New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-05-09
c111FORnT1 AND THE CHINESE.

IF San Francisco is to have a great future
as a commercial port it must be by the en-
couragcment of trade with the Orient. We
are now to see whether a notification to the
greatest and richest of Oriental peoples that
we want to have none of them among us, and
that we look upon them with loathing, is
likely to interfere at all with their trade. Il
it does not San Francisco will escape the
worst danger that seems to be threatened by
the Presidents signature to the Chinese bill.
The President objected to this bill on sew
eral grounds. He considered the length of
time for which Chinese immigration was
prohibited unreasonable He thought a
total prohibition in conflict with the
treaty, which only authorized restriction
Another of his objections was directed against
the clauses of the bill relating to registration
and passports, which he regarded as consi-
tuting an unwarrantable discrimination against
the Chinese. third objection was that there
was no provision in the bill for the
transit across the United States of Chinese
subjects now residing in foreign countries.
His concluding objection was that even if
the Pacific States no longer desired the pres
ence of the Chinese, there might be other see
tons of the country where they might be
advantageOusly employed without interfering
with the laborers of our own race.
The bill was returned to the President prac-
ticallv without change, save that the twenty
years prohibition is cut down to ten. 1t may
vet be somewhat embarrassing to explain why
the same Republican President should have
vetoed the one bill and signed the
other, or how reducing its term one-half
did away with the other objections recited.
Meantime the attitude of California on the
Chinese question is curious study. Judging from
the comments of her newspapers. it would he sup
posed that the people of the State were opposed
solidly to the presence of a single Chinaman
among them, and were determined to rid them
selves Of them as they would of a pest. Judg-
Ing from the news which crccps into the col
umns of the same newspapers, the actual situa-
tion is very different from this. Thus, in re-
cent number Of The San francisco Herald we
read that Cinnamon are arriving in great num-
beers from Hong Kong, and that despite the
"hostilty which has recently been displayed
against them, the supply of Chinese labor in
California is insufficient to meet the demand
of the corporations here and in Oregon We
also read in the same journal that agents of the
Southern Pacific Canadian Southern and other
railways have been sent to China to hire
Chinese laborers and that President Croker.
of the Southern Pacific. offered premium Of
$40 per capita for one thousand such laborers
some time ago, and they could not be found in
the State, the demand for their services was so
brisk.
This presents the railroad side of the case,
a,1 bo IA
that "brisk demand for Chinese servants
"exists in the city, and they are employed in
"many instances by the United States Army and
@Ka,y officers at $40, $50 and $50 "A month";
There is also growing demand for Chinese
labor in the vineyards of California" All this
Is extremely interesting, and the interest