The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1875-12-17
The Chinese Question.


| California and lost it. 1t has Eeen, upon
the part of the Americans, Chinese war
| fare-sound and fury-and on the part of
the Chinese it has been combat to which
they brought neither arms nor strategy, bu4
only persistence and patient endurance.
We have agitated the question of Chinese
emigration, and while we have made
| speeches and held elections, memorialized
| Congress, carried test questions to the Su-
preme Court, worried them by license laws
and poll-tax collections, passed municipal
ordinances to their annoyance, imprisoned
their prostitutes blackmailed their gam
blers, threatened to burn steamships, and
| carried local elections upon the Chinese
| question, they have poured in upon us in a
| silent and irresistible sort Of way that is
more alarming than an actual and forcible
invasion. We say we have lost the battle,
and SO we have. At every single point the
antl-C Chinese emigration party has been
routed and overthrown. The Republican
party and the Democratic party have op-
posed Chinese emigration, and still the en-
igration pours in upon us. Senator Sargent
and Congressman Luttrell have agitated the
matter in the Senate and House, and moth
| ing comes of it. We have passed laws in
the Legislature and the Courts of Califor-
MIA have annulled them. We have engag-
ed our criminal courts to punish their pros
titutes, gamblers and vagabonds, and they
have defeated justice by doggedly submit
ting to Imprisonment and overfilling the Ca
pacity of our iails, and by stolid non-re-
sistance wearying our courts into letting
them alone. Chinese emigration is not an
unmixed evil. There is an argument in it's
favor. This argument is the one of tempo
rary necessity, of individual profit, of
cheap labor and present convenience. The
farmers have utilized Chinese labor in the
pressure of their harvests. The railroad
| builders have availed themselves of their
steady and industrious. working habits;
they dyke the tide lands, build roads, work
| in factories, raise vegetables, catch fish, and
serve in menial capacities; they solve the
servants problem in the country; they act
as breakwaters between the mistress and
maid in the cities, and do something to-
wards mitigating the insolence of cooks
and chambermaids by affording poor SUBJ
stitute for white domestic servants in cases
of dire extremity. But quietly and insid-
iously the Chinese are eating at the vitals
| of our prosperity, and unless the broad
proposition can be maintained that coun-
try may prosper with an alien and hetero-
genious population, there can be no conclu-
sion in favor of Chinese emigration.
If country may attain a real and per-
manent advancement with its labor inter-
ests in the hands Of class that will send
their earnings abroad, then California is on
the high road to prosperity. If it is not
| essential that the population of n State
should become citizens thereof, and be
ties of citizenship, then we may look upon
| the incoming Chinese without alarm. Slow
| ly yet surely they are invading fields of
profitable industry; every branch of labor
their advance is slow, cautious and silent,
but it is as irresistible as, an army of To-
Gusts; the progress of the Kansas grass
hopper from field to field is no more de-
/ | structiveiyy absorbing than the march of
Chinese labor. The Irish washerwoman was
the first to succumb; the German cigar ma
ker fell next in order; the Italian gardener
| and fisherman are made to give way before
the inevitable Chinese; the slipper maker
| fell first in his line, the shoemaker next;
women and tailors hung on upon the sewing
machine for a time, but soon had to give
way; store porters, boys to clean offices,
children's nurses and second girls, box and
| bag makers, employees in cordage, woolen
and silk factories, at turning lathes and in
all the lighter mechanical occupations, la
| borers OH farms, in placer mines, on rail-
roads, all made way for the cheaper Asiatic
laborers. Instead of fifty thousand white
laboring men, with fifty Thousand white
families, living in fifty thousand houses,
| raising children to multiply their genera
tions, spending their money in the land
| where their labor produced it, we have fifty
/ thousand patient, laborious animals, living
| in crowded tenements, sleeping upon
! shelves, feeding upon tea, fish and rice,
cooking with charcoal in braziers, import
| ing from China their own goods and send
| ing to China their earnings. The Chinese
! are not alone dangerous to poor men, but
in good time they will eat up the rich, al
ready and always have they been their own
bankers; they have long since dispensed
with our merchants as middlemen; they
| import their own goods; even now they
| monopolize the trade in tea, rice, sugar,
silk, opium and all the fabrics and produc-
tions raised in China; they supply at San
Francisco and in every interior village their
own people with goods, and we see no rea-
son why they should not in time own the
woolen, cordage, silk, shoe, cigar, tobacco
and other factories, the sugar refineries and
rice mills, import goods in their own ships
and remove the relation which now exists
between the Chinese and Americans. The
| Chinese have greater wealth; they have
|
overwhelming numbers: they can live in
fnitely cheaper than our own people; and,
when we reflect upon the war we have
| waged against them and its results, we are
not altogether convinced that they are not
the superior people. AS yet we have had
no trouble or conflict between the races;
our times are prosperous, our country is ex-1
pansive, labor is plenty; but remove all
this and let us ask ourselves, will our
white working classes be patient and en-
dure, should poverty press them, should
hunger invade their families. Should labor
become scarce and unremnnerative, would
they silently suffer while these barbarians
consumed their substance? The rightfnl
inheritance of poverty is labor. Win our
poor people rest content while these aliens
fill their places? Suppose in this coming
winter. with all its horrors of climate and
its scarcity Of labor, the city Of New York