The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-05-20
JOHN CHINAM1N.
The Present and prospective Eriis Of I"n
GratiOH-SGfire Labor Driven to the
VAIL cnS Of Vice and Violence.

m consideration the resolution recent
'r submitted to senator Sargent of Californ
g recommending to the president to cau'
l, negotiations to be entered into with tt
Chinese government to effect change
III the existing treaty so as to prevent til
L this country.
Mr.. Sargent said:
The difficulties surrounding this prof.
lem of Chinese population are continual
present to the people of the Pacific state
Experience has shown that Chinese POI
ulation expels all other as inferior cul
rency expels all better kinds. TIL
process has been going on for years il
San Francisco, as well as in other Pacifi
communities. A landlord will rent
single house in street to Chinaman
who at once crowds it to repletion. The,
take ordinary rooms, say of ten feet il
height, put in a false floor half way t.
the ceiling, and crowd both floors thu
made with hunks, and as many human
beings as may be pressed into the space
sleep therein. The atmosphere become:
fetid, and sickly smell pervades the
neighborhood, which causes the tenant.
of the houses to the right and left tc
vacate. These houses cannot again be
rented to white persons, the rents fall,
and finally the Chinese get possession.
This process goes on in each direction
until the whole street is abandoned to
Chinese. The property has fallen in
value, becomes dilapidated and offensive,
and the street is as much dedicated
to Chinese uses and lost to other residents
as if it were a street in Hong Kong.
Hotels and churches share the same fate
as ordinary dwellings and stores. He
said in his excursions through the Chi
nese quarter in San Francisco, under the
protection of the police, he had pene-
trated two stories under. ground into the
opium and gambling -dens, where the
stencil was almost uncomfortable, reached
by passages where a man cannot walk
erect, between walls dripping with ex-
halations of the neighboring sewers, and
where the filthy water at the bottom was
only avoided by carefully stepping on
narrow, broken planks laid down. Here
were swarms of Cinnamon, thick as mag
gots in cheese, smoking opium, etc.
No class of population known to the
United States can endure contact with
these squalid denizens. The white and
the negro, the American, Frenchman
and Spaniard all seek residences and
places of business elsewhere. Even the
lowest classes flee away. The whole
street is absorbed and doomed. This
process has already gone on until six
large blocks in>the business heart of San
Francisco have been eaten out and still
the work goes on, and the future will see
San Francisco purely Asiatic city I'M
less some means are devised to avert this
calamity. The number of Chinese on
the Pacific coast is one hundred and fifty
thousand. Of this number sixty thou
sand are in California, thirty thousand
being in San Francisco alone. He said
in all this great number there are not one
hundred families. But the flood is not |
confined to the Pacific states and terri
tories. The Chinese follow lines of travel |
everywhere, and have reached the At
lantic states in small number, but yet |
not numerous enough to excite local COM
ment and alarm.
Another evil of Chinese emigration is
its injury to white labor. By it white
labor is entirely supplanted, and the
growing young men and women in San |
Francisco find scant employment, and in
few avocations, because cheap Chinese
labor is taken in preference by employ
ers. IT the community is built UP by
such industry, it is not as a New Eng
land or western village is built up. 1t
is Foo Chow, and not Cedar Rapids it is
Donovan's alley, and not Broadway it
is the howell, and not the home the joss
house, and not the church; it is not re-
publican, it is not civilization. In San
Francisco laborer cannot support his
family for less than 50 or $3.50 per day.
The Chinaman will work for 81, and mo-
nopolize the market. The white laborer
must emigrate or starve. The China
man is constant threat to labor, skilled
and unskilled. He is very initiative,
and soon acquires sufficient art to COM
pete with the best workmen, and to sup
plant them. The operation of these
principles has been seen on limited
scale in Massachusetts on the occasion
of a "strike," where an employer at
North Adams imported sufficient China
men to carry on his establishment, and
since that time has refused to employ
white men. He has grown rich by the
operation, but labor has been.overawed,
because it learned what could be done if
it was not submissive. That which has
been seen at North Adams on a small
scale, and under the least impulsive con-
ditions, goes on in California upon large
and increasing scale, with surroundings
Of squalor and misery. Mr.. Sargent
then quoted from the testimony be-
fore the legislative commission in
San Francisco to show how the
manu- 'acturers in California had en-
ployed Cinnamon because they would
work for half price, letting their white
laborers go, and as soon as they were
taught the Chinese set up for themselves,
and undersold and bankrupted their en-
ployers, and were getting large branches
Of business into their own hands. The
emigration of Chinese is not like that of
Europeans, who seek our shores volun-
tarily to become citizens. They are
quasi slaves. He quoted from the dis
patch of Mr.. Bailey, consul at Hong
Kong, dated April 25, 1871, to the state
to show the slavery of the
the manner in which theyare
deceived on board shin bv all sorts of