The Shasta courier., 1859-03-05
Horsctovn correspondence.


MEssRs. EDrroRs viii you please give
small space of your popular and much read pa
per to the publication of few ideas that have
suggested themselves during leisure hour
| have been considerably amused, and no
doubt the whole mining portion of our commu-
nifty have been similarly edited at the weak and
shallow attempts that have been made by the
Shasta Republican, and few interested parties,
to bring the action of the miners on the Chinese
question into ridicule. 1t won't do. The miners
are fully sensible of the great Importance of the
question, not only to themselves but to their
relatives and friends that are to fill our State in
future years.
have no desire to be discourteous to the Re-
pubttcdn-do not wish to be understood as being
personally ofensive-but truth demands that
should accuse that paper of making statement
which was unfounded in fact, and calculated to
lead estray the public mind in other sections of
our State. 1t says that not more than one out
OF every five American miners advocate the ex-
pulsion of the Chinese. Its knowledge of the
sentiments of the miners upon the question must
indeed be very limited Now, would ask, is
1t not well known fact familiar to every one
who wished to speak fairly of the movement,
that there are scarcely any opposed to the re-
moYal of the Chinese, except those who have
direct indirect interest in their retention
such as ditch proprietors, their agents, few
traders, and others protesting to be miners, who,
too lazy to work, live by selling the China
men claims, and collecting from each China
man weekly stipend for protecting them from
any encroachments of the white miners who may
be seeking place where he could make few
dollars to keep himself from starving.
Then we have the tax collectors, who prate
about the immense revenue brought into the
treasury by the taxes collected from them for
the privilege of mining. But by the time the
Sheriff, Clerk and County Treasurer take from
1t their per centage, there is not enough left to
keep in our goal, for one month, one tenth of the
Cinnamon caught pilfering either from the Amer
lean miner or trader troughout the county, if
they were prosecuted according to law In
place, however, of bringing them before our
County Court for trial, some light chastisement
is inflicted, and they are again turned at large
to prey upon the public. 1t is well known
fact that, within the year past the thieving pro-
pensities of one Chinaman has cost this county
between two and three thousand dollars This
is but one instance. If all of them who steal
were brought into our Courts the county would
be hopelessly bankrupt in less than one year.
| While the Americans are giving months of
toll to developing the hidden treasures of our
hills, and opening field that may give employ
ment to thousands, those Asiatc barbarians are
exhausting every ravine, gulch, and shallow
diggings wherein the white miner might make
perhaps three or four dollars per day, should his
efforts in heavier diggings prove unsuccessful,
which is too frequently the case
When our placer diggings become exhausted,
Will the Cinnamon still remain amongst US ? and
will we still be able to collect the mining tax :?
think not. The rich Chinese capitalists who
brought them here, finding that they cannot OBJ
tain profitable employment for their forty or
fifty thousand serfs swarming in every mining
county in the State, will at once re-ship them,
with their millions of gold extracted from our
mines, back to China, leaving nothing behind
but desolaton to remind us that tbey had ever
been amongst us.
see that the resolutions adopted by the re-
puted miners meeting held at Briggsyille has
been pretty extensively copied by the press
throughout the State. | think if publishers
knew from what an immense gathering that
document emanated they would not be so ant
to give 1t publication. 1t was indeed great out
pouring OF the masses-all Briggsyiile collected
"a day that every Briggsvillian can look back
10 with PRIDE and say, 4" was one amongst the
immortal eleven that participated at that meet
ing and sent forth our sentiments in favor of our
Asiatic brethern." Indeed, it will be happy
meeting when those eight miners an ex-Judee
bridge proprietor, and hotel keeper, shall
meetln future years and recount their noble
deeds upon that memorable occasion.