The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-03-25
THE CHINESE QUESTION.
Il Serious Social ProbIem-.John's Hay q
IjriHU.

Il Serious Social ProbIem-.John's Hay of
Liring.
The Virginia New Enterprise says:
The learned men who conduct command
ing eastern journals cannot understand
why the people of this coast are opposed
to the influx of a race which all admit
possess patient industry and thrift !; who,
as rule, are peaceful citizens, and who
ask for nothing but what they can earn
They think it is but prejudice of edu
cation which makes us inveigh against
the Chinese, something akin to that
spirit which in the old slave days made
the men of the south. believe they were
right in possessing property in man, and
believing in classes. They can see no
faint in the presence of Chinese and
wenderingly ask why we, in country
where cheap labor of innumerable hands
is needed, oppose the very means by
which our wants can be supplied. We
tell them that white ,nen cannot compete
with the Chinese, and they sneer at us,
and as much as say eff you strong An
glo-Saxo cannot compete with this In
ferior and half barbarous race, then the
sympathy of the world will never go out
to YOU if YOU are undone by Cinnamon"
And yet that is the point wherein the
whole trouble lies. The Chinese live on
food which the white man could not
swallow if he were famishing he sleeps
in cribs that would suffocate white Ia
borer; and with all restrictions taken of
| there is not trade of the white man S
that the Chinese could not in five years
monopolize. There is no invention in
the race, but their faculty for imitation
is marvellous. Show them once how a
boot is made and they forever after will
make boots as nearly like their first
model as one birds nest is like another.
In all the western Pacific islands and on
the Indian coast they have driven every
competitor away and they control the
trade there, neither English, German, FL
Dutch, not even the Jews can co-Po'e
with them.
For our good on this co., we WISH a
dozen ship loads of coolies-ou'u "e ,anue'
in New York, enougt'o MAKE onihese
quarter on some p ee' Ill tna' Guy. IL
I'LL do corr. eastern editors good to
600 how ny live, and to find out how
.leir dens would smell. They
wo,,s,oegin to realize that if there were
million of them instead of few hun
dred, New York city should be poorer
instead of richer for their presence.
They would begin to realize that no
newspaper would ever be subscribed for
by even one of all that million; that no
public work intended for the health,
prosperity or intelligence of the people
would ever be helped by them they
would see that trades were falling into
their hands, but the public somehow
were not prospecting; see that from their
quarter of the city the other races were
drawing away as from pestilence, and
would understand that in case of danger
million of these half made men
weuld be no defense. This is simply
business look, but going further they
would see that every woman of the race
was both harlot and a slave, that they
were being bought and sold daily, and
that every effort of courts and officials
could not check the vice for moment.
This might be extended indefinitely. 1t
might be shown that under our laws they
but follow the laws of their own country
in all their relations with each other, and
that there it not power enough in either
police or courts to change this state of
affairs for moment. The European
soon merges with our people, and it is
hard to tell, after a generation or two,
whether a man is of English, German,
or any other European descent. But the
Chinese have not changed for thirty
centuries, and all other lands, except
China, are to him and his foreign shores
forever. Their presence here now, and
the possibilities of evil they may bring
to our people in the future, is a more Sc
rious problem than the American race
have yet been called upon to decide.