Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-08-18
CHINESE EVASION OF THE LAW.

The attempted jail delivery in Alameda
county should be probed to the bottom.
Twenty-three Chinese were confined ia
that Jail under the commitments of
Federal Court, to be deported to China on
the sailing of the steamer Early on
Monday morning last five Cinnamon were
seen to enter the jail, and an hour later
five Cinnamon came out. Federal de-
tectives who were on the watch arrested
the departing group, and now it turns out
that the five were portion of the gang
of prisoners in the Jail, and that the five
who went in were substitutes desiring a
free passage to China, and who had
accordingly taken the place of five of
the prisoners, who thereby secured their
liberty.
To gain admission to the Jail the men
must have passed the guards and through
three iron double locked doors. These
doors must therefore have been opened
Tor them by some one having charge of the
keys. On suspicion, two of the jailers
have been taken into custody. Both deny
knowledge Of the affair, though they alone
were on duty at the time the substitution
took place. If the keepers of prison
ers committed by the Courts are so sus-
ceptible to the temptations of Chinese
gold, the people ought to know it, and
some means be devised for securing prison
ers beyond the possibility of their being
set at liberty by venal keepers.
1t really seems that the Chinese are able
to defeat the laws Of the land where the
native utterly fails. As rule the China
man violates the law with a nonchalance
that is amazing. In the quarters of the
Chinese in all the cities of the State the
simplest and most essential State and
municipal ordinances are de6ed, while
against white men similar laws in the
same city are rigidly enforced. Indeed, it
has been constantly uttered reproach
from our Eastern friends, who exclaim, eff
the Chinese violate your health ordinances,
and refuse to obey your laws, why do you
not arrest and punish them and compel
obedience? How is it that they can cor
rupt your officials and defeat the laws,
when others cannot escape punishment for
offensesY To these pertinent questions
the Californian has never been able to
make satisfactory reply; to him these in
quiries are as much puzzle as they are to
the average Eastern visitor. We have
ourselves frequently sought to search out a
reason for the discrimination, but have
never done so with satisfaction.
1t remains that the Chinese do effect es-
capes from the penalties of the law posi-
BILE to no others; that they do live among
us in open defiance of health and other
municipal regulations; that they do main
tain system of slavery in our midst; that
they buy and sell women, try offenders and
punish them, levy criminal tribute upon
some of their own classes, and compel pay
ment by methods pronounced crimes by
the State statutes, and that only on rare
occasions are they brought to bar for such
offending, and still more rarely are they
convicted or punished For the offeuses
of theft, burglary and murder, they are
punished, as rule, but for great number
of other and even graver offenses they go
scot free of the penalties Of laws and
ordinances that are rigidly enforced against
all other foreigners, and against our own
people.