Denis Kearney | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | c. 1846–1848 Oakmount,County Cork, Ireland |
| Died | April 24, 1907 (aged 59–61) Alameda, California, U.S. |
| Occupations | Drayman and labor organizer |
| Political party | Workingmen's |
| Other political affiliations | Greenback(1880–1884) |
| Spouse | |
| Children |
|
Denis Kearney (c. 1840s – April 24, 1907) was an Irish-born American labor leader who was active in the late 19th century and was known for hisanti-Chinese activism.[1][2] Called "ademagogue of extraordinary power,"[3] he frequently gave long and caustic speeches that focused on four general topics: contempt for the press, forcapitalists, for politicians, and for Chinese immigrants. A leader of theWorkingmen's Party of California, he is known for ending all of his speeches with the sentence "And whatever happens, the Chinese must go" (a conscious imitation ofCarthago delenda est).[4]
Kearney was part of a short-lived movement to increase the power of theworking class, but after a few years his increasingly vitriolic language and his repeated arrests for inciting violence alienated many of those whom he was trying to influence. When the economy grew stronger in the early 1880s, Kearney faded from public notice. He became a wealthystockbroker and landowner, running an employment agency where he worked until his health began to fail around 1900. He died inAlameda, California, in 1907.[5]
Kearney was born in Oakmount,County Cork,Ireland. In census and voter registration records his birth year is listed as either 1846,[6] 1847[7] or 1848.[8] The second of seven sons, he left home after his father died when he was just 11 years old.[9] He became a cabin boy on the clipper shipShooting Star, and by his own account he "circumnavigated the globe."[4] In 1868 he arrived in theUnited States and married an Irish woman named Mary Ann Leary.[10] Census records list a daughter, Maggie, was born in 1871. Two years later he and his family settled in San Francisco, where he became a U.S. citizen and started adrayage business. A son, William, was born in 1873, and another daughter, Mildred (or Amelia), was born in 1875.[6] He later had another son, Denis Jr., and a third daughter, Ella.[11] By 1877 his business was so well established that he owned five wagons and hauled goods throughout the city.[10]
That same year, Kearney entered into the public arena when he challenged a city-backed monopoly on carting and hauling. As part of this effort he helped to start a loosely organized association of laborers, which within a year's time grew into theWorkingmen's Party of California. For several years the Workingmen's Party would provide a forum for Kearney to speak before growing crowds of unemployed people in San Francisco. At first his speeches focused on uniting the poor and the working class while attacking the greed of big business, especially the railroads. He thought of himself as a "workingman's advocate",[12] although he remained highly critical of unions throughout his life and frequently denounced strikes.[4]
Hubert Bancroft, author in the late 1880s of an influential history of California, considered the Workingmen's Party to be "ignorant Irish rabble, even though that rabble sometimes paraded the streets as a great political party."[13] Kearney's Irish immigrant background made him subject to frequent accusations that he was a foreign agitator. Middle class critics, fearful of Kearney's radical rhetoric and pledges, questioned whether Irish immigrants—embodied by Kearney—should have the right to dictate social policy in San Francisco. AsThe Argonaut, the newspaper founded and published by the formerAttorney General of California,Frank Pixley, noted:
When an organization, composed almost entirely of aliens, who are themselves here by the sufferance of a generous hospitality, band themselves together in defiance of the law to drive out a class, who, however objectionable, have the same legal rights as themselves, it is an act of insolent audacity that ought to move the indignation of every honest man.[1]
In spite of growing criticism, Kearney's popularity increased. At an outdoor gathering place near San Francisco City Hall known as "The Sandlot" he regularly spoke in front of crowds that numbered as many as 2,000 people.[12] Observers said he had a natural ability to stir up crowds, and since his speeches often lasted as long as two hours he had plenty of opportunity to incite the audience. One of his trademarks was to gradually increase the volume of his speech until it reached fever pitch, then dramatically throw off his coat and unbutton his collar. Such gestures "always provoked a storm of applause."[14]
Kearney never attended school, but he was a prolific reader and loved to engage in debates. He attended a club in San Francisco known as the Lyceum of Self-Culture, where he sharpened his speaking skills at weekly forums.[12] One of his contemporaries described him as "temperate in everything but speech."[12] He was said to speak forcibly, and when he wanted to make a point he used words "like a missile."[14] TheBoston Globe said "Mr. Kearney has power, and his power is that of the kind which to be appreciated must be seen and heard. It cannot be properly described."[15]
In some of his speeches Kearny did not hesitate to urge people to take violent actions against politicians and other leaders. He frequently urged people to take immediate retribution on politicians who broke promises. "Shoot the first man that goes back on you after you have elected him intelligently;" he said, "see that you hunt him down and shoot him."[16] In another speech he declared "Before I starve in this country I will cut a man's throat and take whatever he has got ... The Workingmen's Party must win, even if it has to wade knee deep in blood and perish in battle."[17]
Although Kearney was arrested several times for inciting violence, he was always released when charges were either dropped or no one would testify against him.[18] His arrests only served to further his popularity and increase the membership in the Workingmen's Party.[19]
In one of his early speeches he urged laborers to be "thrifty and industrious like the Chinese",[12] but within a year's time he began denouncing Chinese immigrants as the cause of white workers' economic woes. By 1878 he used the Sandlot forum to give frequent and violent speeches against Chinese immigrants and the problems he claimed they caused. He warned railroad owners that they had three months to fire all of their Chinese workers or "rememberJudge Lynch."[20]
Within a short time he was known throughout California for his racially charged speeches in which he repeated his slogan "The Chinese must go."[21]
In 1878, Kearney traveled to Boston to carry his message against the Chinese to eastern audiences. He was warmly welcomed, and it was estimated that "thousands, indeed, packedFaneuil Hall on August 5 to hear his first speech, and thousands more had to be turned away."[22] Within a short time, however, the crowds at his speeches began to dwindle.The Boston Journal noted "the workingmen of this state are by no means united in welcoming Kearney ... Many of them have no sympathy with his anti-Chinese policy, they dislike his openlyCommunistic principles, and will not endure his conceited intolerance."[23]
Kearney supported affiliating the Workingmen with theGreenback-Labor Party, and in 1880 was made a member of the party's national executive committee.[5] While in Massachusetts he campaigned with the Massachusetts politicianBenjamin Butler, theGreenback Party's candidate forPresident. Kearney sought thevice presidential nomination, although Butler never offered it to him. After criticism of him increased in editorials and articles in eastern newspapers, he returned to San Francisco.[24]
Kearney sometimes crossed paths with Chinese-American civil rights activistWong Chin Foo. Wong challenged Kearney to a duel on the occasion of a speech by Kearney in New York in 1883, giving Kearney "his choice of chopsticks, Irish potatoes, orKrupp guns." Kearney responded by calling Wong an "almond-eyedleper."[25] Wong's darkly sarcastic commentary on Christian hypocrisy "Why am I a Heathen?" speculated that Kearney might slip into heaven (via an eleventh-hour repentance), and proceed to "organize a heavenly crusade to have me and others immediately cast out and into the other place."[26]
Kearney faded from the public's eye by the early 1880s, leaving as his legacy only the anti-Chinese laws that the Workingmen's Party had passed at the1879 California Constitutional Convention. Many of these laws, which included a ban on the employment of Chinese laborers, were ruled unconstitutional by the federalNinth Circuit Court. Corresponding with the Irish author and politicianJames Bryce in the late 1880s, Kearney nonetheless claimed credit for making the "Chinese Question" a national issue and affecting the legislation of theChinese Exclusion Act in 1882.[27]
In December 1883, the Park and Ocean Railroad Company (owned by theBig Four'sCentral Pacific Railroad) obtained a fifty-year franchise to build a railroad acrossGolden Gate Park alongOcean Beach. Protesting the underhanded tactics used by the company to override then-mayorWashington Bartlett's veto of the franchise, Kearney and fellow "sand-lotters" Con Mooney andStephen Maybell staked their own illegal claims along the beach. To attractsquatters, Kearney and Mooney offered drinks and dancing while Maybell ran acoffee and doughnuts stand. Otherentrepreneurs soon followed, and the settlement came to be known as "Mooneysville."[28]
Within days, Mooneysville boasted dozens of stands and thousands of visitors, drawing the ire of parks commissionerFrank M. Pixley. By the time he issued an eviction notice in January 1884, the settlement resembled an actual town, with a hardware store, a candy factory, a bakery, achop house, several wells and pumps, a lumberyard, and fifteen saloons. However, when he sent twenty-five laborers backed up by seven policemen to clear out Mooneysville, they faced little resistance. For his part, Kearney let the laborers disassemble his shack for him, giving them orders as they worked.[28]
On March 26, 1899,The San Francisco Call reported that Kearney, now working as aspeculator, had made $100,000 (equivalent to over $3 million in 2025) byshorting a massive quantity of wheat right before competitors brokeJoseph Leiter's corner of the market, causing prices to plummet.[29] Kearney's good luck made national headlines,[30] with newspapers and columnists contrasting his newfound wealth with his early career as ananti-capitalist.[31][32]Ambrose Bierce wrote:
Denis Kearney with gloves! Denis Kearney topped with a shiny hat and booted to match! Denis Kearney lounging gracefully in the office of thePalace Hotel, uttering smooth nothings in unailing English! Denis Kearney cherishing in his breast pocket papers attesting his purchase of three thousand tons of wheat!
— Ambrose Bierce,The Passing Show, August 13, 1899[33]
Kearney died at his home inAlameda, California on April 24, 1907. He had been suffering fromkidney disease andfailing eyesight for several months prior, and his home in San Francisco had been destroyed in the1906 earthquake.[34] His death made international headlines,[35][36] and drew positive and negativeeulogies; while theSan Francisco Evening Bulletin remembered him as "the father of thelabor movement on thePacific Coast,"[34]The Baltimore Sun labeled him a "demagogue who was forgotten long before his death."[37] On May 30, 1907,House SpeakerChamp Clark devoted the end of hissyndicated column,Champ Clark's Letter, to Kearney. He wrote:
The public press has devoted much space in way of obituaries to Denis Kearney. They all pronounce him a cheap, coarse demagogue, but they admit that he more than anybody else forced the new constitution on California and compelled the Chinese exclusion act, which is far more than many big bore statesmen have done. On his tombstone should be chiseled his slogan, "The Chinese Must Go!" In helping to force Chinese exclusion Denis rendered the country a vast, patriotic service. His methods were crude, his oratory was crude, but when all the silver tongued orators and elegant time servers of his day are forgotten, the laborers of the Pacific coast and of the whole country will remember with gratitude that Denis Kearney was largely instrumental in saving them from the blight of Chinese competition.
— Champ Clark,Champ Clark's Letter, May 30, 1907[38]
Today there is aKearny Street in San Francisco that runs throughChinatown; however it was not named after Denis Kearney but after theMexican–American War Army officerStephen W. Kearny.[39]
Dean S. Jagger plays the role of Dylan Leary onWarrior, who is based on Denis Kearney.[40]
If any one individual personified the anti-Chinese movement in the United States, it was surely San Francisco's Denis Kearney. A bigot, a demagogue, and a gifted public speaker, Kearney rose to prominence in the late 1870s....
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Texts on Wikisource:| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
