Letter from the Treasury Department to Attorney Walter S. Carter about Chinese Student 

Mr. Walter S. Carter,
Attorney-at-Law
96 Broadway, New York, N.Y Sir:

Replying to your letter of the 25th instant, in relation to the case of a young Chinese student, who seeks admission to this country upon a certificate not in strict conformity with the requirements of law, you are advised that, it having been ascertained that the applicant in procuring the certificate acted upon the advice of the United States Consul General at Singapore, the Collector of Customs at New York has been authorized to admit the Chinese person upon the recipe of a bond conditioned for the production of a proper certificate. Respectfully yours, Acting Secretary.

Hon. Lyman J. Gage,
Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Washington.

My dear Mr. Secretary:- My friend and neighbor, Rev. S.L.Baldwin, D.D., Recording Secretary of the missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, called at my house in Brooklyn last evening, regarding the case of a young Chinaman, who has come here to study medicine in the medical school of the University of Michigan, but in whose papers, I understand, there is some technical flaw. Dr. Baldwin said he would probably have to go to Washington, regarding the case, and asked me if I knew you. I told him that, thirty years ago, more or less, I knew you quite well, but that I had not seen you but once since I left Chicago, in 1872. I told him, at any rate you were still enough of a Methodist to know perfectlywell who he was, and that no endorsement of mine would help him much.
He writes me to-day, however, asking me to write you, which, of course, I gladly do. Dr. Baldwin has spent most of his ministerial life in China, and if we ever have a Chinese bishop, he will certainly be chosen. Any statement he may make to you, regarding his young Chinese friend can be absolutely depended upon, and I hope you can see your way clear to waive present technicalities and let the young man go to his studies at Ann Harbor. The Exclusion Act, I believe, is for the purpose of preventing Chinese laborers from coming here; this young man is not a laborer in any sense, but a student, seeking to equip himself for a profession and then returning to his home for the purpose of practicing it.

Splendid is the roll of names of the secretaries of the Treasury of the United States. As an old friend, let me express the pleasure it gives me to see your name upon it.
Very truly yours,