The San Francisco call., 1897-07-24
SLAVERY IN SAN FRANCISCO.

There is work for the Board of Health
and for the police authorities in the dark
dens of the Chinese quarter. The revela-
tions made within the last few days con-
cerning the dread horrors of the Chinese
hospitals and the inhuman and even mur-
derous treatment of Chinese girls who are
held in most accursed bondage are enough
in themselves to spur the proper author
tiles to remedial action without delay.
The CALL has been shedding light on
some of the dark plague spots and on
some of the daily crimes OF Chinatown.
Facts and names and addresses are given,
so that officials cannot any longer plead
ignorance in the premises.
The story of the Chinese hospital almost
beggars belief, and yet the sickening de-
tails could not all be told in print. The
esta blishment is a private enterprise; the
owner of the hospital is also nurse and
undertaken. His rooms are as small as
closets; they are dark and foul; they are
infested by vermin; even strong man
gasps Tor breath upon entering the narrow
doorway of one OF these rooms. In one
apartment there were half dozen hunks
along the wall with two Cinnamon in each
bunk in ell stages of disease and in all
degrees of filthiness. In a caulGron in one
corner some boiling mixture emitted an
almost insufferable odor. This was the
cure-all medicine of the Chinese nurse.
The surroundings rendered the recovery
of patients an accident. When friends or
relatives tire of paying for an inmate OF
the hospital, he is showed into another
still more gloomy cham ber and starved to
death. The undertaken realizes profits all
around. The process OF slow murder is
going on continuously in the Chinese
private hospitals. The dead and the dy-
ing lie side by side, and rats wax fat on
human flesh. These things are realities
of to-day in San Francisco's Chinatown.
They cannot be overlooked by the Health
Board and the police.
But there is still more work for the
criminal authorities in bringing to justice
the devilish slave.owners of Chinatown.
In this connection We must speak a word
CT praise and commentator for the
Methodist Mission on Washington street,
and the Presby yterian Mission on Mont
gomery street, the good people in charge
of those institutions having rescued many
Chinese girls from bondage worse than
death. There are now thirty girls at the
Pres byterian and seventeen at the Metho-
dist Mission; and the tales of some of them
are narrowing in the extreme. One was
tortured by her master till her reason fled.
Another was crippled for life by being
beaten with an iron rod. A third, because
she sought liberty, was branded on the
back with a red-hot iron, and presented a
terrible sight with her burns and bruises
and scars.
This slavery in Chinatown is more
dreadful and appalling than ever negro
slavery WAS in this country. This Chinese
slavery should be abolished, according to
the supreme law OF the land. The slave
drivers should be dragged to judgment.
The fiends who used the branding irons
should be run down and made to pay the
penalty Of their shocking crimes. There
is work for the proper authorities in these
cases. The people are interested, and on
such proceedings as may be taken they
will keep watchful eye.