Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1879-03-06
The Chinese Problem.
From the New York Nation.

we are not disposed to pooh pooh
the arguments of Senator Sargent in
support Of the bill It is not candid
TO say, as many of us do, that the
hostility Of the Californians to the in
flux Of the Chinese is due simply to
dislike of cheap labor, any more than
it is candid to say that the hostility OF
the Southerners to negro suffrage is
due simply to race prejudice. Cali
fornia is suffering, both socially and
politically, from the multiplication of
enormous fortunes managed with an
Inadequate sense of moral and social
responsibility, and leading to immense
land monopolies, which begin to bear
a close resemblance to the latifundia
which, Pliny said, ssruine1 Italy" by
the .extirpation Of the free yeomanry.
Nothing would do more to promote
these great accommodations of wealth
than profuse supply of cheap and
contented labor, and the resalt would
soon be form of society not unlike
that which slavery created at the
South. and which, whatever may be
said in its favor, is one which is total
~ unsuited to the American system of
government, and almost unmanageable
by it. If such form of society is
growing up anywhere it is not bad
politics to check it. Measures intend
cd to shape the social system are taken
in nearly all the States of the Union
by the laws of descent, and in this
State by those relating to the tenure
of land, as well as in other ways.
There is distinction, too, between
Chinese immigrants and other immi.
| grants, and it is one which may be
marked by American legislators with
ont any reputation of the theory
on which foreigners have hitherto
been invited to settle in the country.
Foreigners have been invited and en-
couraged to come because it was
expected that those who came would
come to stay, and as matter of fact
| this expectation has been realized. All
but handful of the millions who en-
tered the United States since 1900
have rooted themselves in the soil,
and their descendants are now Ameri.
cans. 1t is not at all probable that
the invitation would have stood very
long in its unqualified form if it had
brought simply swarm of sojonrners,
intending to remain foreigners while
here, and proposing to return home in
a few years Nor could the Govern
ment have stood the strain of the
presence of vast body of persons
owing it no allegiance and feeling no
interest in its safety or success. Some
means would have been resorted to
either to compel immigrants to cast in
their lot with the country or tofestrict
their numbers.
The Chinese, too, are something
more than foreigners who refuse to be
naAas allied. They are foreigners
whose numbers are prodigious, and
whose overflow into all the countries
within easy reach of their own is ex-
citing the hostility and alarm of al!
who find it impossible to enter into
competition with them without scri-
ously lowering their own standard Of
living. 1t is not the Californians alone
who are hostile to them. The Aus
tralians and New Zealanders, eager as
they are for immigrants, are not will
ing to accept the Chinese in lieu of
any other laboring population, because
the ready reception of them is appar.
emily likely to result in their extirpat-
ing all rivals in such callings as they
follow 1t may be creditable to the
Chinese that they are able to do so,
but it is not unnatural that their rivals
should be unwilling to accept their
fate or to acknowledge that the labor
er is nothing but a machine, and
valuable only for the small cost at
which he can be made to produce. A
state IS after all not manufacturing
company simply. II is an association
for moral and social ends, to which
man who remains in it all bis life as
stranger and spending nothing but
what barely sullices to support life,
contributes little or nothing. This
objection, too, has force as applied
TO the Chinese which it is far from
possessing when applied TO any other
race. No people in the world is so
impervlous to foreign influences
Their civilization is not only older
than ours, but older than our 'sancient
world" How after having advanced
SD tar IN arts and arms they came to
stop where they are, and take upon
themselves yoke of custom so hard
and fast that four thousand years
have hardly left mark upon it, is
one of the problems of history which
have thus far baffled all investigation.
What ia most extraordinary in Chinese
civilization, however, is not that it
has made Chinese society immovable
and impregnable, but that it has given
the Chinese population a persistence
and vitality unknown among other
races. They can live and work hard
in all climates; they take and lose
life with absolute Indifference their
armies in Central Asia advance with
such deadly perseverance that they
plant and reap corn after one cam.
paign in order to prepare for the next,
and they kill the males Of conquered
districts with the same calm with
which they throw bridge over a
stream. They are recently slowly
adding European arms and discipline
to the stock of their acquisitions, and
If they can produce generalshlp, they
will be power which no other nation
can safely attack and which all neigh
boring nations must dread. These
things must be born in mind by those
! who propose either to kick them out
as barbarians or receive and try to
educate them as barbarians. They
are men of an older and, if not stron-
ger, far more tenacious civilization
| than our own. We have evolved as
yet no force or influence likely to
make the smallest impression on them.
Ii they were likely to come in great
number to Calitornia-which we do
not think is true-they would easily
| take possession of the State. That
the very gelatinous religion and mo-
rality and customs Of that region
would supply an agency capable of
| q hcnrhinn ohanr.n-