Mr. Pung to Mr. Blaine.
Washington, February 5, 1892. (Received February 6.)
Sir: I have the honor to inform you that, from a report just received from the Imperial Chinese consul general in San Francisco, I learn that various residents of Butte City, Mont., have been obstructing in their lawful business and outrageously treating the Chinese subjects in that place, which fact I feel constrained to bring to your notice in the hope that you will kindly cause prompt protection, as guaranteed by the treaty stipulations, to be extended to them.
It appears that in the month of November last various labor unions of Butte City passed a regulation prohibiting the people in the said city against trading and dealing with the Chinese subjects resident there, and at the same time placed guards at the front of the Chinese stores to arrest and punish any native who should be found to infringe the regulation. Subsequently the labor unions forbade the native landlords to hire any more of their houses to the Chinese, and ordered them to raise the rents of houses already tenanted by them. They further required the Chinese laundrymen to register their names, and attempted to extort from them each $10 for the same. Upon their refusal to comply with their demand the lawless people fired at them and assaulted some of them about the head with their pistols, so grievously wounding them that their lives were in peril.
As the Chinese subjects resident in the United States are entitled to the protection of the laws of the country and guarantied to them by Article III of the treaty of 1880 between China and the United States, I beg respectfully to solicit immediate relief on the part of the outraged Chinese of Butte City, and hope that the necessary instructions may be [Page 143] issued to the local authorities of the State of Montana to take prompt measures for the suppression of such illegal actions and outrages committed upon the Chinese subjects there.
Accept, etc.,