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15 Fifty Cents a Pound (1887) The month after Yan Phou Lee’s article appeared, Wong got an opportunity for a rematch with his nemesis, Denis Kearney. Four years after their initial confrontation, Kearney, a political has-been by this time, was back on the East Coast. He was trying to gin up support for a new bill pending before Congress aimed at plugging loopholes that remained after passage of the Exclusion Act. The New York World, learning of the trip, invited both men for a debate. The legislation, introduced by Senator John H. Mitchell, an Oregon Republican, was not ultimately successful, but had it passed it would have unilaterally abrogated treaties between the United States and China in order to stop all Chinese from entering.1 Kearney, who believed that exclusion policies were not being enforced adequately2 and who held that the Chinese had devised many varieties of subterfuge to evade them—both assertions were quite true—was of course a strong proponent.3 The support of the Eastern states was critical. The Pacific states were already in favor of closing the loopholes; it was Easterners who had consistently stood in the way of more draconian measures. Once the Mitchell Bill passed, Kearney intended to go north to persuade the Canadians to stop their Chinese immigration, since he thought it too easy for Chinese to cross the border once they had made it as far as Canada.4 Every bit as adept as Wong at sensing an opportunity for publicity, Kearney consented to engage Wong directly on this trip. The Boston Globe salivated at the very idea. “To see and hear Wong Chin Foo and Dennis [sic] Kearney in a match to a finish on the Chinese question is a treat such as the intellectual sporting men of this country have not had for many years,” it declared.5 The debate, which took place on October 18, 1887, began with a handshake. 150 The First Chinese American The contrast between the two men was striking. The Chicago Tribune used the word “broad” four times in its depiction of Kearney and “slender” three times in describing Wong. At five feet nine inches, Kearney was not a tall man, but he had more than half a foot on Wong. The Tribune made him sound positively Neanderthal: “broad-shouldered, deep-chested and muscular, with a broad, round head set solidly on a thick, brawny neck. His little ears bulge out over wads of thick cervical muscles and his grayish-blue eyes peep out above chubby cheeks the color of ripe cherries. His hands are broad and thick and his fingers stubby. His short-cut brown hair and bristly little red mustache highten [sic] the pugnacious aspect created by his broad, low forehead, slightly turned-up nose, wide mouth and square chin.”6 The diminutive Wong, by contrast, looked the model of an American gentleman. He was about five feet two, “slender and agile as a greyhound. His features are distinctively Mongolian and his hands long and slender . . . there wasn’t an ounce of superfluous flesh on his slender frame, and his black eyes were snappy and sparkling.”7 A description of him from the Augusta Chronicle from the same era completes the picture of a “very little man in a large overcoat and a square top Derby hat” with close-cropped black hair. “His coat was of black diagonal, buttoned up in a trim way. His trousers fitted closely. His shoes were small and pointed at the toes. He wore a stand-up collar and narrow black tie.”8 In short, he was a far cry from the man who just a few years earlier had still sported a floor-length queue and Chinese robes. He now dressed wholly unlike most of his American Chinese compatriots, few of whom had yet adopted Western dress at this juncture. The Globe’s prediction notwithstanding, the debate was hardly a “match to the finish.” Much of the dialogue, which took place at the offices of the World, was actually quite banal. Excerpts were reported verbatim in the press. As the Fitchburg Sentinel recalled it: “I understand, Mr. Kearney,” said [Wong], “that you are against all Chinamen, and that you have come to New York to fight them.” Dennis [sic] stopped the thrust neatly. “I am not against Chinamen as a race,” he answered, “but I am opposed to their coming here as serfs, peons, slaves. If the Irish Catholic, the English Protestant or the German...

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