The remaining words, "regulate, limit, and suspend," first appear in the
American draft. When it was submitted to the Chinese, they said:
We infer that of the phrases regulate, limit, suspend, or prohibit,
the first is a general expression referring to the others. * * * We
are entirely ready to negotiate with your excellencies to the end that
a limitation either in point of time or of numbers may be fixed upon
the emigration of Chinese laborers to the United States.
At a subsequent interview they said that "by limitation in number they
meant, for example, that the United States, having, as they supposed,
a record of the number of immigrants in each year, as well as the total
number of Chinese now there, that no more should be allowed to go in any
one year in future than either the greatest number which had gone in any
year in the past, or that the total number should never be allowed to
exceed the number now there. As to limitation of time they meant, for
example, that Chinese should be allowed to go in alternate years, or
every third year, or, for example, that they should not be allowed to
go for two, three, or five years.
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