The Hickman courier. [volume] (Hickman, Ky.) 1859-current, 1877-03-09
SIreARSKING IN PERU
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T,,.,;,.ye T,eol ,lsllt.of Chinese LoJorers on.
the sugar Plantations.
The manner IN which men come by
their deaths is as Varied as the ways by
which thew earn sliving. 1t is not our
intention to writso on the subject of pic
turesoue homicide in general, but to
confne ourselves TO one particular class
of persons, the desth they die, and how
they are killed. apd in whose interest,
or for what purpCs the final catastrophe
is brought about Although the muir
dered people we nfer to are none other
than certain Cinnamon, temporarily
resident IN Peru yet, remote az the
place of their Slaughter may be, it will
be found that thep deaths concern US
more intimately tbn at first sight they
would appear to do. These hapless
Cinnamon are kiIsd in the process of
making cheap sugar tie sugar so made
is sent to the Engsh market, and OF
course is brought ias Competition with
the product of our owu West India
colonies.
We have, then, to declae that very
much of the sugar which ONES to this
country from Peru is thefruit of the
labor Of kidnapped men-f men who
are kept in loathsome isolation from all
the syInpathies which make human life
differ from that of the brte-of men
who for years at a time, neer see the
face Of wOman-who die of tspair-are
killed by Internal cruelties, md left to
rot like carriOn, and to become food for
carriOn birds This sugar w English
christians eat, this sugar we allow to
complete with tnat of our owl planters,
and we think that no mere anxiety to be
consistent in our belief of political
doctrine FshouId stand in tn, way of
putting a stop to that state of .hings
Our own government has supplied us
with the knowledge on mich We ground
these remarks. The foreign office has
instituted an inquiry into the condition
of the Chinese in Peru, and hss recently
published the result. 1t lisa British
consul who reports. He says that dur
ing the five years ending 1874 more than
46 GOO Chinese left China for Callao, of
which number more than 5000 died on
the way. Ninety. three ships were en-
gagged in their trade, twenty-four OF
which were Peruvian. The rest sailed
under the flags of the French. the Dutch
and Portuguese.
Fourteen million flve hundred thou
sand dollars invested inthis traffic by
the producers of Peruvian sugar alone,
ana it may add to the interest Of this
statement if we remind our readers that
-he greater portion of that great sum
,pent in Cinnamon was supplied by the
English public. The Peruvian govern
ment received il in the tirst instance as
a loan, and then the great officials and
their friends helped themselves to it in
their own peculiar fashion, and set up
n the sugar trade. The immortality of
trusting this class of b igs may possibly
press itself or the mind of the English
public, to say nothing Of its expediency.
The madness of lending money to these
foreign thieves, who nearly always steal
it, when the same lent TO our own col
onies would be safe and yield tenfold
is, we think, beginning to be
perceived by our money.lending people
1t appears that enslaved Cinnamon are
also employed in digging guano, blast
ing it and shoyeling it into ships. At
the pabelion de Plea alone more than
three hundred Chinese are employed in
this dangerous and disgusting toll No
less than ninety-eight were in hospital at
the time of the consul's visit, all suffer
ing from a disease which resem bles scurvy
)r purpura, to which were added wounds
)r bruises received from the falling on
their bodies Of great stones and masses of
displaced guano, which at that deposit
Is as hard as granite, and smells like no
known single stink, but like all the
'tinks of the corrupted earth put to-
ErqmiHey.