Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-06-13

seem TO include the wrongs Wnlcn are Sell
inflicted. Self-indulgence is the funda-
mental cause of at least two-thirds OF the
misery which exists in the world to-day.
This is especially true of the United States
in almost any part of which industry and
temperance combined will suffice to secure
comfortable living
1t is one of the most formidable advan-
tages possessed by the Chinese over the
white mea that they are temperate. In
this State that one virtue of sobriety has
repeatedly enabled them to push aside
their white competitors. 1t has long been
q staple complaint against the white labor
available for agricultural purposes that it
is unreliable because of the prevailing
| fondEess for drink. There are few farmers
who have not suffered from this propensity
in their white laborers. When the harvest
work is to be done, and new week is
beginning, the farmer often finds that half
his men are away. They were paid off on
Saturday night, and they at once went to
the nearest rumshop and entered upon a
debauch extending into Sunday, and un
fitting them for work until Tuesday or
Wednesday. In such cases the farmer is
! obliged to go out and seek Chinese help.
He may not believe in employing the
Chinese, but he must get his crops in, and
he knows that at any rate the Chinsman
will not abandon him to go off and get
drunk. a great many theories have been
propounded to account for the dissolute
habits of large proportion of the Califor-
MIA country labor element. It has been
said that the farmers did not treat their
white help well. and so forth. But while
it is no doubt true that our farmers have
not as q rule tried to make their hired men
very comfortable, this fact cannot excuse
the hired men for their VIGOROUSLY reckless,
unthrifty and dissolute habits.
Men who get drunk as soon as they
have earned weeks wages can never pros
per in any part of the world, but it is just
such men who try to put the responsibility
of their own misconduct upon their EN-.
ployers. Nor have suoh men any right to
complain il Cinnamon are put in their
places when they have proved faithless to
their undertakings. In so far'as the Chi
nese are industrious and sober, they are
superior to white men who get drunk and
neglect their work, and this superiority
will tell in the end. No Chinaman can
make himself as acceptable workman as a
white man, if the latter is a manly and
conscientious man, and does his duty fully
but we have beel cursed with multitude
of white loafers, who cannot or will not
work faithfully and steadily themselves,
yet are always ready to denounce those
who are forced to hire Chinese as SUBJ
stitutes for them. 1t is this class of men
who are also prone to strike for higher
wages in the harvest.fe field, when they
think the farmers cannot help him.
self, and who are capable of setting his
barns or stacks on fire If he ventures to
employ Cinnamon in their stead. 1t is this
class, also, which has always been the fercest
in the cities against the Chinese; fellows
who squander their earnings at the bars of
corner groceries, leaving their wives and
children to go hungry and half.clothed,
and who are ever ready to declare them
selves ruined by Chinese cheap labor, !"
whereas all that ails them is their own in.
temperance and slothfulness.
As these men have votes, however, the
politicians never dare to tell them the
truth. They must not be put face to face
with the consequences of their own selfish
and barbarous vices, but a scape- goat of
some kind must always be found fer them
And SO they are tickled and gratifed by
being told that they are the salt of the
earth, and that they are the victims of all
kinds of nefarious practices that if jus.
tice was done they would all be rolling in
their carriages, while the wicked rich men
would be toiling for living. But the
truth IS that the men who have attained
success in life have always begun by mas
teripg their own lower appetites; that SO.
briefly, industry, perseverance, attention,
are as necessary as ever to the attainment
of prosperity that whenever wealth has
been gained it has been secured by superior
intelligence or application /; that the rich
men are, as a rule, very hard and constant
workers; that if at the outset of their
career they had begun to loaf about saloon
bars, they would never have become pros.
porous and that whoever expects to rise
in this world must put his whole mind and
bis whole capacity to the work in which he
is engaged. The relation of temperance
to progress is in fact identical with that of
cause to effect, and wherever it is seen
that there is heavy consumption of liquor,
and the working classes contribute largely
to that consumption, the philosopher will
expect to find, and will find, much suffering,
and discomfort, and poverty. 1t is not
necessary to be fanatical upon the temper
ance question to see that the neglect of it
has very much to do with the slowness of
the progress the world is making towards
a higher civilization, for incompetence is
the most fatal obstacle conceivable in the
way of intellectual development and the
cultivation of the humane life.