The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-03-02
A ,pEcx OF TROUBLE ABOUT THE CHINESE

Immediate occasion of il, is ominous OF ex-
tensiye and complicated trouble hereafter at
tendant upon the increasing number OF .nA'
class of immigrants in the United States
Heretofore the Cinnamon who have come to |
California have shown but little disposltionto
naturaiize themselves in the country. Like
the original gold diggers from the United
States. thew were led thither by hungry and
rowing thirst for speedy gain, with about as
much thought of remaining permanently as
the whale fisherman from Nantucket mas OF
making his home on one of the Aleutian
islands when he visits the North PACING IN
ouest of blubber. At first they were almost
entirely unaccompanied by women. by ana
by. some of them introduced families, and at
length San Francisco was found to nave
considerable population of Chinese with all
the conditions of permanancy and OF natural
increase, segregated, however, from the
rest of the inhabitants somewhat
as the occupants of the Frankish or Christian
quarter used to be from the Turkish portion
of Constantinople. But it is only of very re-
cent a.to tlses tho California Chinese seem to
have thought of the systematic importation OF
women from their native country, as the raw
material, so to speak, for wives and house
keepers. That the commencement OF such
practice should produce excitement among
those Californians who had already viewed
with alarm the swelling stream of Chinese I'M
migration, is not in the least surprising. The
event indicates, more unequivocally than any
thing heretofore has done, that the Chinese
settlers, as body, are there to stay, and to
multiply and spread. And it is suggestive,
in a startling degree, Of much more. Ii
Chinese immigration is hereafter, as this
seems to signify, to comprise, in the long run,
men ana women in about equal per-
tons, coming to stay, to multiply and
spread, it is time to estimate the probable
magnitude of this immigration and to consider
the capacity Of this country for assimilatins
or incorporating it. From the light manner
in which most American journals refer to the
Chinaman as an immigrant, and from the
unhesitating spirit in which it is proposed by
Congress to make him a citizen in political
as well as civil sense, it would seem that but
few persons in the United States have pom
dered seriously the possibilities of the in
creasing influx of people from China which
will attend the enlargement of trade with that
country resulting from the establishment OF
railway connection with the Pacific. Has
any one reflected that, with respect to ex-
portable commodities, China has less to offer
us. in comparison with her numbers her
| industry and production, than any other
country in the world Has any one
reflected that the only material which
she possesses in obvious excess of her
wants, the only material which she can afford
to export without stint, is labor, and that OF
this material the supply is great almost to
| inexhaustibility 1t is doubtful whether any
| such reflections have come over the minds of
those who have dreamed most fondly OF the
maenificenee of that trade with China which,
rs thew fancy, is to be realized when Pacific
raIIrUaus ana rs-sifo etaornshir --sl.s-ii -1--i
New Orleans and st. Louis practically nearer
to Canton than they were, fifty years ago, to
| New York. Be that as it may there can be
| no question that China is able to send us more
labor than anything else, and that if this ex-
portation is not prohibited on the one hand or
repealed on the other by causes that are not
simply economical, it will proceed in q
steady volume until the surplus laboring
population of the most industrious and frugal
country on earth is drained off. And what is
this surplus and what is likely to be the rate Of
its exodus? These questions may be best
answered by the statement of few undispu-
ted facts. The eighteen provinces of China
| proper covering about the same area as the
United States exclusive of outlying territories,
contains q population of not less than four
| hundred millions. Their seventeen hundred
walled cities alone contain nearly twice as many
inhabitants Is the whole American Union.
Tho one nation of China according to u reli-
able authority, constitutes nearly one-third of
the whole human race. "Its inhabi-
tants are about equal in number to
those of all the kingdoms of
Europe and of North and South America COM
bined. Any one of the more populous of the
eighteen provinces contains a population
nearly equal to that of the largest nation of
Europe, or Of the United States" Add to
this that the masses in China, say about three
hundred millions, are agriculturists, and the
most of these manual laborers in the actual
tillage of the soil; that they bring every avail
able spot under cultivation IN order to pro
vide food for man almost to the utter exclu-
sion of beasts; that, though, with an IN
equaled agricultural economy, they tax the
soil to the utmost, their numbers still press
painfully upon subsistence, so that, in their
hand-to-mouth existence, enough never
amounts to plenty, and they live always next
door to famine. Then consider that its
ratio of population to the square mile
Is greater than that of either Ireland or Ger
many, countries which have hitherto fur
nished the bulk of foreign emigration to the
United States; consider that the need, the
supreme need, of its over-crowded population
for more land to cultivate is greater than is
known among any other people on the globe
and it would seem naturally to follow that
the tendency of the Chinese to satisfy this