Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-03-15
CHINESE SLAVERY.

authority of a despotlc 4id absolute char.
.eter, which can be trs .nsSerred by sale or
ease to others. 1t is extremely probable
that this representa- .tioais in the main true,
for analogous res ats have in all parts of
the werld grown out of that patriarchal
system which. obtains in China. In
RUSSIA, for ey ample, which has preserved
the primitiv e social institutions more faith
fully than any other country in Europe,
the heads of families until very recently
exercised an au+hority'ev ever its members
which l Eft the latter little or no wolition
in the management of their affairs. The
rigid maintenance of the system of COM
munity property in land, under the Mir,
or to Hnship institution, no doubt,eontrib-
uted greatly to facilitate this family des-
pot SIN. Until the abolition of serfdom it
was. the custom for:the head of the family |
to select wives for the male children long
b sfore the latter had became old enough to
marry, and as the girls were grown up |
srhen SO chosen, it was very common for |
H,,d .the..asoIs cs Erzatctt to middle-aged or |
elderly wives, whose yigor had been ex-
pended in laboring for the benefit of the |
/ elders. As in China the veneration for
parents is carried to the point of idolatry,
it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that
| the parental authority may merge into
| slavery. The belief that slavery exists
among the Chinese in California has indeed
been frequently asserted, but no sufficient
evidence has ever been adduced in support
of it. The allegations commonly made
with regard to the authority exercised by
the Six Companies, even if true, would
prove no more than the existence of
kind of peonage or serfdom, which though
akin to slavery, is yet sufficiently
distinguished from the latter. The
statement made by Consul Bailey, to
the effect that the English Government
of Hongkong he's made repeated efforts
to extinguish Chinese slavery there, but
Indeed, if any factsyexist to bear it out even
partially, the probability would seem to be
that the evil complained of was really a |
patriarchial SYSTEM of peonage, and not /
slavery as understood in the Western |
world. The rigidity of the Chinese social !,
institutions, however, must render it COM |
paratively easy for Chinese colonists to
maintain customs the only hope of abolish
ing which can be derived from desire on |
the part of the enslaved people themselves
to recover their independence. With any
other people such movement for liberia
ton would be natural, but the Chinese can
conceive of no destiny worth the achieving
which separates them from their time hon.
ored customs, or subjects them to the i'm
putation of having shown disrespect or
want OF submission to their ancestral
deities
It is possible that this question of slav-
cry may, however, afford a handle whereby
to deal with the subject of Chinese immi-
grafton. If indeed the paternal authority |
is so intimately bound up with their social
system that to ask them to modify it is to
ask them to revolutionize their civilization, !
the fact would furnish an additional argu-
ment against the free Importation of peo-
pie so situated to the United States. The
question of assimilation,- about which so
much has been written, is closely con-
nected with this new phase of the subject,
moreover, for it is clear that if the aboIi-
ton of partial or complete slavery |
is regarded by the Chinese them
selves as impracticable, because it is an |
outgrowth of their entire social system,
nothing can be more hopeless than to i'm
agine that such a people will in any given |
time abandon their peculiar customs and |
selves to American civilization. With re-
gard to the alleged ability of the Chinese
successfully "to defy foreign laws and
Courts even in foreign countries, " we are
disposed to attribute the actual condition
of things in this respect rather to the diff
culties which their language throws in
the way of English speaking peoples, than
to the peculiar vitality of their pre-
JUDGES. That language makes them
an alien race wherever they go,
and they are enabled to keep up
their special customs because it is
scarcely possible for Americans to ascer-
tain what they are doing. The life of the
Chinese who have been in California for
twenty years is a mystery to most people |
even now, and it is only occasionally that
anything comes to light concerning their
peculiar methods of governing themselves.
The new vein opened by Consul General
Bailey, however, promises better results
than most of the preceding experiments in
the same direction. The slavery cry is
taking one even with those whose preiu-
dices lead them to sympathize rather with
Chinese than white men, and the question
has now reached stage where none of us
are disposed to quarrel over the means of
enfranchisement, if only the evil can be
abated.