John Franklin Swift

Along with Newton Booth, Swift formed an Independent Republican party whose platform was dominated by an anti-monopoly plank.

Swift was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and died in Tokyo, Japan, but spent most of his career in San Francisco, California.

As a legislator, Swift wrote provisions in the California State Constitution which gave the county board of supervisors the authority to control water rates.

The Angell Treaty regulated and limited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States but did not prohibit it outright.

In Chae Chan Ping v. the United States, Swift and LA District Attorney Stephen M. White on behalf of California succeeded in moving the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1888.