The patron of husbandry. (Columbus, Miss.) 1875-1883, 1879-08-16
CHINESE IMMIGRATION.

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The large cotton planters of this State
and Louisiana, who, backed by the mer-
chants of New Orleans, brought thous-
ands of negroes to these States immedi-
ately after the war to the great injury of
all classes, are now organizing to bring in
Chinese coolies to take the place of the
negroes. The farmers and workingmen
should unite at once and be fully prepared
to resist and crush this infamous move
ment at the threshhold ..-t..-...
To give our readers an idea of what
Chinese immigration means, we take the
following extracts from a speech delivered
during the last session of Congress by
Hon. Horace Davis of California;:
So fal, the bitterness of this struggle in
California has fallen upon the poorer
classes. The laboring men are unable to
resist this movement. With families to
support, with children to educate and
maintain in decent comfort and respecta-
bility, they are no match for the Asiatics,
who come here single handed with he
redltary frugaity trained by centuries of
want, and with habits of life reducing their
needs to bare animal subsistence 1t is
idle to say that these matters must be set
tied by competition, that the strongest
must survive and the weakest must go
under in the struggle. This is natures law
the law of brute force, and we are per-
petually trying to modify it by the higher
principle of protecrion. AS well tell the
farmer to let the weeds and the wheat
struggle for survival. This more reason
able theory of protection finds place in
our legislation when we foster American
manufactures and protect them from for
eign competition, and the same principle
that protects the cotton spinner of Massa-
chusetts, the iron workers of Pennsylva-
MIA, or the sugar planter of Louisiana,
calls on you to come to the aid of the la
borer of California and save him from his
unequal struggle-all the more real be-
cause it is at our very doors.
Cheap labor and the accumulation of
wealth are not the objects of republican
government, but the creation of a pros
porous, happy and united people. Now to
reduce our men to the Chinese standard
of a bare maintenance of animal life is to
discourage immigration of white labor,
and to substitute for it an inferior class of
men, degrading labor itself by making it
the heritage of servile race instead of the
privilege Of manly citizen, and renew
ing within our borders, as already stated,
the system of slavery we have overthrown.
If this invasion continues unrestricted,
there can be only one result-white labor
will be driven from the Pacific coast and
the gap supplied by the Chinese. The
statutes enacted by the state for our relief
have been set aside by the federal courts;
the doors have been thrown wide open
and we have no refuge. The Chinese,
crowded out of their own land by hunger
and want, will flock across the ocean in
swarms. AS they accumulate capital they
| will gradually creep into new lines of bu-
| siness, from which we are unable to dis
| lodge them, till California becomes like
Singapore-wheret they form three-quar-
ters of the population-where they have
driven the English out of different branch
es of trade and manufacture, and have alb
! sorbed to certain extent even the bank
| ing business, and own different lines of
steamships plying upon the Indian ocean;
where they are so numerous and turbulent
as to defy the authorities, who confess
their inability to keep them in proper
check, and have repeatedly been obliged
to call upon the strong arm of the English
navy to protect the city, and in one case
were glad to avail themselves of the SER
vices of an American fleet.
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