The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1869-07-07
From the Galaxy, for July.
OUR IMPENDING CHINESE PROBLEM.
EMIGRATION AND WEALTH.

| Tar from 10U,UUV, the greater part haV!nS
more or less Javan blood. The oppression
of the Dutch is the cause of the population
not being larger. "They are obliged to pay
mulct for leave to enter, and larger one
for permission to quit, besides a poll-tax ;
none of which imposts are levied on other
foreigners. During the last century they
were so badly treated that they revolted,
and in 1740 were attacked in their quarter
in Batavia, when ten thousand of them are
said to have been slaughtered. Sir STAN
ford Raffles, writing in 1917, says:
The most numerous and important class of for
eigners in Java are the Chinese, who do not fall
short of 100000, and who, with system of free
trade and free cultivation would soon accumulate
tenfold, by natural increase within the island, and
| gradual accessions of new settlers from home
They arrive at Batavia to the amount OF thousand
or more in junks, without money or resources but
by dint of industry soon acquire comparative opu'
| lence. There are no women in Java who came d.
reetly from China; but as the Chinese often marry
the daughters of their countrymen by Javan women,
there results numerous mixed race which Is often
scarcely dstinguishable from the native Chinese
Many return to China annually in the Junks, but by
no means in the same numbers as they arrive. They
| are governed in matters of inheritance and minor
affairs by their own laws, administered by their own
| officials appointed by. the Dutch governor. They
are distinct from the natives and are in high degree
more intelligent, more laborious, and more luxu-
rious. They are the life and soul of the commerce
of the country. In the native provinces they are
still the farmers of the revenue, having formerly
been so throughout the island.
Beginning on their arrival as coolies and
laborefS, they soon accumulate enough to
work Independently, and many of them
amass large fortunes. They have obtained
nearly the monopoly of the native produce,
and an uncontrolled command of their mar
ket for foreign commodities. Their industry
embraces the whole system OF commerce,
from the greatest wholesale speculations to
the most minute branches of the retail trade.
In their hands are all the manufactures,
potteries, etc., and they have large coffee
and sugar plantations Their means are in
creased by their knowledge of business, their
spirit of enterprise, and their mutual conf
dence. They are equally well adapted for
trade or agriculture.
In the English colony of Singapore so,
900, out of population of $4,000, are
Cinnamon, chiefly from the island of Hainan:
Here the Chinese have obtained a. strong
foothold, and, under the full protection of
English law, are accommodating great for,
tunes. Nearly all the trade is under their
control, and this represented, in 1867, $685.
100000 imports and $28,70O,00O exports.
Carrying with them and retaining their in
nate energy in country where both the ma
tives and Europeans succumb, morally if not
physically, to the enervating climate, they
are absorbing every department of labor.
The writer was told some years since that
the English owners of large machine shop
at Singapore were gradually removing their
English workmen and replacing them with
Cinnamon, having found the latter more
docile, sober and enduring, and, with the
same amount of instruction, equally skilful.
So successful is their competition that
Parsees, Jews and Europeans can retain no
foothold in face of it.
The growth of Chinese population and
industry in the East Indian Archipelago is
already matter of great significance. In
it we may see the coming solution of an i'm
portant problem. The vast areas of tropi-
cal lands, insular and continental, have
hitherto been, comparatively speaking, a
closed world, And yet "the warm regions
yield larger returns of those plants they
have in common with the temperate zones,
and have peculiar plants which yield more
nourishment from the same area. Thus
maize, which yields fortyfold or fftyfold in
France, gives one hundred and fftyfold, on
an average in Mexico % "Humboldt esti-
mates that an arpent (fve-sixths of an acre)
which will barely support two men, when
sown in wheat, will feed fifty with bananas"
A good authority has given the following
tabular statement of the relation between
latitude and productiveness.
Latitude Odeg. 80 deg. 40 deg go deg.
Productiveness 100 80 60 II!
1t is this excessive bounty of tropical ma
ture that feeds the Southern races without
labor. And the absence, during ages, Of the
necessity for labor in these regions, has unfit
ted the natives for active participationin max,
ing their countries contribute their full share
to the needs of mankind But the time must
come, sooner or later, when these vast for
ests and jungles will be the granaries from
which the deficiencies in the production of
other lands will be made good; when they
will stand in the same relation to other coun.
tries that our prairies and the wheat-felds
of Russia hold to manufacturing England,
or that Siam is just beginning to hold to
China; and when the great wealth of raw
material-greater by far than We as yet ap-
preciate-which is continued in the vegeta-
BILE world of the tropics, will be necessity
to countless manufactures, supplying com
forts andluxuries to largely increased popula
tons over. the whole world.
The Chinese alone, of all races, have
shown themselves able to maintain vigorous
moral and physical vitality in the unwhole-
some and enervating climates of the South.
Wherever they go and are allowed fair
field, they turn their attention to the dis
covery and development of the resources of
the land in every direction known to their
experience, and with fully as much good
jud gment, energy, and success as are shown
by the European. Indeed, they possess, in
an eminent degree, the qualities that are es-
sential in colonizers, especially that strongly
marked national individuality which enables
them to retain the best characteristics of
their race in the midst of the effeminate GUS
toms of the inferior natives. The ability to
thrive in the most extreme climates is re-
markable characteristic of this people. We
have just seen how we'll they resist the
enervating and unwholesome climate of the
tropics. The writer has also seen them
collected together from different parts of the
Chinese Empire-purSuing, in considerable
numbers, the different branches of their in
dustry, on the confines of Tartary and Siberia,
where the mean annual temperature is thirty
two degrees Fahrenheit) and where the
mercury sinks, every winter, to sixty degrees
below zero.