Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-05-24
WHITE LABOR.
Appeal to vineyardist, Fruit-Grower
and Labor Employer.

Appeal to vineyardist, Fruit-Grower
and Labor Employer.
The State Board of Trade has issued the
following circular, which should receive the
careful consideration of the whole people
| OF this State:
So much has already been said, discussions
regarding the economic status of the Chinese
upon our coast have been SO prolific, and the
| agitation so constant, that it seems almost
useless to begin it again, but the State Board of
Trade, through its Executive Committee and
Manager, take the liberty of again bringing the
subject before you. believing that only through
an honest agitation of the subject and a per-
| severing reiteration, that its object will stand
any chance of success; and this object is to SUD-
plant the teeming and cheap Chinese hordes of
1aborers with unemployed and equally as good
white laborers.
To do this and to do it effectively needs not
only your cooperation but your practical every
day observation of the principles and maxims
that you, together with the majority OF this
great country, have laid down during the last
energies and your time, during the last year
and a half, when the principal of protection
was struggling against that of free trade and
for what, gentlemen, may we ask, did you Go
this thing? Was it not that the products of
your vines, your trees and your manufactured
articles might not be brought face to face, in an
suit of a cheap and often degraded labor
in a foreign country? The labor of the country
| stood by you and with you in this Struggle.
helping you, and expecting, when your object
was gained, help from you. The laws have
thrown the mantle OF protection around you
and the products of your shops and your field /:
thanks to the highest legal tribunal of our COM
monWealth, the laborer is protected from any
further invasion. But the fact stares the man
of labor in the face. that the4horde already
here is IS ready, as willing as ever, to take the
bread of labor that by right belongs 10 him.
You gentlemen, employers of labor. asked for
your protection from the results of cheap labor,
asked that your goods, manufactured by home
labor, might not come into contact with the
same goods, the result of cheap and foreign
labor. You vineyardists asked that the pro-
tective duty might not be taken from ~raisins;
and a generous and ~fair-play loving people
stood by You and gave you the protection asked.
In view of this the State Board of Trade asks,
is 1t to be the fate of our white labor to look
INTO the doors of factories this summer and see
the hands of his Chinese enemy busily engaged
in labor? Must he sit on the fence this long
summer, when the vines gre hugging close to
earth with their golden burdens, and see this
| yellow-skinned foreigner reap the reward of
labor that by the bond OF color belongs to the
white laborer?
We truly and sincerely hope that such may
not be the fate of the white laborer this summer
or any longer. Already our books are becoming
filled with the names of men and boys ready
for the shop, the factory or the field. There is
a principle lying beneath this question of deeper
and more important significance than the idea
OF cheapness. And, gentlemen, that is the
only reason why you ever think of taking a
Chinaman in preference to a white man to
work for you, because of a money cheapness,
feeling that for a smaller amount You can get
the same work, the same results. You must
take into consideration that you are suceoring
O class of laborerS that take all and return
nothing; you must take into consideration that
your money goes, never to return into your COM
mon circulation again; you must not keep alive
a parasitic growth in your midst by sustaining
1t by feeding it: you must not help keep an
alien class with you that will not assimilate,
VIII not mix with you, will not traffic with you,
aud IN death wishes his bones to be removed
from your country. And yet you wish to build
up your State, wish to see 1t prosper, wish to see
family after family come here and locate. And
you invite him for what? To seek labor
fellow white laborer? Oh, no, BY the
side of John the Coolie. And yet the
cry continually goes out from California that
we would do anything to get rid of our yell
low countrymen. And we hold him tightly
with one hand while pushing him desperately
away with the other. There is indeed a princi-
p e in this, q principle OF consistency If nothing
more; and if we cry out against an evil and
have the remedy in our own hands, and apply
1t not, we soon become the laughing-stock Of
the country, and when next we send our plaint-
i've cries across the continent beseeching help,
people will laugh as they do at the fable Of The
Boy and the Wolf"
As we said at the start, this is an old subject,
q wornout subject, a subject of much discussion
and more agitation and less practical observ-
ance than any in our midst. But the State Board
OF Trade has found in its career that only by in
detatigable industry and persevering reiteratlon
mas 1t ever accomplished anything; and as for
this subject, we will say that, though the echo
and re-echo of the chestnut bell sounds from all
sides in our ears, we will probe this subject I'M
til we find whether the manufacturer, the vine
yardist, the fruit-grOWer and labor-employer
loves TO talk a certain way to a white laborer
when he wants his vote and a different way
when he wants his labor. When we solve this
problem we viii drop the subject.
JOIN q. BROWN, General Manager.
j. NJ. DAVIES, Secretary.