The union Democrat., 1869-08-21

| We to penetrate through the fosslllZed vices
habits and usages of the Oldest civilization L
the world, and reduce the Chinese intellec
and culture into sympathy with our own!
CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE.
The Chinese we admit, are frugal and in
dustrious. Though not endowed with
genius for invention, they are eminently sue
cessful as imitators, and can turn their hand
to almost any of the ordinary trades an'
handicrafts. Ii is a we'll known fact that, II
the city of San Francisco, they have poy
almost a monopoly of several trades whicl
| they must have learned since landing on ou
shores.
The peculiar fiexibility of hand and meet,
of touch, for which they, in common witt
most Asiatics, are distinguished, enable then
| 10 excel in those arts requiring great mamma
dexteritv, and in which females have usual,
been employed in our country.
When we have said this much, we have
said all that we can in their favor. II we are
to take the concurrent testimony Of all who
have travelled or resided in China, they ART
probably the most corrupt and immoral race
on the face of the globe.
Their religion, being an unmltlgated IDOL
airy, their moral system is III keeping viii
it. They do not commit crimes OF open
violence more frequently, perhaps, than
other races but they are adopts III all such
az require secrecy aud cunning IN their e4'
ecution. They are false, decelttul and dis
honest, and are said to possess, absolutely,
no sense OF the obligations of truth. They
unite the cruelty of the savage state, with
the vices of an effete civilization. With them
women have no souls, and lnfanticlde Is no
crime.
Reared as they have been, under the most
absolute despotism i'll the world they are
necessarily slavish, cringing and cowardly.
Although so strongly attached to their
native soil that they actually transport the
remains of their dead thlther for final inter
ment, it would yet be a prostitution OF the
word to call such attachment patriotism,
which, in its proper meaning, is virtue OF
which they seem to have no conception.
THE MEANS BY WHICH THEY ARE IMPORTED
TO AMERICA.
1t is we'll known that the great mass of the
Chinese now in the United States have been
imported as laborers, by certain Chinese
companies and contractors, to whom they are
bound by indentuIes. These hire them out
in gangs, or distribute them through the
country, in such employments as will COM
pensate them for their outlay, and yield a
profit.
In one sense they may be said to be the
property of the contracting companies, and
there is no doubt that among them i'll Cal
ifornia a system of servitude exists, similar
to the peonage of the Mexican peasantry.
And thus the party, which has SO recently
waged bloody war for tho liberation of the
negro, tolerates a Chinese slavery in our
midst, probably far more cruel and oppres-
sive than any to which the black race was
ever subject
We do not know that their present numbers
in tho United States have been accurately
sscertained, but We may venture to assert
that they do not fall far short of one hundred
and forty thousand, and every vessei which
enters our ports from China continues to land
moro or less of them on our shores.
1t is asserted that they can be brought
from China at an average cost per head OF
fifty dollars; whence the reader will perceive
that the companies importing them have a
large margin for profit II their wages amount
to but forty per cent of what has usually
been paid to white laborers.
EXTENT OF THEIR EMPLOYMENT.
We doubt whether it is generally under
stood out of California how far the Chinese,
in this State, have monopolized the several
fields OF labor to the exclusion of white men
and women.
The first of them who arrived in this State
engaged in surface placer mining and in the
laundry business, of the last of which, in
our cities and villages, they soon acquired a
complete monopoly.
1t was soon ascertained that they made
tolerable cooks and house servants, and they
We're employed as such, at first in hotels and
public houses, and then in private families.
Gradually they found their way into all other
kinds of employment known to our people,
and they are now engaged AZ farm laborers
rs gardeners, as fishermen, i'll the excavation
of bitches for mining and in the construction
of railways and other public works. 1t is
even asserted that the Central Pacific Rail-
road could not have been constructed without
their labor, though the Union Pacitic, a much
greater work, was constructed without the
aid of single one. In fact there is scarcely
a trade practiced i'll the State into which they
have not, to a greater or less extent, intruded.
They till all our manufacturing establish
ments. and have become expert operatives.
They are largely employed in placer mining,
but have not, as rule, been heretofore en-
gagged in vein mining. The time, however,
has now come, it Is said, when white miners
must either come down in their wages to the
Chinese level, or make way for their Mongo-
liam competitors.
Necessarily every Chinaman employed has
been in the stead of one of our own people,
who by this means has probably been driven
from the business to which he was reared to
seek a support in some other
What We now witness i'll California must
also ere long take place in the more Eastern
States. Chinese are, since the completion of
the Pacific Railway, beginning, it is said to
spread over the valley of the Mississippi and
the Atlantic sea-board. They WILL in those
parts of the Union, by means of low wages
and cheap living exclude all white labor, as
they have so nearly done in California. They
will be employed as cooks and servants i'll all
public houses, and on steam vessels; they
will be employed as servants even in private
houses: they will, III short time, supersede
the Western farm laborers, the miners OF
Pennsylvania, aud the operatives in the vari-
Gus great manufacturing centers. The girls
at Lowell will have to make way for these
sons of the Flowery kingdom, and even the
favorite and favored negro will be excluded
by them from the rice, cotton and sugar
plantations of the South. Judging by what
we have witnessed in California, il their I'M
portation continues be encouraged, all our
predictions will be fulfilled in period, which
in the lifetime of great nation, Is but a
single day.
THE CONSEQUENCES.
The consequences of their continued i'm
portation cannot but be in the highest degree,
deplorable. The friends of this policy are
in the habit of urging that We need more
labor: that the field of labor is, III fact,
ilhmitahle and that we have room for all
white, black and copper colored.
The opposition of the party TO which we
belong, 10 their introduction is not founded
on the assumption that there is not room for
further labor. That party has always been
and is still in favor of inviting by the most
liberal means, men of our own race, color
and religion, TO our shores. Such emigrantS
soon become sssimilsted to our people: in a
few years they and their children are alb
sorbed into the community, and become in
sentiment and poliucd opinions, patriotic
and devoted Americans.
Such is not and cannot be the case with
these Asiaticsl We object TO them because
they never can become good and valusble
citizens; because they are impure. corrupt
false and dishonest: because they are addict
ed to gross and demorslizing idolstry, and
lastly, We object to them i'll the interest of
the labor of our own people.
1t is obvious that if the friends of the
Chinese succeed in filling the Union with
them, and in their designs to bring down the
price of labor, the effect must be, either TO
Starve our own laboripc classes or drive them