The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-11

men, fathers Of families, and good and useful |
citizens and members Of society, while E, F,
and G are nothing but eating, drinking, and
working machines, with scarcely the vestige
of souls, is left out of sight altogether.
Hence, when it is proposed to import from
China laborers and mechanics who will do for
half dollar q day what Americans have
been accustomed to get three or four dollars
for, they are lost in amazement at the stu
pidity which opposes the instant acceptance
of the proposition.
Another class of the champions of the
coolies are sentimentalists, who insist that if
it we're possible it would be good thing to
bring the whole world here to share in the
advantages of our superior civilization, and
rescue it from barbarism. In the excess of
their benevolence they would have Ameri-
cans starve and die in order that everybody
else might live and grow fat. To them, too,
one man is as good as another, and birth,
education, morality, and intellectual power
count for nothing at all.
But these classes unite in assuming that
American workingmen design to exclude by
force all Cinnamon from competition with
them in mechanical industry; and they de-
nounce the workingmen accordingly as en-
deavoring to overturn the laws of trade and
violate the dictates of humanity. The poll
tical economists demand that competition
shall be allowed to work out its legitimate re-
suits, and the philanthropists protest against
preventing barbarianS from coming under the
influences of civilization and Christianity.
Notwithstanding the immense interests
which the workingmen have at stake, and the
natural bias which those interests give them,
they are, so, far quite reasonable in their
positions. Men to whom the difference of a
dollar day in their wages means the differ
ence between comfort and privation for them
selves and their wives and children, might be
excused if they took even an extreme view
of measures which threaten to deprive them
of that dollar. But, as we understand them,
the workingmen ask for no more than simple
justice. They do not desire that any dis
elimination shall be made against Cinnamon in
general, but they do insist that there shall be
no conspiracies entered into to bring Chinese
laborers into competition with them by whole
sale, and far in advance of the regular pro-
gress of events. While they are willing that
individual Cinnamon who come freely and
without solicitation to our shores shall earn
their living honestly, they very properly OBJ
ject to an organized system of Chinese immi-
grafton, having for its direct object the re-
duction of the price of labor
For instance, take the shoemakers in North
Adams. If in the regular course of emigra-
tion one, two, or dozen Cinnamon had come
to the town and learned to make shoes, we
do not understand that any interference
with them would have been asked for. They
would naturally have joined the regular
unions and increased the force of shoe
makers without apparently affecting the rate
of wages. But here comes ship-load of
| ignorant heathens, bound both by their con-
tract and by their want of acquaintance with
| our social system to labor for term of years
at a mere pittance, and they take the places
of an equal number of white men already on
the spot. Let the experiment be repeated
again and again, as it threatens to be, and
we shall soon see the whole army of white
shoemakers supplanted, not slowly and gra-
dually, but in single night as it were, by
their Asiatic competitors.
This, then, is the demand of our working
men, that the laws of trade and of humanity
be obeyed, not violated, and that this sudden
inundation of Asiatics be restrained within
the limits of natural immigration. Those
who condemn them for making the demand
are neither good Americans, good economists,
| good philanthropists, nor sensible men.