Denis Kearney (1847–1907) was a California labor leader from Ireland who was active in the late 19th century and was known for his racist views about Chinese immigrants. Called “a demagogue of extraordinary power,” he frequently gave long and caustic speeches that focused on four general topics: contempt for the press, for capitalists, for politicians, and for Chinese immigrants. A leader of the Workingmen’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 inspiration from Roman senator Cato the Elder’s fame for ending all speeches with ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam – “Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed”.)
Denis Kearney (1847–1907) was a California labor leader from Ireland who was active in the late 19th century and was known for his racist views approximately Chinese immigrants. Called “a demagogue of fabulous power,” he frequently gave long and cutting speeches that focused upon four general topics: contempt for the press, for capitalists, for politicians, and for Chinese immigrants. A leader of the Workingmen’s Party of California, he is known for ending everything of his speeches next the sentence “And anything happens, the Chinese must go” (a stir inspiration from Roman senator Cato the Elder’s fame for ending all speeches with ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam – “Furthermore, I rule that Carthage must be destroyed”.)
Kearney was ration of a short-lived hobby to addition the capacity of the full of zip class, but after a few years his increasingly sharp language and his repeated arrests for inciting violence alienated many of those whom he was infuriating to influence. When the economy grew stronger in the beforehand 1880s, Kearney faded from public notice. He started an employment agency where he worked until his health began to fail more or less 1900. He died in Alameda, California, in 1907.
Kearney was born in Oakmount, County Cork, Ireland. In Census and voter registration chronicles his birth year is listed as either 1846, 1847 or 1848. The second of seven sons, he left home after his dad died considering he was just 11 years old. He became a cabin guy on the clipper ship Shooting Star, and by his own account he “circumnavigated the globe.” In 1868 he arrived in the United States and married an Irish woman named Mary Ann Leary. Census chronicles list a daughter, Maggie, was born in 1871. Two years future he and his family granted in San Francisco, where he became a U.S. citizen and started a drayage business. A son, William, was born in 1873, and unorthodox daughter, Amelia, was born in 1875. By 1877 his situation was so well established that he owned five wagons and hauled goods throughout the city.
That thesame year, Kearney entered into the public arena afterward he challenged a city-backed monopoly upon carting and hauling. As share of this effort he helped to start a loosely organized association of laborers, which within a year’s period grew into the Workingmen’s Party of California. For several years the Workingmen’s Party would present a forum for Kearney to talk before growing crowds of unemployed people in San Francisco. At first his speeches focused upon uniting the destitute and the in action class though attacking the materialism of huge business, especially the railroads. He thought of himself as a “workingman’s advocate”, although he remained highly vital of unions throughout his dynamism and frequently denounced strikes.
Hubert Bancroft, author in the late 1880s of an influential archives of California, considered the Workingmen’s Party to be “ignorant Irish rabble, even even if that rabble sometimes paraded the streets as a great political party.” Kearney’s Irish immigrant background made him subject to frequent accusations that he was a foreign agitator. Middle class critics, fearful of Kearney’s innovative rhetoric and pledges, questioned whether Irish immigrants—embodied by Kearney—should have the right to dictate social policy in San Francisco. As The Argonaut, the newspaper founded and published by the former Attorney General of California, Frank Pixley, noted:
In ill will of growing criticism, Kearney’s popularity increased. At an outdoor store place near San Francisco City Hall known as “The Sandlot” he regularly spoke in belly of crowds that numbered as many as 2,000 people. Observers said he had a natural ability to stir going on crowds, and past his speeches often lasted as long as two hours he had profusion of opportunity to back the audience. One of his trademarks was to gradually addition the volume of his speech until it reached fever pitch, then dramatically toss off his coat and unbutton his collar. Such gestures “always goaded a storm of applause.”
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. One of his contemporaries described him as “temperate in all but speech.” He was said to talk forcibly, and following he wanted to make a tapering off he used words “like a missile.” The Boston Globe said “Mr. Kearney has power, and his capacity is that of the nice which to be appreciated must be seen and heard. It cannot be properly described.”
In some of his speeches Kearny did not hesitate to urge people to take violent actions adjoining politicians and new leaders. He frequently urged people to accept immediate retribution on politicians who broke promises. “Shoot the first man that goes back upon you after you have elected him intelligently;” he said, “see that you hunt him down and shoot him.” In another speech he declared “Before I starve in this country I will clip a man’s throat and accept whatever he has got … The Workingmen’s Party must win, even if it has to wade knee deep in blood and perish in battle.”
Although Kearney was arrested several era for inciting violence, he was always released bearing in mind charges were either dropped or no one would testify against him. His arrests lonely served to new his popularity and addition the connection in the Workingmen’s Party.
In one of his to the fore speeches he urged laborers to be “thrifty and industrious in the same way as the Chinese”, but within a year’s become old he began denouncing Chinese immigrants as the cause of white workers’ economic woes. By 1878 he used the Sandlot forum to meet the expense of frequent and violent speeches adjoining 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 “remember Judge Lynch.”
Within a rude time he was known throughout California for his racially charged speeches in which he repeated his slogan “The Chinese must go.”
In 1878, Kearney traveled to Boston to carry his message neighboring the Chinese to eastern audiences. He was in a kind way welcomed, and it was estimated that “thousands, indeed, packed Faneuil Hall on August 5 to listen his first speech, and thousands more had to be turned away.” Within a immediate time, however, the crowds at his speeches began to dwindle. The Boston Journal noted “the workingmen of this confess are by no means united in to hand Kearney … Many of them have no attraction with his anti-Chinese policy, they detest his openly Communistic principles, and will not acknowledge his conceited intolerance.”
While in Massachusetts he campaigned considering the Massachusetts politician Benjamin Butler, the Greenback Party’s candidate for President. Kearney sought the Vice 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.
Kearny sometimes crossed paths similar to Chinese-American civil rights protester Wong Chin Foo. Wong challenged Kearney to a duel upon the occasion of a speech by Kearney in New York in 1883, giving Kearney “his different of chopsticks, Irish potatoes, or Krupp guns.” Kearney responded by calling Wong an “almond-eyed leper.” Wong’s darkly sarcastic commentary upon Christian hypocrisy Why I am a Heathen speculated that Kearney might slip into heaven (via an eleventh-hour repentance), and take action to “organize a heavenly crusade to have me and others hastily cast out and into the additional place.”
Kearney faded from the public’s eye by the before 1880s, leaving as his legacy solitary the anti-Chinese laws that the Workingmen’s Party had passed at the 1879 California Constitutional Convention. Many of these laws, which included a ban upon the employment of Chinese laborers, were ruled unconstitutional by the federal Ninth Circuit Court. Corresponding later than the Irish author and politician James Bryce in the late 1880s, Kearney nonetheless claimed bill for making the “Chinese Question” a national business and affecting the legislation of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
Today there is a Kearny Street in San Francisco that runs through Chinatown; however it was not named after Denis Kearney but after the Mexican–American War Army manager Stephen W. Kearny.