The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-06-27
California John.


bering animosity against the Chinese,
are virulent in their opposition to any
further immigration. Further than
this, the old ruffianly spirit of abuse
to be spreading, and the timid foreign
ers are greatly alarmed. The people of
San Francisco, at least, withdrawing
their attention from the problem of
Chinese cheap labor, are considering
John Chinaman as a local nuisance.
According to the census of 1870, there
are in San Francisco 25, 938 Chinese, of
whom the greater part are men. The
better class of these live and comfort
ably and decently but the vast ma
iority are housed in close quarters.
Their home education has not been IA
vorable to fine ideas of cleanliness:
and they have come from land where
teeming population divides living
space into the smallest possible indi-
vidual allotments. Whatever may be
said of the diet of the Chinese in Amer
lea, it must be confessed that their
domiciles and dormitories, where they
have their own way, are vile and crowd
ed. When a party of Cinnamon are
settled to work in building originally
fitted for the use of white people, the
first thing they do is to set up at least
one additional floor inside each room of
fair height. Into these hives the busy
workers are crowded, layer above layer
While ten Chinese are at work at
laundry table or cigar-rolling bench,
ten more are slowed underneath-to
sleep; and they do sleep, strange as it
may seem. Multitudes of Cinnamon
are employed about the cities in daily
labor but they all prefer to go to their
own quarter at night to gamble and to
sleep. For the accommodation of these,
lodging houses are constructed in build
ings which have been abandoned by
the white population and in hunks
like cOfins, piled from floor to ceiling,
the easy going Celestial reposes as
TRANQUILITY as though he were in the
most commodious of apartments. Some
of these nests are under ground some
are in lofty tenement houses from all
of them the air is carefully excluded,
and the aroma of China is over them
all. Further description is superfuous.
Society, and plenty of it, in his slum-
bers is one of John Chinaman's pet
weaknesses. His pigtail is another
The long queue, half silk and half
hair, which hangs to his heels, is the
Chinaman's national badge. He will
bear kicking or splitting upon with
meekness his pigtaiI is sacred to lay
hands thereon is to insult the entire
population of the Central Flowery
Kingdom. But more than cheap and
populous quarters, and more than his
cherished queue, John Chinaman de-
sires burial in the land of his fathers.
No Chinaman so poor that his mortal
remains may not be sent to rest in his
native land. The wild barbaric system
of religious superstition which directs
the daily forms and ceremonies, omens
and observances of the heather China
man is called Fung-Shuey." Just
what "Fung-Shuey" is no Christian
man can tell, but this mystic power
compels every son of China to leave
his bones to molder in his native soil
or be forever a spiritual wanderer up
and down the face of the earth. Poor
John can contemplate death or even an
initiation with a smile but his shade
must rest with the shades of his ances-
tors. From the Son of Heaven down
to his lowest subject this cardinal
principle of belief is respected i'm
plicitly. Every Chinaman who leaves
his native land under contract for ser
vice or labor has solemn assurance that
his bones shall come back if he dies
abroad. The promise is kept, and the
export of dead Cinnamon, gathered
from all parts of the state, is a consid-
erable feature in the commerce between
California and China. With almost
one fell blow, the local authorities of
San Francisco have struck at this three
fold trait of national character. It is
enacted that every Chinaman shall have
not less than five hundred cubic feet of
air to sleep in; and it is proposed TO
cut off the pigtails of all Cinnamon
confined in the county jail, and to pro-
hibit the removal of dead bodies to
China.
The Cinnamon refuse to pay fines
when arrested for violating the city or
dinance relative to the : ount of air to
be allowed to each sleeper. They are
found sleeping in rooms which give
about 200 cubic feet of air where the
law requires 500 feet they go to jail
their queues will next come off and,
by a refinement of legal cruelty, every
Chinaman will thus be made to pass
through the prison and come forth
shorn. John Chinaman, confronted by
the dreadful apparition of his ghost
lona-wandering and lost in a barbarous
land, will fall into detection and refuse
to stay in a country which has no avail
able ferry privileges across the Styx.
The representatives of six companies,
to whom all Chinese immigrants are
consigned, have telegraphed to Hong
Kong advising the discontinuance of
further migration. There is something
pitiful in all this. The legislation re-
ferred to is exceptional and designed to
harry the Chinese, not to purify the
city and elevate its sanitary character.
There must be slums in San Francisco
as well as in New York, where mu-
nicipal ordinance regulating the amount
of atmospheric air consumed never
comes. Yet a local journal Historically
demands that the municipal govern
ment shall keep at it "until the last
Chinaman is compelled to breath five
hundred feet of Gods atmosphere"
What about the vile creatures of the
Barbary coast, as it is called, who may
think themselves well provided with
half that amount of the divine air ?
Cutting off poor Johns pigtail and for
bidding the shipment of his bones
homeward is class legislation which is
inconsistent with honest republicanism.
John Chinaman is, perhaps, nuisance
to our Occidental fellow-citizens. Can
not nuisance be abated by some general
remedy? ,'
My own invention or imagination,
such as it is, / can most truthfully as
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