The San Francisco call., 1898-07-13
SHUT THE DOORS ON cooLIEs.

T is to be regretted that the Pacific Coast Sena-
 tors, who were such earnest supporters ot the an- nexatlon of Hawaii, and whose votes colned the measure had not sufficient influence 10 secure the appointment of Pacific Coast representative on the commission which IS to frame government tor the islands. This coast and especially California, has
 greater interest in what is done ln Hawaii than all the rest of the country.
 It is true that the annexation resolution, which cleared the constitution at jump, says that there shall be no more Chinese immigration to Hawaii by virtue of anything therein contained which is mere shufie and evasion pretense at prohibition which prohibits nothing. The full objection of California is to Asatic coolies whether Chinese Japanese, Bur mese or East Indians The East India coolie has been domestcated n the American tropics and proved the same sort of pest the Chinese here So, grant ing that the doughy and deceptive phrase gratted out of the treaty into the resolution does exclude Chi nese cooes 1t by no means excludes all Asatic cool ies and cooe wages The interests of labor in Cal ifornia require that the form of government framed for Hawaii shall exclude all cooe labor and coole wages; that it shall put employees here and there an exact equality This is necessity for California. Our laboring people here have felt keenly, and sented with spirit the manufacture of uniforms for the War Department by coolie labor. If labor is touched in its dinner pail by the employment of hundred coolies in such competition, is 1t not far more interested in the competition of 10000 cooes under our flag in Hawaii?
 The overthrow of slavery in this country when 1t understood by free white labor that black slave labor competition unfair to 1t, and when the Northern employer felt himself handicapped by the Southern savehoders chatel ownership of labor
 It presented unequal conditions for both labor and capital under a government founded upon equality, and the interests of all found to require the maintenance of equality It a profound i'm presson of this necessity that made Lincoln declare "A house divided against itself cannor stand. The republic must be all free or all slave"
 The issue involved then was labor, nothing else.
 Tn the annexation of Hawaii that issue is presented again, as forcbly to Lincoln and the men of his generation We cannot have law and servie labor for an Hawaiian planter and another law and white labor at white wages for California rancher, both under the same flag. A house divided against itself cannot stand any more than in Llncolns time.
 At least one of the Hawaiian commissioners should have been from this coast. But ignored. With one exception the Western Senators helped nexation when they could have beaten it. and labor finds that they have committed its interests to an old slaveholder from Alabama and two from Illinois! It is the old story. The West beats the bush; the East and South get the game
 What left for protecting white labor should be used at once. Our interests require that all Asatic coolies and blackbrds now in Hawaii be immediately deported and that present labor laws, the eight-hour day and all be at extended to the islands. To this no reasonable objections can be made. We live and thrive under these laws here and thrift that cannot be under them has no right to be at all