Sacramento daily record-union., 1882-04-28

trail Pacific and leased lines to white labor
average ninety-one per cent. OF the total
disbursements under that head. The fact,
therefore, is, that the company employs
| less than nine per cent. of Chinese labor in
the whole State, and it is further demon
strable by comparison that it really is the
strongest supporter of American labor on
the coast. In the first place it is the
largest employer of labor in the State. In
the second place over ninety per cent. OF
all its disbursements for labor goes to
white men. In the third place it can chal-
lenge comparison with any other employer
of labor in California, as regards the per-
centage of white labor it finds work for
How many individuals are there in this
State who can stand comparison with the
Central Pacific en- this basis? Every man
who employs single Chinaman to do his
housework, and has no other help, does
ninety per cent. more than the corporation
towards maintaining the Chinese here.
Every man who employs one Chinaman
aud one white person, when he might
employ two white persons, does fifty per
cent. more than the railroad company to-
wards supporting the Chinese. The other
laundry, and it came out incidentally that
more than hundred Cinnamon were EN-.
ployed there. Investigation would no
doubt have shown that in that laundry the
railroads figures were reversed that it
had ninety per cent. of Chinese labor and
only ten per cent. of white labor. But the
lying Chronicle has had no abuse for the
owners of the laundry. An individual
may employ Chinese labor alone, to the
exclusion of every other kind, as scores OF
thousands of blatant anti. Chinese people
do, and they are not even reproached with
inconsistency. But because the railroad
company employs nine per cent. of Chi
nese, the fact that it employs ninety per
cent. of white men is ignored, and vicious
slanderers like the Chronicle try to raise
hue and cry about it.
II there is to be general overhauling
of the question of Chinese employment,
the Central Pacific Railroad will have moth
ing to fear from the outcome, though
good many people who are at present talk
ing very loudly will be shown to care great
deal more for precept than practice. Wher-
| Gb;paca ri
trade or manufacture the proportion is much
more like that OF the laundry referred to
than like that of the railroad company
and as a matter of fact it may be asserted
specifically that the latter has done and is
doing more for white labor in California
than any other corporation or firm or in.
dividual in the State. Here in Sacramento
there are constantly employed some 1000
men, and they are all white men, or nearly
ALL There are not half dozen Cinnamon
in the employ of the company at this point.
Yet it is perfectly certain that the corpora
tion could have economical largely by EN-.
ploying a much greater percentage of
Chinese labor, and it is equally certain that
if it had followed the example of most
employers of labor in the State, it would
have done SO. But it is to its credit that
it has employed white labor whenever and
wherever it could be obtained, and that it
has kept up very much larger proportion
Of that labor than any other employer on
the coast.
Such defenders of the cause of Amer
"ican labor" as the Chronicle, are in truth
its worst enemies. A concern which has
always beaten down the wages of its own
employees mercilessly; which has screwed
its miserable writers down to pittances
scarcely sufficient to keep life in them
which pays its reporters as if they were
Cinnamon which expects its staff to lie
and fabricate and debase and prostitute
themselves in all manner of dirty ways,
and for next to no compensation which
has always been first to reduce the wages
of its printers, and last to raise them
this is pretty paper TO thrust itself for.
ward as the champion CT labor" and to
empty its stink. pots upon corporation
which has always paid the very highest
wages current to its employees, and has
always been the very pillar Of labor in
California. The Chronicle would sell out
the California workingmen tomorrow, and
everyone knows this. Nor would K be
the first time it had done so 1t has
helped the thieves OF the stock market to
plunder them often enough in the past,
AID they have not forgotten its record. 1t
is not so characterless and disreputable
paper that can come forward now and
attitudinize as the friend of the working
men, nor can it conceal its own Infamous
past by fabricating gross misrepresenta-
tions concerning those corporations which
every year distribute millions OF dollars
among the industrial classes, whose exten.
sive works support thousands of comforta-
BILE and happy homes, and which have done
more to stimulate the growth and insure
the prosperity OF the State than wilder
ness of Caromcies could do, even if
every one of them was as upright and
public-spirited as the actual Chronicle is
corrupt, selfish, false and base.