The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-28 00:00:00

THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA.

A gentleman recently from California discusses
the future of the Chinese race in America in an
article extending over five closely-printed columns
of the New York Tribune. The connection so ra-
pidly growing intimate between the Pacific slope
with its virgin lands and China with its 400,000,000
of inhabitants renders this subject one of enormous
importance, not to the Pacific shores of America
only, but to the whole continent. If all mankind
were marshalled, every third man would wear the
queue and the blouse of a race which could annually
deport emigrants in millions without even causing a
vacuum. As yet it is but from the province of Canton
that they come, leaving untouched the remaining
seaboard of China, including Manchooria and Japan.
hitherto California has exerted a repelling power

for their exclusion. They are unduly taxed, they
are the victims of unequal laws, and too f. equmtly
the ol,jects of ill-treatment and oppression ; yet
nearly every place of any importance has its China
town, the meanest and filthiest quarter, and where-
ever a new district is opened the inevitable Celestial
appears. The potency of the reasons for the en-
couragement of Chinese immigration is so apparent
that those who run can read, and must outweigh
other considerations and every opposition. The broad
fact is clear that no tract on earth equals in climate
and resources the country between the Sierra Ne-
vada and the Pacific, stretching from the Gulf of
California to the north of Vancouver's bland. With
unbounded fertility, with extraordinary mineral
wealth, with a genial climate, that almost uninha-
bited region smiles along an ocean which laves the
shores of densely peopled Japan and China, invit-
ing their overcrowded inhabitants to come. On
the one are nature's untouched treasures
stored in -abundance ; on the other labour in over-
flowing masses—the storehouse, and the key which
those in -possession have but to apply. The won-
erful resources of California,' the cheapness of
the labour furnished by the swarming hives of
China are equally well known, and in this rare com-
bination the Anglo-Saxon settlers of the Pacific slope
possess the only royal road to wealth we know of,
which lies through the Golden Gate and leads to
San Francisco. At first the Chinese were met with
a universal antipathy, but gradually working men
have grown used to them, and employers have dis-
covered their value. Of course the repugnance of
the white labour which they supplant has become
more intense, but the Anglo-Saxon settler in Cali-
fornia either is, or in the immediate future aspires to be
an employer ; therefore the capitalist is backed by
a large class who in other countries would be
ranked among working men, in importing labour
which at a glance might be supposed to compete
again§t itself. The Chinese work more patiently
and steadily than any other race. If their spades-
ful are less heavy than those thrown by the Irish
" navvy," they are more continuous. They are
willing and reliable, requiring less watching, with-
out strikes, sprees, and holidays. They are good
gardeners, supplying San Francisco and Sacra
mento with the fine It vegetables. The railroads
on the Pacific slope are graded by them, they cut
wood, pick fruit, tend stock, weave cloth, drive en-
gines, and are firemen on steamers. The hotel
work and household duties are nearly all performed
by them, so they have supplanted washerwomen
and chambermaids, as well as the Irish navvy.
Much of the heavy work of the farms is in their
hands, while the superintendents of the woollen.
and cotton mills, as well as railway contractors and
others, prefer their labour. They keep small shops,
and may be seen casting up their accounts and
making entries in their ledgers with a brush from
right to left. Even type-setting is performed by
them swiftly and correctly, considering their
ignorance of the meaning of the words. Thus
by degrees they have displaced white la-
bour, notwithstanding its opposition, for the
simple reason that they can exist on less, and
therefore can work cheaper. Sheep being able to
live where oxen starve, the weaker animal destroys
or drives out the stronger. The former nibble close
and fatten, where the great mouth of the ox re-
quiring a substantial tuft, can get nothing. Si with
Chinese labour; patient, industrious, ever at work
and always nibbling, they undersell the white la-
bourer, and absorb every field of manual toil and
handicraft. A hundred thousand are alreacly on
the Pacific slop, and every effort to bar any branch
of industry against them has as yet failed. Ten
years ago the manufacture of cigars, a branch of
white industry in San Francisco, .was invaded by
Chinamen. Alarm was taken, unions formed,
appeals published, cigar, dealers hanging out sgus
" No Coolies employed here," but in vain, for that
industry has entirely passed into the hands of the
Chinese. The . Pioneer woollen mills employed
coolies, and were burnt to the ground ; they were
rebuilt, and, like other woollen mills, now employ few
other hands. Irishmen mobbed the first Chinese
navvies, but they were supported by a strong force
of police, and when the Central Pacific worked up
to the Union Pacific, the Californian line was being
run by Chinamen, while the Omaha line was being laid
by Irishmen, a veritable meeting at the Salt Lake of
the East and the West. The Pacific Mailship Com-
pany had to smuggle on board cooly firemen, with
whom they replaced the discharged white men, but
upw the Chinamen come and go unmolested. All
this is in obedience to the economic law which
_§t4ops such questions, and the influence will extend
jaihe_Chinese increase, till but two classes will
exist in California, the labourer and the employer,
.not of one but of two races, not graduating into each
other, but separated by a chasm. Such a state of
society, is a reproduction of that in the Southern
States ; a new phase of the Negro quesidon on the
Pacficslope.The opposition of the white working man,
who sees in the Celestial a mortal foe, is neutralized
by the growing favour with which he is regarded by
capitalists, and crushed by the sentiment now per-
vading the nation. If the cheap labour of serfdom is
degradation as well as annihilation to white labour
on the Pacific slope, it is unbounded wealth and in-
fluence to the Anglo-Saxon settler with means. A
virgin country of unequalled resources, with an un-
limited supply of cheap, patient, enduring labour
form an unparalleled combination considering, that
so happy a conjunction is in the hands of the most
energetic and materialistic of this world's races.
That they will avail themselves of it regardless of
any considerations cannot be doubted, and with
what result ? On the Pacific slope an oligarchy
will grow with a marvellous speed more wealthy
and powerful than that which nearly shattered the
Republic into ruin. With an unbounded supply
of serfs, with a country of greater wealth and better
climate, with that situation of all others an ambi-
tious
community would select, for it dominates the
greatest of oceans, and is strong in a position most
difficult to invade;—resources so placed can be used
to build up a powerful oligarchy resting on a great
substratum of Chinese labour. They can cultivate
all the fruits of the earth so as to compete with Euro-
peans even in European markets ; they can under-
sell the manufactures of the Atlantic seaboard, they
command the markets of the Pacific ports, and they
possess the richest of all mines of the precious metals.
The effect of bringing the white labourer into com-
petition with the Chinese is to degrade manual work
as in the Southern States. The country will be
possessed by estate holders, great manufacturers, and
merchants, and they will rule even more thoroughly
than did the Southern planter, for they will not, in
the same degree, come in contact with white immi-
gration, reinforcements of the negro being wholly
excluded, as was the case in the South, but be inti-
mately connected with their storehouse of work-

men in China, repelling poor whites in the same
degree that it draws rich whites, barring Cali-
fornia to Anglo-Saxon labour, while making it the
paradise of the capitalist. It is a singular fact that
this formation of society, so wholly opposed to
American principle, will be fostered in a measure
by the American sentiment of the day. The United
States is the asylum of the poor and the oppressed,
alike open to all, and where the law treats all alike.
Legislation calculated to shut the country to any
nationality would be insufferable to New England.
The white workman of California may earnestly
desire it, but it soon will be opposed to the Consti-
tution, which, in the Fifteenth Amendment all but
passed, provides that no such prohibition shall be
made. The capitalist will naturally avail himself of
this, and the effect will be to generate the very state

of society to.defeat which that and other Amendment
were proposed. Indeed it is not easy to estimati
the effect Chinese immigration is likely to work 00
the Union. If it flows in the abundant stream
anticipated to the shores of the Pacific, it Will
rise over the Rocky Mountains and pour down °l3
the Eastern States. In truth, the Mongul invasloll
once begun cannot be controlled, a China tow!
being the result in every great city of America, alv
who can tell with what effect. This meeting G,
1,
the East and West, of the youngest and oldest 01
nations, of the petrified Chinaman and the rest.
less, energetic, brain-working Yankee, will be the
great problem of the next generation, and perhae,
prove a harder nut to crack than was ever offered
by the simple, docile Negro.—Anglo-Antericas
Times.

BUDGET OF PERSONAL.--The Governor-Genersi
of Canala costs the Dominion 552,000 a year salary''
William Pitkin, merchant and ex-Mayor of Rochester,
New York, died in that city, May 3.—A statue of Ge°ro,
11. Stuart is to be placed on the Lincoln monument P
Now York.—An Indian Chief has turned up out -Weal
named " White Feather." He is going on a lecturingrge i
tour. Boutwell is "turning out" badly, the discha
clerks say.—Boston Post. —lto is proving himself a refer'
rater, as he intends to prohibit smoking, chatting, visiting'
and drinking among the Treasury clerks during businn°
hours.—Madame Parepa-Ilosa is rehearsing for perf°::
mances in Oratorio.—Hon. Eugene Casserly, Senator fro'
California, is a five millionaire.—Senator Pomeroy is gat
to preach female suffrage in Brigham Young's tabernsc'
at Salt Lake. —Senator Sprague was at the Fifth-aveo
Hotel, New York, May s.—The Hon. George Villiers,ll
of Lord Clarendon, left New York for Washington It
—The Hon. J. Lothrop Motley, Minister to England, wiP.
the Hon. Samuel Hoop-e'r, M.C., left New York for Bost°
Wo learn by telegraph that he sailed for England 11l
Wednesday.—Lord Berkeley Paget, Lord Waterpark,
Mr. Wigram, from England, arrived at New York by tb
Scotia, and are stopping at the Brevoort House.—James
Ilunnewell, a merchant, of Boston, identified with t'"
Sandwich Island and California trade over half a ceuturf,
died on Sunday May 2, at the age of 70.-3lr John 1:100846
born in Oxford, England, in 1802, and for more than 30 yes'
a resident in New York, has just died.—Gen. John Ely, fir
cently appointed United States Marshal for the Eastern 19'
trict of Pennsylvania, has died suddenly in Philadelphitv:
Hon. Henry L. Dawes, M.C., celebrated his silver wedding
at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Monday, May 3.—The WOE'
Ignatius Donnelly, known for his attack on Mr. woof
burns, will be an independent candidate for Cievereoro4
Minnesota at the next election.—President Grant return'
au income of $560. This is independently of his sail;
front which the tax is deducted before payment.-"P,al
1
Edward Cunard left an estate valued at $3,300,000.
his will $1,500,000 goes to his eldest son, Pell
Cunard; $700,000 each to his second and third sorl
o'''
e
and $lOO,OOO each, and the accumulation thereoftL
his four daughters, all quite young.—William E.
has been re-elected President of the New York CO'
her of Commerce. John Destonet of Philadelphia, for
merly of the firm of Destonet, Brothers, a French 1°
porting house, fell dead in Chestnut-street, of heart diseit.;
—J. J. Atkinson, treasurer of th, Baltimore and Oin
Eailroad, died suddenly in Baltimore, on Saturday oleo{
May I.—J. Lothrop Motley has been elected a member et
the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.-- Hon. Alexan";
H. Bullock, late Governor of Massachusetts, and the Ile;
C. H. A. Dalt of Boston, were present at the 53d aunts
sary of the Peace Society last Tuesday in London!
Republican State Convention is to be held at 150411:'..
Maine, on the 24th of June, to nominate a Call-al
date for Govarnor.— Mr. D. D. Young, President 0
the Quebec Bank, is dead.—Ex-President Pierce has °lv
his " Boar's Head" farm on "Rye Beach," New
shire, but reserves his private summer residence there'te
Preparations are making to convey the Empress CWI%,
to Bagueres-de-Luchon, in France, where she will pass
season.—Baron Gerolt, who has safely arrived in Enc%i
had continuously represented the Prussian Governril°,„
for 22 years.— General Hancock is reported to be discn;
tented with the command assigned to him.—Samuel SPeto
has just returned to Greenfield, Massachusetts, fry'
0
California, after having been mourned by his parents 0
dead for seventeen years.—Dr. Brewser, whot died
Pittsfield, on Monday, May 3, was born in Becket g
1780, and was a lineal descendant of one of the Pileallir
in the Mayflower. —D. Waldo Lincoln, of of
cester, Massachusetts, has been elected one
the trustees of the State Agricultural COllegeio
John P. Halo's mansion at Dover, New Hampshire/
being put into complete order, in anticipation of his retnt
from Madrid.—Professor C. 11. Hitchcock, of New gam
,
shire, state geologist, and son of the President,Hitcha',
of Amherst, has been elected Hall Professor of Ge°l°0o
and Mineralogy in Darmouth College.—Genoral Edit'sg
M. Lee, of Gnildford, lately confirmed as Seeretative,
Wyoming territory, left on Friday, April3o, for Cheinares
—Mr. C. E. Deelong, of Nevada, has received tl'io
months' leave to settle his affairs boforo proceeding t°
mission in Japan.

Foreign Nail Pullet List.

MAILS DUE.
... 9.
: strallk and New Zealand, via Southatnpton...•.Ju"-.}
Ditto, Tia .1,-` iirseilles . June:
lrazii, Buenos Ayres, and Monte Video Tune '•
Ditto, by F iench packet . June V,
Cape Verde. by Brazil packet .... •..„,June 0.
Crape of Good 11.,pe. Ascension. and St. Helena... • June 6,
.Tina. Penang, and Sing,tpure, via Southampton. •JuPe,,9
a
ibrattar. via Southampton m'
.79
India, via SouthaßA)ranton
Mal ',l, Via3lareeiLes
Malta, r:gypt, Jzo... .... Mg •.
Mg •
Ditto, Marseilles
Jane
Newfoundlanc