strikes. The fear that these Asian laborers would work longer hours for a lower wage presented a serious threat to emerging efforts at unionization. Most attempts to bring in Asian workers never materialized, despite the hysteria regarding an 1870 incident in North Adams, Massachusetts where a factory owner did bring in Chinese labor to break a strike. It was the implied threat of such a widespread influx of cheap, non-unionized labor that terrified the average eastern workingman. Gyory argues that even when workers thought such a danger loomed on the horizon, they still did not embrace exclusionary policies. The picture that emerges is instead one of eastern workers welcoming the Chinese with open arms as long as they came to the United States of their own freewill and not under contract with factory owners.
The stance of eastern labor did not find a reciprocal attitude in California and the West Coast. These regions supported a ban on Chinese immigration from the highest echelons of society down to the lowest ranks of the working class. Westerners persistently sought legislation at the federal level to end the Asian influx, with men like Denis Kearney embarking on widely touted tours of the East to promote an exclusionist agenda. These efforts either completely failed or achieved only limited results until the national election of 1880 when presidential hopeful Senator James G. Blaine realized that promoting a ban on Chinese immigration could sweep western votes into the pockets of the Republican Party. Blaine failed to secure the presidential nomination, but both parties soon adopted his race baiting tactics in the hope of winning a presidential election in an era of razor thin vote margins. After several intricate political maneuvers in Congress, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law in 1882. Eastern unions, which had ardently opposed immigration bans for so many years, eventually supported exclusion when it became apparent that this measure was the best labor legislation they would likely get from the federal government.
Gyory's research on this issue is exhaustive. By scouring through mounds of newspapers and related documents, he successfully constructs an argument that eastern unions opposed importation while supporting Chinese immigration. His presentation of the political machinations centering on Chinese exclusion shows the author's mastery at negotiating the immense source material concerning congressional debates and election politics. Moreover, the section of the book outlining Denis Kearney's excursion East illustrates the level of hostility westerners had for Asians while revealing the character of this flamboyant orator. Historians, like the public, enjoy reading about such vibrant individuals.
The author's central premise that eastern workers opposed exclusion runs into a major difficulty when one realizes that the book deals almost exclusively with unions or pro-union laborers. Labor unions during the 1870s never came close to representing a majority of workers nationwide, so drawing an overarching conclusion that "workers" opposed exclusion is arguably still up for debate. Moreover, Gyory often fails to make the critical distinction between organized labor and "workers," and would probably have found firmer ground if he had argued that UNIONS in the East opposed exclusion. Of course union members supported Chinese workers; they could build stronger unions if they could convince Asian laborers to join their ranks. Accomplishing this feat would be more difficult if Chinese laborers could only work through restrictive contracts with capitalist owners.
A further problem with this book lies in the hysterical tones westerners used when referring to Asian immigrants. Why did every level of society in the West reach near consensus about the undesirability of the Chinese? Other than a vague reference to westerners living in an area where the Chinese formed a measurable minority of the population, Gyory never examines the reasons for this overwhelming hatred. Defining the causes of this western repugnance would not necessarily translate into a justification of anti-Asian hatred, but rather would provide an explanation for the unanimous calls for exclusion in this area. Several western figures quoted in the book make vague references to vices and prostitution in their arguments for an immigration ban, so certainly there were specific issues on the West Coast that excited public opinion against the Chinese. What were they and why do they not appear in this book?
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