The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1888-12-05

Nor is there any significance in
the fact that wages are as high at
the islands as ever; for wage earn
ers there as class do not attempt
to compete with the Chinese, and
rather than reduce the recognised
scale of wages when there are more
men to work than there is work for
them to do, simply leave the is
lands, For instance, there are
said TO be about 100 Chinese
carpenters in Honolulu. where there
were but handful few years ago.
This simply means not increased
competition between so many more
men for the work there is to do, but
the withdrawal of so much white la
Dor as was necessary from time to
time to ease an overcrowded market;
in other words the white men keep
up wages and get sufficient work by
thinning out their own ranks from
time to time as the Chinese keep
sitting in. 1t is process of substi-
tuition, not competition, that is 60
ing on. While many whites un-
doubtedly go to the Islands simply
during a squirt of good times, with
no intention of staying, and many
leave because of exceptionally dull
times in the main, due TO
other causes than the pre-
sence of the Chinese, yet with
all due allowance for the fluctuations
caused by good and bad times. the
fact is incontrovertible that the
set of the tide is against the
earning Whites at the Islands,
by reason of the Chinese; and
though good times and the natural
development of the country may
hold the tide back for while, and
bad times may give it an exceptional
impetus, its steady onward move
ment, and that with accelerating
speed, is sure-so sure that only
persistent and heroic use of legisIa-
tion will stem the tide, and even
then, the result seems doubtful, 1t
really looks sometimes as if the
Mongols were, as many say, the
scourge of God, and that we are in
for it anyhow. The appetite for
cheap labor as speedy avenue to
wealth and luxury coupled with an
enervating dread of poverty, is what
is leading the whites to give up the
ship to the Chinese. The argument
by members of the House against
Chinese legislation, that the Legis-
lature could not interfere with Chi
nese already engaged in general oc-
equations, if good, made it all the
more imperative for the Legislature
to pass at least that part of the
amendment which would have given
the Legislature power to prevent
any more Chinese from acquiring
these vested rights. 1t is hard logic
to say to those who wish to be pro-
tected against Chinese competition,
as yet only anticipated-''Den't cry
before you are hurt!' And then to
those who are already hurt, "It's
too late TO help you, for these Chi
nese you complain of have acquired
vested rights and we cannot trouble
them now."
That clause in the proposed
amendment which gave the Legisla-
ture power to dispossess Chinese al
ready engaged in business and
trades was put there not for the
purpose of disposessing Chinese now
regularly established in business,
but to give the Legislature the power
of preventing whole raft of Chi
nese from scrambling into those oc-
cupations between that time and the
day two years later, when the
amendment (if at all) could become
law; and also, if need be, for the
purpose of relegating to field work a
large class of Chinese who congre-
gate in the towns, and while osten-
sibly engaging in some occupation
have no plant or regular place of
business, and who would be better
off in the country where they are
needed than in the towns where they
are dead incubus. In other words
we gave our own race the benefit of
the doubt and preferred to make the
amendment wider than necessary
rather than run the risk of making it
too narrow and having our work to
do all over again.
SO far as the question of injustice
to the Chinese is concerned, the
choice we have is not between good
and evil, but between two evils.
Unmixed good will come neither
from letting the Chinese alone, nor
legislating against them. We must
take the course that will bring the
larger ultimate good to all, the Chi
nese included. Our aim as a people,
from the standpoint of political ethics
is, Isuppose, to preserve and advance
our Christian civilization among all
nationalities, the Chinese included.
We are bound TO receive and absorb
as many Chinese as we can, without
endangering or deteriorating our
own civilization, but no more. And
to my mind we already have an
overloaded and diseased stomach
from Chinese. The Chinese would
conform 10 our civilization much
more readily if the influence and
| power of their own civilization