The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-27
LIE COOLLE SYSTEM.


THE COOLTE SYSTEM
THE Secretary of the Treasury, in his late
letter to the Collector of New Orleans, shows
that the Government has already adopted
precautions against a repetition of the worst
abuses of the Coole system on American soil,
or in connection with the importation of the
Chinese to this country. Our consuls are
requested to prevent involuntary emigration
from the land of the Flowery Kingdom to the
land of the Starry Banner, and we presume
that John Chinaman will be at least tolerably
well protected against the grosser forms of
oppression. If this shield against slavery is
afforded, we see no good reason why hundreds
of these active, industrious laborers should
not be welcomed to our soil. They are espe-
cially necessary in the Southern States, where
hundreds of millions of acres of fertile land
which would richly reward careful culture is
now lying idle. There is but slight prospect
of its speedy development if the Chinese
do not come to the rescue. There are now
two or three hundred acres to every
effective Southern laborer, and if some new
influence is not called into action this gap will
emigration. as a rule, follows isothermal
lines, and comparatively few Of the people
born in the Northern States, or in the north
ern portions of Europe will ever become
active field laborers in our Sunny South. The
planters are debarred from their old resource
of importing slaves from Africa, and as it is
difficult, if not impossible, to induce large
immigration from Southern Europe, China
is their most available recruiting ground; and
if their present difficulties and past troubles
have inspired them with an earnest and sin
cere desire to give fair trial to the children
of overcrowded ASIA they may furnish a much
broader and safer basis of Southern prosperity
than negro slavery. In many respects the
Chinese are the best agricultural laborers in
the world. For countless centuries all classes
have felt deep pride in this most ancient and
most useful of all arts. Of one of their en-
perors it is recorded that he gave the best
energies of his life to an improvement of the
cultivation of the tea-plant, and that his in
telligent and continuous exertions were finally
rewarded by wonderful success in extending
the domain in which that useful product could
be grown. The bulk of the lower classes have
been animated by a similar desire to achieve
the great end of making two blades of grass
grow where but one grew before, until the
whole nation teens with garden-like fer
tility. The Southern States, above all other
sections of the world, need such laborers.
Their old agricultural system was to the last
degree careless and wasteful, and there are
doubtless millions of Chinese laborers who
r..I
of two of their most important staples, rice
and cotton. Rice, the favorite food of the
Chinaman, can be grown not merely upon the
famous rice plantations near the seaboard, but
in many upland districts, and Chinese laborers
would have little difficulty in raising the
Southern cotton crop to the old standard, and
in extracting from the soil at the same
time, by little extra exertion,
enough food to sustain life. They
would not necessarily become the
industrial rivals of the freedmen. Under
proper conditions, they would prove effective
coadjutors. The great danger in the South
is, not that too much work will be done by
either white men, negroes, or Chinese, but
that Incidence will continue to prevail, and
that the aggregate of productive labor will be
infinitely smaller than the amount required
for the rapid promotion of Southern as well
as Northern interests. The great need of the
nation is millions and myriads of laborers to
do the work which should be done for the
common good of all; and if the Chinese can
reclaim Southern wastes, and at the same
time improve their own condition, let them
! be welcomed