New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-07-22
TIE LIBERTY or L1BOR.

Those newspapers which dixie The Richmond
Dispatch persistently assert that The TRIBUNE
has favored and recommended the introduction
of large masses of Chinese labOrers to compete,
at low wages, with American wOrlmcn (tO use
a milky euphuism which need offend no SEN
sitive souD, state "the thing which is not"
That this kind of labor will ever be to any
great extent employed in the NewEngland
and Middle States there is good reason to
doubt. How far it can compete with the labor
of the Blacks at the South and Southwest, Is
one problem of which the solution must be
waited for; while still another is, to what ex-
tent it may be relied upon for subjugating our
enormous territory, of the cultivation of which
we have made scarcely beginning. These
are political and economical questions which
must receive their response through the lapse
of time and through circumstances. For the
present we put them aside.
But what THE TRIBUNE has insisted upon,
and, while it is published, will continue to
insist upon, is, that in the practical solution of
these problems on the part of the race calling
itself Caucasian 1--WE don't know WHY there
shall be no cruelty no injustice, no violation
of the fundamental principles of freedom, but,
on the contrary, a strict adherence to the re-
publican doctrine upon which this Government
is founded. That is to say: Having held out
an invitation to all the world to come to us !;
having for years declared the United States to
be the Refuge of the Nations; having put into
our Constitution an acknowledgment of Equal
Rights for Al having proclaimed that within
our borders no man shall be forbidden to work
at such lawful calling as to him may seem
proper; having made a covenant against wrong
and injustice; having done all this with fer
vency and in apparent good faith, our idea is
that the United States should either renOunce
its principles or boldly stick to them.
We claim for the Chinaman, as for every
other kind of Man, full permission to come
within our borders, to work here at his trade,
to make contracts which our laws will enforce,
and generally to do all those things which he
might do if he were a Swede, an Irishman, or
Patagonian. About the expediency of his
coming or staying away, we say nothing. That
is his business and not ours.
Secondly, we aver, with all the force of
which we are capable, the right of an en-
ployer to employ such workmen as he may see
fit, be the same Demsgods or Digger Indians.
That, we say, is bis business.
Thirdly, we deny the right of any class Of
men to band themselves together to prevent
any human being from working if he wishes
to work-industry not being so universal in
this world, or so fatal to its prosperity, that
we must resort to mobs to diminish it.
These are our views. Now for their practi-
cal application. We find at North Adams, in
the State of Massachusetts, company of
Chinese employed in a certain way. Being
thus employed peaceably and proftably lac
cOrding to their own ideas of profit, we deny
the right of anybody to harass or in any way
obstruct them. We claim for them the protec-
ton of all laws which are good-of the Divine,
the Moral, and the Enacted. Any organized
attempt to drive them away from the town in
which they are sojourning we hold to be a
Conspiracy punishable by fine and imprson-
ment. If one of them is killed, it is Murder
Ii the building IN which they work ID burned.