Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-12-13
POLL TAXES.

To the citizen and to the Chinese of
this ponderous commonwealth poll.tax day
come surcharged with huge Importance.
Young America, on the twenty-irst ami.
yersary of his existence, assumes q cash
value, for at the close of his political novi-
tiate, and before he has learned how not to
pay taxes, he takes dollar in each hand and
flies away through the dawn of his twenty
second year to the Collectors Office, from
which he energies prouder and full-fedged
sovereign. The Chino-American has far diff.
ferent ideas concerning this, one of the
modes of penetrating the vail of Yankee.
dom. He does not consider his poll
tax in the light of an initiation fee to
the family-politic of this great republic,
the glory of which serves as a calcium
light to dazzle the eyes of tyranny and
subject for spread.eagle orstory. He has
no all-absorbing admiration for the flag that
serves as convenient table.cloth at torch
light mass meetings, and also shows the ex-
cited youngster the exact locality of the big
circus tent. In his financial transactions
with the Government of his white brother he
moves with a cst.like cautiousness, which
might, at venture, be compared to that of
ing of iron money-chests the only really
safe business to engage in. He displays
a reluctance to breathe the same atmosphere
that envelopes the form of the poll-tax man,
whom he cslsnders with the nethermost fiends
of China devilology; and his love for that
official is only surpassed by Mrs. Murphy's
love for the dog-catcher who subpenaed her
straying goat to appear at the pound. a
press representative had an opportunity to
accompany Collector Harvey during one of
his recent foraging expeditions through the 1.
street rookeries. They entered a passage
that ran down under large building and
stretched away into the smoky gloom. In
they went the star of the rotund officer
flashing through the heavy blackness like the
march of a meteor across the arc of night
Emerging from the darkness they found a
tan.cavern in full operation under heavy
city license, and q dim lamplight, with twenty
four gamblers bending over table, in the cen.
ter of which was pile of white buttons,
from which the croupier was raking them
away by fours." At the sight of the two
" barbarians" play was suspended. Out
of the crowd only six could show
too old or too poor, while large
percentage had left their paper" at
some convenient and mystical ''wsshee
house." All these commenced to make
frantic efforts to go out expressly for these
important documents ~. Although the col
lector threatened to drive the entire gang OF
delinquents to the police station, he never
raised the color of a cent. Other places were
visited with like result. Some readily pro
duced their receipts, but the majority stood
around like menagerie of monkeys, and
were as tranquil as June time" There,
said the official, pointing to the sunny side OF
the street, There sits hundred idle China
men who are not taxable, because they refuse to
pay, and having no property we MT compel
them. They have millions for tan and opium
not cent for taxes. o, they're an OPP
pressed population, they are They are fit
subjects for good, healthy Christians to exer-
else their rectitude upon, amt they p and
the bsffied Caucasian sat down upon tea
chest, and groaned il spirit. Outside, on the
lickety pavement rolled the stream of yellow
humanity, restless as the muddy Yangtse's
flood when transforms drench the Hima-
lsyan slopes-the silk-clad merchant,
the thread-bare coolie and those
hideous nightmares of femininity, China.
women, in long overshirts and voluminous
trouserlets, all passing in review before the
reporter and his disconso!ate comrade. It
will ever be thus the Chinaman will come
over the sea, will play tan, will smoke opium,
will smell badly, will beat the Tax Collector,
will figure in the Courts and be an everlsst-
ing expense to the people, who are taxed the
yearly golden millions to keep the mills of
justice grinding, for which these "restriet-
ed " Chinese will furnish constant "grist"
and, like Bo Peeps sheep, they will at last go
home across the sea, and with their tails be.
hind them